The 1.19.0 release comes hot on the heels of last week's 1.18.0 release. This is possible as 1.19 is a "focussed release" which we've been working on for a while, in a parallel track to our normal sprints. The release contains a significant improvement to the media management functionality of the Platform, hence our decision to publish it now rather than wait for the next "normal" release sprint to reach completion.

This functionality has already been deployed to the new site of East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, (ESFRS), which is currently undergoing content population. ESFRS were the original requestors of this functionality, so it makes sense to work with them to gain feedback and make any refinements necessary for the new functionality.

Headline feature:

Introduction of directories to media management

Many client sites have media libraries that contain thousands of items, and in the more extreme cases tens of thousands of items.  The sheer scale of this makes finding and managing media hard.  The addition of a media duplicates report in the 1.18.0 release of the Platform revealed that duplication of media happens a lot, most likely from content editors being unaware that the files they want to use already exist in their sites.

In this release, we have implemented the ability to create directories in the media library and to assign both new and existing media items to them. A screenshot of this in action is shown below:

Directory names and media allocations are defined by content editors using the admin system. We would recommend planning your directory naming convention and structure prior to building it out, as you'll need to ensure it is scalable and maintainable.

We've woven the new directory functionality into the rest of the media management system, so directories can be chosen when a file is uploaded, and it's possible to search the media library by directory, as shown in the following screenshot.

As always, all existing sites will gain this functionality over time at no additional cost.