CoffeeWP Media Cleanup – Scan and Remove Unused Media and Orphan Thumbnails

CoffeeWP Media Cleanup helps you reclaim disk space and tidy up your WordPress media library without risking data loss. Every destructive action moves files to an internal trash so you can recover anything you did not mean to delete.

A guided three-step wizard walks you through the work:

1. Pre-scan settings — review detected page-builder compatibility, pick which thumbnail sizes WordPress should generate, and choose a batch size that fits your server.
2. Scan — walk your uploads tree and detect which files are unused, broken, or missing.
3. Results — see what is unused, what is broken, what is missing, which thumbnails are stale, and run targeted clean actions on selected rows or across the whole result set.

Clean actions:

• Delete unused media (file moves to trash; attachment record soft-deleted).
• Delete missing files (clears DB rows whose backing file is gone).
• Delete broken-link records (clears attachment posts whose files never existed).
• Delete orphan thumbnails (removes derivative files with no attachment parent).
• Regenerate missing thumbnails (re-runs WordPress’s image-size pipeline).
• Add orphan files to the Media Library (creates attachment records for unattached files).

Trash + restore:

A dedicated Trash view lists every file the plugin has moved out. Restore any item with one click, permanently delete individual rows, or empty the trash. Optional auto-delete after N days. Trashed files live under wp-content/uploads/cwpm/trash/ and are protected from being overwritten by new uploads (filename collisions are detected and avoided).

Activity log:

Every clean action writes to a daily log file at wp-content/uploads/cwpm/logs/. The Logs view shows each file with size and download link. Optional auto-delete after 30 days.

Designed to be safe:

• Soft-delete by default — no file is ever permanently removed except via the explicit “Empty trash” or “Permanent delete” controls.
• Per-row checkboxes and a typed-confirmation disclaimer modal gate the destructive actions.

External Services

This plugin does not connect to any external services. No data leaves your WordPress install.

Third-Party Libraries

The plugin bundles these GPL-compatible libraries (LICENSE files shipped alongside each):

• Color Punch (MIT) — internal CSS / JS UI framework. Shipped at assets/vendor/color-punch/.
• Font Awesome Free (CC BY 4.0 icons + SIL OFL 1.1 fonts + MIT code) — icon font. Shipped at assets/vendor/font-awesome/. Upstream: https://fontawesome.com/
• Rubik, Outfit, Fira Code fonts (SIL OFL 1.1) — bundled with Color Punch under assets/vendor/color-punch/fonts/.
• Catppuccin color palette (MIT) — applied via Color Punch theme variants. Upstream: https://github.com/catppuccin/catppuccin

Data + Storage

Custom database tables (created on activation, dropped only on uninstall when you enable “Delete data on uninstall”):

• {prefix}_cwpm_scan_results — per-file scan output (rel_path, attachment_id, usage flags, thumbnail status).
• {prefix}_cwpm_trash — trashed-file ledger (rel_path, original_path, file_name, file_size, trashed_at).
• {prefix}_cwpm_file_hashes — md5 hashes computed during scan; reserved for future identity-matching features.

On-disk storage (under wp-content/uploads/cwpm/):

• wp-content/uploads/cwpm/trash/ — files moved by the trash system. Recoverable until you Permanent-Delete or Empty-Trash.
• wp-content/uploads/cwpm/logs/ — daily activity logs (one file per day, e.g. cwpm-2026-05-13.log).

Both folders contain .htaccess + index.php stubs to prevent direct web access.

Options + transients: all keys start with cwpm_. Stored in wp_options. Per-user preferences (theme, table density) stored in wp_usermeta with the same prefix.

Custom post type: cwpm-trash — used as a soft-delete state for attachment posts. The attachment record stays in wp_posts but is hidden from the Media Library until restored.