Reflect the folder structure of your Real Media Library (media library folders) in your file system. Organize media in physical folders and benefit from SEO optimization.

Reflecting the Real Media Library folder structure into your file system not only gives you a better file structure when working with an FTP client, but a more descriptive file path. This SEO optimization will drive traffic directly to your website from image search engines!

Physically restructures uploads

Upload files to physical folders

Queue for reliable moving of files

SEO-optimized file paths

Rename file names by their title

Redirect old file paths for SEO

Reorder existing files

Stripe special characters

Extra long file paths allowed

You want a list of all features? Get it by scrolling down!

Real Physical Media is an add-on for Real Media Library and Media File Renamer (free or PRO). You need to install both plugins to use Real Physical Media.

Real Media Library: Real Media Library helps you with media management. Organize thousands of uploaded files into folders, collections and galleries. A real file manager that allows you to manage large amounts of files in WordPress.

Media File Renamer: Media File Renamer physically rename media files to get more descriptive file names based on the media title. This helps search engines index your images better and direct more traffic to your website via image search.

Over 15,000 people</strong> have already purchased WordPress plugins from devowl.io.

Top rated WordPress plugin: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars rated plugin. What customer says: Works great and reliable together with the Real Media Library [...]. If you want to really organize your files on your file system, this is a must-have plugin.” written by dlutt; “Unique in its value and Matthias gives great support and continues to update and improve this product. This kind of thing should honestly be standard in WordPress!” written by thedonquixotic

You want to try Real Physical Media before buying? Take a free sandbox and play around! A sandbox is a WordPress installation with the pre-installed plugin just for you. You can do what every you want on this installation.

Do you have questions before you buy? Or are you already a user of the Real Physical Media and need support? Then simply read our Knowledge Base, open a support ticket or write to us in the live chat. We are happy to help you!

Real Physical Media is compatible with next to any WordPress plugin and theme. In addition, we have created an explicit compatibility with all plugins compatible with Real Media Library. You can use Real Physical Media with any devowl.io WordPress plugin which have an advanced integration for the best usability.

Real Physical Media comes with a lot of features to physically manage your uploaded media. For this plugin we have focused on a high-performance solution that can most effectively improve your ranking in search engines.

Physically restructures all uploads in your WordPress media library using the folder structure created with Real Media Library.
Moves new uploads directly to the correct physical folder (instantly done; no need to queue).
Removes special characters from file and folder names for best international compatibility.
SEO-optimized descriptive path names with meaningful folder names and file names that are renamed by their title.
SEO URL redirections protect you from errors: If your or another website refers to a file whose URL changes when the file is moved, the user’s browser is automatically redirected with a 301 and 302 redirect for best SEO results.

Works with all files in your media library such as images, videos, audio, text or PDFs.
You are independent from this plugin. Your files will remain in the physical folders, even if you delete this plugin at some point.
You can physically arrange all folders already created with Real Media Library before installing this plugin. This will give you better visibility of all images on your website in search engines – not just newly uploaded ones.
Set up an additional upload suffix to be added to your upload folder, e.g. wp-content/uploads/storage/
Allows extra long media URL paths and file names with even more than 255 charters (default limit in WordPress).

Built-in high performance file structure rewrite queuing system that protects your system from crashes or timeouts (works for large websites with thousands of media uploads).
Enabled automatic queuing tracks every file movement (move, reorder, mass move, folder renaming) and automatically queues them for maximum efficiency.
Optionally, set up a cron job that processes the queue in the background without blocking you while editing the website.
Import categories/folders from third-party media library folder plugins such as FileBird, WP Media Folder, Advanced Media Library, Media Library Wizard and automatically rewrite the created structure to your file system (import via Real Media Library).
Supports WordPress Multisite (each page has its own folder tree).
GPDR/DSGVO: The plugin does not collect personal data without your consent!

Why you should rewrite the folder structure of your media library for SEO purposes?

