How to Organize WordPress Media Library Folders in a WooCommerce Site

Are you trying to organize your WordPress Media Library Folders?

Efficient organization of product images is essential for managing a WooCommerce store.

By categorizing and organizing your images in folders, you can save time, streamline your workflow, and enhance site performance.

This guide covers the steps to organize your WooCommerce media library using FileBird, a plugin designed for intuitive media folder management in WordPress.

Let’s get started

Why Organizing Your Media Library Matters

You might be wondering why you should care about WordPress media library organization. Well, a well-organized media library can streamline your workflow, save you time, and improve your site’s performance. Imagine running your physical store with all your products piled in one big heap. Scary, right? The same logic applies to your WooCommerce digital assets.

Step 1: Install FileBird plugin

FileBird is a feature-rich plugin to manage WordPress media library in many different aspects. Within the scope of this article, I am only focusing on those features that are most useful to an ecommerce website.

Before we start, you can download this WordPress media folders plugin for free.

Please note that FileBird is compatible not only with WooCommerce but also goes well with other e-commerce plugins. Since WooCommerce is the most popular plugin to create a fully functional e-commerce website, I would use it to take screenshots and demonstrate FileBird’s features.

Upon activation, this plugin inserts a new collapsible sidebar to your media library as a folder-tree placeholder. You can right-click on each folder to rename, delete, cut and paste to a new position. 

Pro tip: Right-click a folder to access the smart context menu from which you can easily click Download to export the selected media library folder in a ZIP file.

Step 2: Enable user-based folders

After activating, the plugin adds a new FileBird sub-menu in the main Settings menu. That is where you should visit first to explore all the available settings.

There you will find in the first tab the mode for user-based folders. What are user-based folders anyway? Well, if this option is enabled, you have set an alternative mode in which each user can create their own folders and he/she can’t see the folders created by other users.

Is there anything great about it? Since FileBird creates virtual folders to optimize the WordPress media library view, it allows users to set their own categorization system however they want it. Therefore, you will have your preferred file order while respecting other users’ arrangement.

Despite not critically recommended before using, you had better enable this option. You might be asking why? Your store will definitely grow in the future, and you won’t be managing your store all by yourself, right?

Now we move on the next step of uploading categorized images to WordPress media library.

Step 3: Import product images and folders

This best practice applies when you want to upload your very first product photos or update the previous products.

No matter if you store your data on your computer or the cloud services, I believe all of you arrange your files in folders. So do I on my hard drive.

Take, for example, I have a bunch of files for the kids fashion store. I would put them in a folder named “Kid”. When I have some hundreds of items, I would even go further and create sub-folders for “Kids shirt”, “Kids shoes”, “Kids hats” and so on.

Back to WordPress, I can bulk select folders and upload those product images from my computer to WooCommerce store. 

By drag and drop, all the folders will be uploaded including their files, keeping the same folder structure. Now you have the categorized product images in WordPress media library without the need to do it over again!

Step 4: Improve Image Organization with Sorting and Bulk Actions

It works by drag and drop, meaning you can bulk select pictures on the right section and move them to the destination folder. 

Organizing images to the sidebar folders or the top containers is equally the same.

Quick tip: Press ESC key to exit bulk select mode for both files and folders.

Step 5: Set a Default Folder for Easy Access

In the three dot icon, you can find another handy option that lets you set the startup folder. 

Startup folder is the first folder location that you are in when you access WordPress media library. You can set it as a specific folder among the drop-down. 

For me, I prefer setting it as the previously opened folder, meaning I am enabled to always go back to the most recent folder I have left. In order to do that, just tick on that checkbox Previous folder selected and click Save.

This comfy feature just helps me get back to my work quickly. Extremely helpful when I need to add WooCommerce variant product images to their variations.

Step 6: Browse pictures via folders

Now that you have all products categorized in labelled folders, it is much easier to find the photos you need. 

In the media library browser, you can search for a folder name. Looking for Shoes? Type Shoes in the search box.

Even when you have some hundreds of pictures in each folder, there will be sort functions to help! Please note that this is a cool feature available in FileBird pro version. With the help of file sorting, you have 8 ways to sort out images based on their names, modified, added date, and author.

Pro tip: Advanced sorting is particularly useful when you have a wide range of product variations to upload to the product gallery. By giving decent attributes to those file names, you then can use file sort to locate the images quickly.

Imagine how fast it is to create multiple WooCommerce variable products like this.

Step 7: Create Product Galleries with FileBird

Additionally, if you also run a blog on your ecommerce website, it has been very easy to list your featured products in any pages or post. 

In the Gutenberg editor, you can add a block of FileBird gallery to insert multiple media files at once. By picking a particular folder, you are displaying its media content to showcase on the page, post, and custom post type, with or without caption. 

So go ahead and tweak the design for the front end display as you like it. Try changing column number or visually cropping images for user interface optimization.

That’s it! You have a well-aligned product gallery to showcase what your online store has to offer.