Media Ace

Media Ace is a plugin that helps you with your day-to-day media management tasks.

Installation

The plugin is built into the theme so after theme activation you will be asked to install it.

How to Update?

After theme update, if new version of the plugin is available, you will be asked to update it (notice on top of the Dashboard).

If for somehow reasons you can't see the notice, you can update the plugin manually.

To do that, go to the WP Admin Panel › Appearance › Install plugins, find the "Media Ace" plugin on the list and click "Update" right below it.

Notice

If you can't find the Install plugins link in the WP Admin Panel › Appearance section, all your plugins are up to date and you don't need to update anything.

Setup

After activating the plugin its configuration page will be accessible under the WP Admin Panel › Settings page.

Image Sizes

Every time you upload an image, WordPress generates a set of different sizes to be served in different locations on your site. This increases the end-user performance but takes up a lot of server space. Media Ace allows you to reconfigure that for you own needs.

To manage image sizes, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the Image Sizes section
  3. In the Custom section you can add your own sizes.
  4. In the Theme and Plugins subsection you can edit or deactivate sizes used by plugins or the theme
  5. In the WordPress subsection you can edit the sizes that are created by default by WordPress core. They can't be disabled.
  6. In the Inactive subsection you can reactivate the disabled sizes

Image Bulk Actions

To regenerate the thumbnails, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the Image Bulk Actions< section
  3. Press Start in the Regenerate Thumbnails subsection

To add watermarks to all the images, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the Image Bulk Actions< section
  3. Press Start in the Add Watermarks subsection

To remove watermarks from all the images, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the Image Bulk Actions< section
  3. Press Start in the Remove Watermarks subsection

Lazy load

Lazy loading is a system which makes the browser download assests (images, embeds) only when they are displayed. This will reduce the loading time of your site and the data usage for mobile users.

To enable lazy loading, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the Lazy load section
  3. Turn on Lazy load images to enable lazy loading images
  4. Turn on Lazy load embeds to enable lazy loading embedded content (i.e. YouTube videos or a Spotify player)

Watermarks

Watermarks are small symbols/logos that are put on images to indicate what site they originate from. This way you protect your content from being used on other sites without admission.

<p>Media Ace allows you to add watermarks to all the images uploaded to your site, including the ones from frontend submission.
</p>

Important
Media Ace will create a backup copy of every image before watermarking. All the original files can be restored. If you change/set the new watermark, you can apply it to all the pictures in the media library in the Image Bulk Actions section

To enable watermarks, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the Watermaks section
  3. Check the Enabled box.
  4. Press choose an image and select the watermark picture. It is recommended to use higher resolution pictures.
  5. Choose Position on image and Opacity
  6. You can enable watermarks for different image sizes, set the size of the watermark and it's offset in the Advanced options subsection

Sometimes you do not want other webpages to use your images directly from your server. It is possible to block that, and even set up a replacement image to be displayed instead.

To enable hotlink protection, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the Hotlink Protection section
  3. Check the Enabled? box to turn on the protection
  4. Access allowed for URLs allows you to make exeptions for some sites. Some social media are added by default, to enable sharing with the featured image
  5. Block direct access to these files allows you to set the file formats to be protected
  6. Turn off Direct requests to make the protection stronger (but less stable). Not recommended.
  7. Redirect blocked request to this URL - here you can type in the URL of a replacement image that will be send instead of the hotlinked one.

GIF to MP4 conversion

To enable GIF to MP4 automatic conversion, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the GIF to MP4 section
  3. Set your Cloud Convert API key. You need to first sing up on the cloudconvert.com site.
  4. If you want to serve MP4 files from Amazon S3 Cloud Storage instead of local disk (default), please change the Store MP4 files option to on Amazon S3 and fill your S3 account data.

Media Ace allows you to automatically download featured image for posts with embedded content.

To enable this functionality, please follow these simple steps:

  1. Go to the WordPress Admin › Settings › Media Ace panel
  2. Switch to the Auto Featured Images section
  3. Enable the Auto download embed featured images checkbox.