purging pics from File Upload Manager

[theGinsue]

COPY OF MY PREVIOUS POST - FOR TROUBLESHOOTING (SWAPPED IMAGES TO NEW ONES FOR THIS POST...the difference in why one image is a hotlink and the other shows the actual image is the hotlink is a .pdf file)


Just trying to grasp the issue at hand and see if I can come up with a solution.

Solid Mt Logo.pdf


** I had the old header logo attached here but was able to successfully delete it from my attachments **

Starting to get a better understanding of what might be going on here.



First 2 images uploaded from my computer. "Insert Image", "From Computer" and it uses "Attach" tag within brackets to add.

Third image "Copy Image Location" from news website, then "Insert Image", "From URL" and it uses "IMG" tag within brackets to add.

Now to go into my Manage Attachments and to File Upload Manager to see the difference.

ETA: Nope, still lost. First two images show in both Manage Attachments & File Upload Manager. Third images doesn't show @ all.

When I compare my "Manage Attachments" and "File Upload Manager" results, I'm getting the opposite results than the OP - "Attachment Statistics" (top of "Manage Attachments" screen) shows I have 56 attachments but I only count 53 in "File Upload Manager".

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Okay, copied my previous post but used new images....now to see if I have a workaround for the OP.

Deleted one of the attachments via File Upload Manager.

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NOPE, no workaround.

Here's what I found: I can successfully delete the attachment from any post I've made, but vBulletin maintains the image on the system which can't be seen in "Manage Attachmnets", but still shows in "File Upload Manager".

When I attempt to use File Upload Manager (the key word here is "Upload"...I'll get to that in a moment) to delete the file I get the following message:
"The following errors occurred:
The asset is not currently being used by any content that you have access to."


So, this is why you don't show more than 2 attachments in "Manage Attachments", but many in "File Upload Manager". vBulletin created File Upload Manager as an UPLOAD tool (as the name implies), not an attachment manager. Why then, when an attachment is deleted does vBulletin keep a copy of the file and show it in File Upload Manager when it's been deleted from your attachments? That's a question you have to ask the vBulletin folks.

I can say this though, once the image is gone from your Manage Attachments, you no longer have that file visible anywhere on the viewing portion of the site - no one can see it (even mod's). There is no way that I've been able to identify for anyone to remove the image from the underlying system short of a server admin going in and scrubbing the database which is too labor intensive to even consider.

File Upload Manager does indicate that unused files will be removed in 1 hour if not used. Perhaps it will disappear from File Upload Manager eventually.

This still doesn't explain why I have more files in my Manage Attachments than I have in File Upload Manager. vBulletin mysteries.