Files that staff attach to forum topics and replies land in the Media Library alongside every other document and image on the intranet, with nothing to say where they came from. This plugin puts [FORUM UPLOAD] at the start of the title of every such file, so forum attachments stand out in the library, can be found with one search, and can be reviewed or cleared out without touching anything else.
What you need
bbPress, and the GD bbPress Attachments plugin that lets people attach files to topics and replies. Activate this plugin under Plugins; there are no settings.
How files are labelled
When someone attaches a file to a topic or reply, its Media Library title becomes “[FORUM UPLOAD]” followed by the original title, for example “[FORUM UPLOAD] site-plan.pdf”. The file itself, its address and the attachment shown in the forum are unchanged; only the library title differs. A file that already carries the label is not labelled twice when it is saved again.
Files uploaded before the plugin was installed are labelled too. The plugin works through the library in the background, a batch at a time on ordinary page loads, until every existing forum upload has been covered. On a large library that takes a little while; nothing needs doing.
Find forum uploads
Go to Media, Library, switch to the list view and search for FORUM UPLOAD. Sort by date to see the oldest first. Deleting a file here removes it from the forum post it was attached to, so check the post first if in doubt. To remove old forum content wholesale, including its files, use (Govintra) Forum tidy instead, which deletes topics, replies and their attachments together.
Change the wording
The label can be changed by a developer with a filter in a child theme or small plugin. Files labelled with the old wording are not relabelled automatically unless the background pass is restarted, which is also a developer job. Most sites leave the label as it is.
Related
- Available plugins: every Govintra plugin.
- (Govintra) Forum tidy: delete old forum topics, replies and their files on a schedule.
- Forum template: the forum pages themselves.