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Media Search Enhanced

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Media Search Enhanced

by Yoren Chang

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Description

Try it live in your browser — launch the WordPress Playground demo. Boots a WordPress instance with this plugin active and a Media Library seeded with 8 attachments, so you can see the cross-field search in action immediately. Searching mountain returns 6 hits (matches in filename and alt text included) — core WordPress search would only find 3.

This plugin is made for:

  • Search through all fields in Media Library, including: ID, title, caption, alternative text and description.
  • Search Taxonomies for Media, include the name, slug and description fields.
  • Search media file name.
  • Multi-term search — Anywhere in the WordPress admin (the Media Library list view at upload.php, the “Add Media” modal, and other admin screens), use commas to search for multiple items at once (e.g. image-a.jpg, photo-2.jpg). Matches attachments containing any of the terms. Limited to 10 terms per search. Frontend searches still treat commas as literal characters, as a query-amplification guard for public pages.
  • Use shortcode [mse-search-form] to insert a media search form in posts and template files. It will search for media by all fields mentioned above.

Using The WordPress Dashboard

  1. Navigate to the ‘Add New’ in the plugins dashboard
  2. Search for ‘media-search-enhanced’
  3. Click ‘Install Now’
  4. Activate the plugin on the Plugin dashboard

Uploading in WordPress Dashboard

  1. Navigate to the ‘Add New’ in the plugins dashboard
  2. Navigate to the ‘Upload’ area
  3. Select media-search-enhanced.zip from your computer
  4. Click ‘Install Now’
  5. Activate the plugin in the Plugin dashboard

Using FTP

  1. Download media-search-enhanced.zip
  2. Extract the media-search-enhanced directory to your computer
  3. Upload the media-search-enhanced directory to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
  4. Activate the plugin in the Plugin dashboard
  1. Demo search on the Media Library screen.

    Demo search on the Media Library screen.

  2. Demo search on the Insert Media - Media Library screen.

    Demo search on the Insert Media - Media Library screen.

How to link media to the file itself rather than the attachment page in media search results page?

Please add the following code to the functions.php in your theme:

function my_get_attachment_url( $url, $post_id ) {

    $url = wp_get_attachment_url( $post_id );

    return $url;
}
add_filter( 'mse_get_attachment_url', 'my_get_attachment_url', 10, 2 );

Don't install, will cripple your site

By bhasic on February 8, 2024

Searching with this will use all resources and cripple your site. Don't install this. Developer doesn't update this.

No longer working - breaks media search completely

By Tomas Eklund on December 21, 2021

I've noticed that a few other users on the support pages have reported that this plugin, which hasn't been updated for the last two years, no longer works as intended. In fact, it breaks the media library search functionality completely. I can attest to this. This is very unfortunate as the functionality that this plugin seemingly used to provide would be very useful to me.

Wonderful plug-and-play plugin that lets me search through alt text

By waterdandelions on November 1, 2019

I find this plugin really convenient because I name my media files only with alphabets, but I write the alternative text in my non-alphabetical language. After the installation, I can search both titles and ALT text. Also, it is a plus that it needs no set-up. I am really grateful to the developer for creating and maintaining this useful plugin.

It saves me!

By Baharehtz on July 10, 2017

I had problems with finding in media library search the images that I have added in the passed few years, searching them with the file name wasn't working at all.. till I installed this plugin, things start to work and I don't have anymore this problem! Great job! Thanks.

Essential!

By Ken Gagne (kgagne) on March 29, 2017

This plugin was essential for my photoblog and its thousands of media library files. How else could I ever expect to find what I was looking for?

Works as advertised

By tijsgerritsen on February 20, 2017

Does what it says on the box. Love it.

