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By default, media uploaded through the Wordpress dashboard goes into a folder determined by the current date. For example: /wp-content/uploads/2011/09/. Once the media is uploaded I'm not seeing any options in Wordpress to change the location of my file to something else.

Can I tell Wordpress to place my media in a separate folder? Not all my media. Just ones that I specifically select.

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4 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted
  1. Go to Dashboard -> Settings -> Media
  2. Enter the desired location in Store uploads in this folder
  3. Uncheck Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders

This will specify the global upload location. To specify a per-file upload location, you'll need to use a Plugin, such as WP Easy Uploader (not an endorsement, per se; it was just the first one I found).

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Thanks! That answered my question and that plugin you posted looks absolutely perfect. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated since 2009. I guess I should probably see if there's anything available that's more up-to-date. –  jimmykup Sep 30 '11 at 23:14
For anyone else looking at this, the plugin still works on WordPress 3.5. However, it's kind of limited in that you have to manually type in the path (you can't browse for it), you can only upload one file at a time, and you have to go to the plugin to upload, it doesn't override the basic upload functionality. But it's probably still the best file uploading plugin out there. –  gsingh2011 Dec 20 '12 at 16:31
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I would advise against un-ticking 'Organize Media' unless in a situation where you are handling storage elsewhere.

Having a large amount of files in one directory is flawed for many reasons, though there is some situations where this is unavoidable but for a website this is always unavoidable.

I inherited a Wordpress website and was tasked with moving it to another host. This proved to be a problem since all uploads were in one folder, over 93,000 files - yes 93 thousand.

No FTP client was able to index that many files and simply would not navigate into the folder.

I had no shell access to the system.

I couldn't do a full dump using the hosting control panel as there was no option to do so.

I had to rely on the hosting company to do a dump for me, which was a task in itself tying to get them to do it.

Apart from these potential issues, indexing thousands of files is slower than indexing tens or hundreds of files - simply, performance is effected with large amounts of files in one directory.

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Just use http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/ Nextgen Gallery. You can upload groups of images there, use it to display galleries, or upload a single image from there in the WP image insert window.

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How exactly the plugin applies to the situation asked in the Question? –  brasofilo Feb 9 at 20:33
Yeah, I don't see how nextgen-gallery does what the OP wants. –  Jason Jul 13 at 19:17
This doesn't answer the question, it's specific to galleries in NextGen, rather than general media uploads. –  cale_b Aug 7 at 21:32
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Another solution to this problem:

  1. Go to Dashboard → Settings → Media and uncheck "Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders". So now every file you upload will be placed in "wp-content\uploads" [optional step, but recomended to find easily new uploads for moving to another folder].
  2. Install "Media File Manager" plugin.
  3. Go to Dashboard → Media → Media File Manager.

Here you can create all folders you wish to organize your contents. The two divided window is just for moving content between different folders, you create a folder in one side and it'll be refreshed in both. Use two sides to navigate to current and destiny folders of your content, then use left or right arrow to move it, it's easy!

Notice DB is updated also, so if for example you move an image you're currently using elsewhere in your web, you'll have to reselect this image from Media Library or it won't appear in your web.

Hope you'll find this info useful. Regards!

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