WordPress plugin – Something Odd!

I’ve just released Media Picker for Immich on the WordPress.org plugin directory. It connects WordPress to a self-hosted Immich server so you can browse, search, and insert your photos and videos into posts without copying files around.

Immich

I run Immich at home. It’s where my photos now live. They’re organised, searchable, with facial recognition and AI search. My WordPress uploads directory is where photos used to go, and the two never talked to each other. This plugin fixes that.

How it works

Point the plugin at your Immich server and give it an API key. You can set a site-wide key or let each user configure their own to connect to their own Immich account.

Screenshot 1: Settings → Immich:
Server address and blank site-wide API key, default cache settings

If the site-wide key is blank, each user adds their own key on their profile page. All Immich API calls happen server-side.

Two ways to add media

Once configured, an Immich tab appears in two places.

The first is the Media Library grid. Switch to the Immich view and you can search, filter by person, and either Use or Copy assets into WordPress.

Screenshot 3: Media → Library, Immich view.

Use creates a virtual attachment. Nothing is copied; WordPress proxies the media from Immich on demand and caches it locally on first request. Your uploads directory stays lean.
Copy downloads the original file into wp-content/uploads/ as a normal attachment.

The same tab shows up in the “Select or Upload Media” dialog inside the post editor, so you can pull an Immich photo straight into a post without leaving the editor.

Screenshot 4: Select or Upload Media dialog, Immich tab.

A few details worth mentioning

Videos work too. Proxied videos stream with seek support.
Lightbox. Proxied Immich images in posts open a full-resolution lightbox on click.
Local cache. Proxied media is cached to wp-content/cache/immich/ after the first fetch. Optional cleanup with a configurable lifetime.
Your server stays private. Immich only needs to be reachable from WordPress — not from the public internet. Visitors never connect to Immich directly.
When images are copied over, virtually or otherwise, you can insert them into a post like any other image, which also includes adding them to galleries in posts.

Get it

Install it from the WordPress plugin directory or search for “media picker for Immich” in the plugins page in WordPress.

Feedback and bug reports are welcome. Development is done on GitHub here.

A long sought after feature in WordPress MU is domain mapping. That’s where a blog on a WordPress MU site can be “mapped” to a new domain. WordPress.com has an advanced domain mapping feature that has proved to be very popular with users even though it’s a paid-for upgrade.

This domain mapping plugin isn’t quite as powerful and still requires plenty of testing. So, while domains and “sub domains” or hostnames can be mapped to individual blogs, there are a number of caveats:

Remote login does not work. It’s possible to be logged in on the main site, logged in on the domain mapped blog as a different user or not logged in at all there!
It only works if your WordPress MU site is using sub domains.
It’s the ~~0.1~~ 0.2 release. It’s basic.

Here’s the plugin page, and the download page. I’d like to hear how well it works for you.

I’m submitting this plugin to the WordPress MU plugin competition. There are only 2 other entries so the odds on my winning are pretty good!

I should have a Sitewide Tags update later this week, with thanks to Thomas Schneider who came on board last week to help and has done some super work!

Ron and Andrea found a bug in pre release testing that I forgot to fix in 0.1, so grab 0.2 if you were (un)lucky enough to grab the first release! Thanks Trent for testing too. Follow me on Twitter to get the inside scoop on my WordPress plugins, including a sort of super secret Twitter plugin..

WordPress MU is the multi blog version of WordPress that runs on WordPress.com and many other sites.