Neat but with an inconvenient or a bug

By boumy on February 10, 2017

The functionality is a must have. I don't understand why it is not implemented in WordPress by default. It works very well on my WordPress 4.6.3 except that… the sorting column functionality of WordPress doesn't work correctly anymore when your extension is activated. In the Media lib, I click on "Title" or "Date" column headers and the result is not all consistent. I hope you'll get this review and fix the issue. Thank you.

reduces wp functionality

By recons on January 13, 2017

I tested this plugin and for media that few words in the title, it fails to find them. For example, if my media name is my_media_file.jpg and I search for "my media", this plugin does not find it. While wordpress without this plugin is finding it fine. Would be happy to change my review once this is fixed.

Saved The Day

By David Sharpe (davesharpedotcom) on October 26, 2016

I'm rebuilding a site that used a Gallery CPT with no image titles. This plugin allowed me to rebuild the galleries by searching by file name. Works perfectly.

Wonderfull

By princealbert on September 3, 2016

Works perfectly.
I can now search gallery captions.

Is there a way I can include the search in my footer area as a widget or something?

I would also like to decrease the length of the search bar.

1.0.0

  • New: Multi-term search — use commas to search for multiple items at once anywhere in wp-admin, including the Media Library list view and the “Add Media” modal (e.g. sunset.jpg, logo.png). Limited to 10 terms. Frontend searches still treat commas as literal characters.
  • Performance: Replaced LEFT JOINs + DISTINCT with EXISTS subqueries, eliminating temporary tables and improving search speed up to 10x on large media libraries.
  • Performance: Numeric searches (e.g. searching by attachment ID) now use exact integer matching instead of string comparison, enabling primary key index usage.
  • Compatibility: The plugin no longer overwrites the entire WHERE clause. Conditions from WordPress core and other plugins are now preserved.
  • Security: Fixed reflected XSS in the search form placeholder.
  • Security: Private attachments are now only visible to users with appropriate permissions (editors/admins see all; authors see only their own).
  • Developer: Added mse_max_search_terms filter to customize the multi-term cap (default 10). Added mse_allow_multi_term_search filter to customize where multi-term search is allowed; defaults to is_admin().

0.9.2

  • Security enhancements.

0.9.1

  • Fix: Prevent “Not unique table/alias: wp_postmeta” SQL error by aliasing the postmeta JOIN. Props @mikemeinz. See https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sql-syntax-error-26/

0.9.0

  • Added the languages pt_BR and es_ES. Thanks to @larodiel.
  • Fixed an issue when searching for images in the Image block, the plugin caused the HTTP 500 error. Also thanks to @larodiel.

0.8.1

  • Fix PHP notices and updated the “Tested up to” field.

0.8.0

  • Supporting MIME type and date filters when searching in the Media Library. Thanks to @jedifunk for spotting this bug.

0.7.3

0.7.2

  • Bug fix: Make the search work with WPML Media – All languages.
  • Filter the search form if it’s on the media search results page.
  • Make the images clickable in the search results. Can be disabled by setting the filter mse_is_image_clickable to false.

0.7.1

  • Bug fix: Remove duplicate search results when WPML plugin is activated, THE RIGHT WAY.

0.7.0

  • Remove duplicate search results when WPML plugin is activated. Props @joseluiscruz.

0.6.1

  • Security update: use $wpdb->prepare to process SQL statements. Thanks to @daxelrod for this.

0.6.0

  • Add ID to search fields.
  • Modify the clauses with posts_clauses filter.

0.5.4

  • Add filter mse_get_attachment_url to modify the attachment URLs in the media search results.

0.5.3

  • Bug fix: Filtered excerpt should be returned, not echoed.

0.5.2

  • Display thumbnails in the media search results.

0.5

  • Use shortcode [mse-search-form] to insert a media search form in posts, which only searches for media files (through all fields).

0.4

  • Search media file name.

0.3

  • If there are Taxonomies for Media, search the name, slug and description fields.

0.2.1

  • Add DISTINCT statement to SQL when query media in the “Insert Media” screen

0.2.0

  • The first version
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