Split media settings for "images" and "files" folders

[scw-1937]

I am working with Joomla since 2015 and I especially like the stuff that is built-in already to make it easy to customise web sites without breaking upgrades and too much dependencies on third party extensions for basic stuff. 👏🏼

I also like the idea of the new "files" media folder. However I feel that it lacks customisation. In the involved Github issues I read that splitting the media folder into two folders was just a first step. Let me start the discussion to expand the functionality.

Suggestion

I would like to suggest to split up the media component configuration so the restrictions/settings for images are different than for other files. I can imagine that there are lots of other scenarios that are kind alike. Bringing those together might help creating the exact requirements that are needed to start development.

Use cases

Blog/news images are restricted in size for site performance because, sadly, users do not follow rules that are not forced :-). However documents and videos are often larger in size and there is no way to upload them using the UI because of the configured maximum file size for all media files. The same goes for other settings since one might want the images folder to accept only image file/mime types.

Notes

I am aware that it is always possible to create/use (third party) extensions to get things done. However I feel extending the configuration for media items should be part of the Joomla media component and would benefit the community.

[brianteeman]

You are aware that there is a scheduled task available that will automatically resize images?

[scw-1937]

Hi Brain, thanks for your quick response. I was not aware that there is a built-in task that resizes images. I like the fact that it can be set up per subfolder. The task is interesting, however it does not take into account image quality, ratio and file size. These are important for UX.

This discussion however is broader than just resizing images in terms of dimensions or file size.

[Fedik]

The "images" and "files" is just a folder name. They (their names) can be any. Ideally there should be no hard linking to specific one.

What you asking is configuration per folder. This part need to be handled by file system plugin ("Filesystem - Local" plugin) not in global configuration. There already some options like "image resizing".
But I would not overcomplicate it.

[scw-1937]

@Fedik, thank you as well for your fast response. You are right: they are just names. I am a fan of KISS too, but I also like flexibility. I think I did not formulate my request/idea correctly and I made assumptions. I apologise for that. I should have just explained my use case.

I saw the "Media Action - Resize" plugin, but that just resizes all uploaded media image files to fit the configured dimensions.

For this project I adjusted the global media component settings (Global configuration > media) to restrict the file size. These apply to all managed media items. The project requires different image dimensions, which could be forced by the built-in task that @brianteeman mentioned. It also requires different kind of files, such as PDF files. Max file size per root folder would enable users to upload the PDF files as well since they are larger. However if it is not possible to set restrictions on file/mime types per folder, users could (ab)use the PDF folder and upload images there.

It would indeed be useful to have these kind of settings per (root/sub-) folder.

[Fedik]

Since Joomla 4 the Media manager is totally different, and many stuff in global Media configuration is outdated, kind of.
Now Media manager has Filesystem providers, a special plugins that handle the files (local, dropbox, ftp, etc).

In core Joomla provide "Filesystem - Local" plugin which handle "images" and "files" folders (and not limited to only these).
It is indeed may be possible to extended to what you asking, however I cannot say amount of work it requires.

One of feature already suggested in:

• [6.0] Implement access levels for media manager folder #45331