Andy and Alex have been hard at work on it for some time. It’s really impressive and I’ve only started to play with it — it being searchable is a huge enough leap for me. I don’t use a lot of images and other media, so I’m eager to see what you experts think of the experience.

Lorelle describes it as hot. And Matt is eagerly waiting for it to be ready:

My pictures are ready to go, I’m just waiting for certain features within WordPress to start working and creating intermediate sizes so I can upload them to my blog instead of Gallery.

Andy responded

The Media Library only knows about files that have a record in the posts table with post_type = ‘attachment’. These records are created when you upload a file via WordPress. Uploading via FTP, etc., has no effect on the WordPress database.

We do not scan your upload directories and that is not now planned. I would like to see a plugin do this.

So Andy has dropped the gauntlet. Which plugin developer among you will rise to the challenge? You will garner much fame and admiration from your fellow WordPress participants!

Update: Less than 9 hrs since I published this, the amazing Dion Hulse, or as we know him, DD32, has created Add From Server:

A WordPress plugin which allows you to browse the filesystem on the webserver and copy any files into the WordPress uploads system, Once imported it’ll be treated as any other uploaded file, and you can access it via the Media Library.

On wp-testers list Dion adds:

While it doesnt scan the directories for new files, I just wrote up a plugin to allow importing files from the web servers filesystem into the WordPress uploads system.

It simply allows you to select files, and then import them into the uploads folder(They’re copied).

It needs more work obviously, And i’ll have to add some logic to detect that its adding a file from within the uploads folder to prevent duplication i guess.. Another function that i’d like to add is a watch-directory, Any files which get uploaded into that folder, get imported automatically (and optionally deleted from the source dir afterwards), But thats all for the next release in another week or so most likely.

It is a work in progress, as all great things are. Already this is going to make a lot of people happy!

embedding youtube – I know to turn off WYSIWYG but is there an easier way?

First, you can’t do embeds, JavaScript, etc if you are don’t have unfiltered_html, which only the Admin and Editor roles have.

Nancy, describe it works in “code” mode so she has sufficient permissions. So this is a big clue that the problem is how we integrated TinyMCE (the WYSIWYG or visual editor) into WordPress.

Although, if I had waited until tomorrow I would have gotten additional important details. I was about to confirm there is a bug in the latest release (2.3.3).

And it is fixed in the next major release (WordPress 2.5), further in 2.5 it will remember whether you were last using Visual or HTML editor mode, so even if the bug still existed, which it doesn’t, it would be worked around.

The bug is #5336 TinyMCE Mangles <object> tag’s and DD32 verified that it is fixed:

WordPress 2.4/2.5′s TinyMCE has a built-in flash functionality.

Heres the HTML it generates: (as seen on the published page, i’m pretty sure its identical in the edit window)

<p><object height="110" width="315" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"><param value="http://www.spiegel.de/media/0,4906,16534,00.swf" name="src" /><embed height="110" width="315" src="http://www.spiegel.de/media/0,4906,16534,00.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></p>

Appears to be fixed.

So Nancy, it sounds like you have the best work around until WordPress 2.5 which will fix the problem.