Experimenting with FSE
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Being brand-new to FSE, naturally I wanted to import my entire active site to a “sandbox” site for experimentation, without any possibility of disturbing the active site in any way.
I soon discovered that the media library on my live site is not accessible from the sandbox site, even though they’re under the same account.
I’m on a “Premium” plan which provides 13GB of storage, and is currently 88% full. That said, I obviously don’t have the space to perform a complete media import into the sandbox site without upgrading to a “Business” plan, which provides 200GB of space at over triple the price.
Bottom line, this is a showstopper for me as far as experimenting with FSE on a site-wide basis goes, since I can’t afford that cost. I imagine there must be others in the same boat.
Support suggested deleting unused media files, which naturally would free up some storage. However, except for a few small “straggler” images that may exist and no longer attached to any posts or pages, I’m certain that 99% of my media files are in use as I’m always careful not to upload duplicates.
To make matters worse, selecting “Media” from my home page reports the vast majority of my files as “(Unattached)”, which is certainly not the case.
I reported that problem long ago, and was informed it was a known issue which would soon be fixed. Yet, unfortunately to this day the problem remains. That’s a shame, since it would be a powerful tool in determining which media files aren’t actually attached to any posts or pages, and would accommodate library clean-up without any fear of deleting files that are indeed in use.
In the end, in order to give my live site a face-lift I guess I’m back to using templates. I’m aware that some support FSE to a certain extent, but I really wanted to use it to build a custom site from complete scratch. Alas, on my plan this seems to be impossible.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi @cygnusstudiosflorida, we don’t currently have an option for free staging sites that copy your existing plan, but thank you for that feedback. I’ll pass it along.
I’ve been trying to think of what I would do as a workaround in the meantime.
Would you consider creating a new site with just your pages and an export of the last few months worth of posts?
You could edit the FSE templates as you like. Then, just before you’re ready to go live,
1) Upgrade the site plan
2) Get backups of both sites, just in case!
3) Export the (entire) old site and import into the new one
4) Make the switchI haven’t tinkered with step 3 myself yet on a large site with FSE. But I know in the past, the importer won’t overwrite new pages with old ones.
If it did, though, you could import your fresh backup from the new site. And that definitely would not erase the other posts you’d just imported.
Would that work for you?
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Thanks for the response!
Sorry, but no, for several reasons:
Would you consider creating a new site with just your pages and an export of the last few months worth of posts?
I’d much rather be able to test the full site and wouldn’t be comfortable with just checking a few pages and posts, as who knows how the rest would display when I brought the site up live… Definitely wouldn’t want to be scrambling to fix content at that point.
1) Upgrade the site plan
As I already mentioned in my OP, I can’t afford to upgrade from a Premium to a Business plan at triple the price. It’s a free site for visitors in support of my home studio (and always will be), so no revenue is generated to help with hosting costs. It’s entirely out of my pocket.
Also, I think you missed one of my questions. Is there any word on this issue? (copy/paste from my OP):
To make matters worse, selecting “Media” from my home page reports the vast majority of my files as “(Unattached)”, which is certainly not the case.
I reported that problem long ago, and was informed it was a known issue which would soon be fixed. Yet, unfortunately to this day the problem remains. That’s a shame, since it would be a powerful tool in determining which media files aren’t actually attached to any posts or pages, and would accommodate library clean-up without any fear of deleting files that are indeed in use.
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Here’s a screenshot of my Media Library, to better understand the problem outlined in my last post:
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Oh well, forget trying to embed it. Here’s a link to the image on my Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m-vZWrgnDR37q2DG0bNFoTopJ80LYMff/view
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To make matters worse, selecting “Media” from my home page reports the vast majority of my files as “(Unattached)”, which is certainly not the case.
When an image in the Media Library is “unattached” it means it’s not been used in a published post or page. The files exist, but aren’t “attached” to any post or page content. If you have an image that is posted to a published post or page, please give us a link to that post/page and which image should be showing as “attached” and we’ll take a closer look.
As we’ve stated before, we don’t offer free trials, but offer a refund policy (14 days for most yearly upgrades and 7 days for most monthly upgrades – check here for more details) where you can try the upgrade out and get a full refund if you request it within the refund policy window.