WordPress creates by default a very simple folder structure for uploads to the media library. It creates a folder for each year and month the image was uploaded. For example, the URL of your image calls http://devowl.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/example.gif. The structure gives you a good historical overview, but this is bad for search engines.

What search engines know about your files

Search engines are getting better over time, but they still rely on relatively simple data. Nowadays, search engines can’t recognize what the content of an image is, or interpret it. Instead, they depend on additional information that you as a webmaster pass on to them. Thus the alt and title attributes in the <img /> tags of your website give search engines very valuable information about the content of the image – and you can control it. At least as important is the information about which images are related to each other – which you can also control. For example, Google should know that the GIFs of the most important features shown above belong to each other and to the product Real Physical Media. The easiest and even for humans the most intuitive way to group these images is a folder structure.

How a good folder structure looks like

You can reflect the folder structure as a path in the URL of your image. Instead of the given example URL, the URL should rather look like http://devowl.io/wp-content/uploads/real-physical-media/product-description/features/seo-optimized-file-paths.gif. From this path name, the search engine can determine the full context of the image. The image shows the SEO-optimized file paths feature that is part of the Real Physical Media product description. The URL is also much easier for a human to understand.

Real Physical Media does exactly that for you. It automatically reflects the folder structure which you have already created with Real Media Library in a meaningful path name and increases the ranking of your images (and in the end your complete website) in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu or Yandex.ru. Questions from happy customers

Real Physical Media is a WordPress plugin for professional website developers. It comes with advanced features that may not be easy to understand. That is why your customers have asked us the following questions over time. - Question: When I move images in my folders, are they still referenced correctly on my WordPress site? Answer: Yes, don't worry about references. We automatically replace all references on your website. And in case we can't find all references or another website referring to your image or another file, we will create a redirect for all moved files to make sure no URL is broken. The user's browser is automatically redirected with a 301 HTTP header (best SEO practice). - Question: Does the plugin change the image URLs? Answer: Yes, it physically moves the files in your file system. This changes the image URL and your images get a better visibility in search engines like Google. - Question: Will the plugin work if I have already created a folder structure with Real Media Library (or any other Media Library folder plugin) before installing Real Physical Media? Answer: Yes, you can physically move all files in the media library structure after installation. It reflects the existing virtual folder structure created with Real Media Library. If you have used another plug-in than Real Media Library for media library folders, you can use the Real Media Library import feature to preserve your existing folder structure in Real Media Library. From there, physically reflecting files is as easy as clicking a button. - Question: Why dose Real Physical Media use a queuing system? Answer: Renaming files and references in the database is a stressful job for your server. Especially if you want to do this job for thousands of files. A queue-based system guarantees that your system will not overheat and is protected against timeouts. - Question: Do I need to install the Media File Renamer and why? Answer: Yes, you must install Media File Renamer. It's the standard solution for SEO-optimized file names in the WordPress ecosystem, and it does an excellent job. We don't believe the wheel should be reinvented over and over again. That's why we built Real Physical Media on top of Media File Renamer and Real Media Library (free version available for both plugins) to focus on new features that will give your images a higher ranking in search engines. - Question: I have installed a plugin for multilingual support like Polylang or WPML. Does Real Physical Media work with multilingual websites? Answer: Yes, but Real Physical Media optimizes file paths only for the primary language of your WordPress site. Whether file names are optimized for multiple languages depends on the settings of your multilingual plugin.

WordPress Real Physical Media is a modern and high quality plugins. But we try our best to ensure backwards compatibility so you can use it even if your setup is not the latest.

PHP Version: 7.4 or newer (PHP 8 supported)
WordPress Version: 5.8 or newer
Database Version: MySQL 5.7 or newer or MariaDB 10.3 or newer
Browser: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge or Apple Safari (latest versions)
WordPress plugins installed: Real Media Library (free or PRO), Media File Renamer (free or PRO)

We update WordPress Real Physical Media regularly. Not only do we fix bugs, we also add new features. All updates are included and free. Read about our latest updates!

Navigate to the complete release notes here.

physical media folders Plugins