While we don’t offer staging websites on WordPress.com, this guide can help you find alternatives to staging sites based on your needs including what’s available to your current plan level:
https://wordpress.com/support/alternatives-to-staging-sites/
I hope that helps!
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Surely, here’s not one, but four examples…
Referencing the screen shot I previously posted:
1st file (mp4):
https://cygnusstudios.blog/about/2nd file (png):
https://cygnusstudios.blog/cygnus-studios-local-videos/Next 4 files (jpg):
https://cygnusstudios.blog/2022/02/27/new-cover-the-jim-carroll-band-people-who-died/Next 2 files (jpg):
https://cygnusstudios.blog/2022/02/13/new-instrumental-from-guitarist-mike-milan-dedic/Curiously, the last file in the screenshot is in the same post as the previous two above (it’s the featured image), but displays correctly as attached while the other two do not.
This is just a VERY small sample. If you’ve got access to view my Media Library, start scrolling through pages there and you’ll see the vast majority of files are labeled “Unattached”, when they are indeed in use by various posts and pages.
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Hi @cygnusstudiosflorida, I think I understand now.
– I’ve tested the bug you mentioned. You’re right; while it doesn’t affect live sites, it does make managing media harder. I’ve left some comments and hope to nudge that in the right direction.
– We’ll note your feedback regarding cost concerns, too. Thank you.
In both cases, I can’t make promises as to whether or when something will happen, but I can promise you’ve been heard.
For now, while I hear your point that alternatives are not ideals, we’d recommend one of these options:
https://wordpress.com/support/alternatives-to-staging-sites/Hoping that helps!
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You’re right; while it doesn’t affect live sites, it does make managing media harder.
To be clear: I beg to differ… Everything I’ve reported so far is definitely occurring on my “live” site. I have no other sites active.
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Thank you for clarifying. I can confirm that it is noted in our bug report that this issue affects live sites as well.
Happy to update you when we know more, but as mentioned above we do not have a timeline one when that would be addressed.
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Thanks, Jerry.
Happy to update you when we know more, but as mentioned above we do not have a timeline one when that would be addressed.
Hmm… Since you obviously appreciate sarcasm, that sounds awfully familiar for some reason. 🤔
Have a look at the email response I received from my original report of this problem, about 15 months ago. Hope I don’t have to hold my breath much longer!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m2_Z5nL8gWiLJL6M8xQmQu48Q0FvYcbM/view
Seriously though, it’s obviously a high severity issue which renders one of the most valuable functions in the Media link on the Home page totally useless.
I sincerely hope it finally gets the attention it needs, and soon. If you have a rating system for known problems, in my opinion this is most definitely a “Sev 1”.
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Hi there, no sarcasm intended, it’s very hard to divine true intention from text.
Our developers are aware of the issue, but there are higher priority items currently.
You’re welcome to follow along at https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/issues/44427
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Found it, opened Jul 24, 2020. Wow, it’s been a known issue for much longer than I thought… Around 20 months, and on top of that assigned as a “low” priority. No small wonder it hasn’t been seriously addressed yet.
I’ve subscribed to the bug on GitHub and requested a priority bump, guess I’ll go back to turning blue for now.
Until fixed, “Home”>”Media” to check status of file attachments = Completely useless, and more importantly dangerous in that those in use may be inadvertently and permanently deleted. 🤨
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P. S. staff-blorbo
Forgot to clear something up… My mention of sarcasm was in reference to Jerry’s user name (jerrysarcastic). Certainly, no offense was intended. 😉
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Hi there,
As you’re subscribed to the GitHub issue you already know the issue causing the unattached images has been fixed.
Our developers have now run an update on your site to fix images that were incorrectly showing as unattached.
We found 401 “unattached” images
There was a reference for 263 of those images (either as the featured image or in the post content). Those images were reattached.
The remaining images weren’t referenced by a post and so were left unattached. These could be used in widgets or the sidebar, or it could just be that they were uploaded while drafting a post but decided against using the image. So please don’t just bulk-delete those images without checking them first.
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