Unique Media File Folders

Change the default WordPress upload folder structure to a randomly generated one. Each image and its thumbnails will be given an unique folder with a randomly generated name.

Why?

Because WordPress default media file paths are not very good. You either get year-month folders which may look funny if you are re-using content and is reminiscent of WordPress' blogging engine roots. The other option is to put all files into one folder which does not scale when you start to have a lot of files.

Too many files in a folder can lead to performance issues on filesystems like EXT4. If all your files are in the same folder, you’ll also run into file name conflicts.

How it works

Instead of the following file paths:

https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/photo.jpg
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/photo-150x150.jpg
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/photo-300x168.jpg

https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/image.png
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/image-150x150.png
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/image-300x168.png

The plugin will generate the following paths:

https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/cnk3nae60p6f3e942b4cpvm8q/photo.jpg
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/cnk3nae60p6f3e942b4cpvm8q/photo-150x150.jpg
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/cnk3nae60p6f3e942b4cpvm8q/photo-300x168.jpg

https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2xv5r4tnlrcodofcq3ageksmb/image.png
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2xv5r4tnlrcodofcq3ageksmb/image-150x150.png
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2xv5r4tnlrcodofcq3ageksmb/image-300x168.png

How to install

1. Download latest version from the Releases tab
2. Unzip the plugin into your wp-content/plugins directory
3. Activate Unique Media File Folders from your Plugins page

Customizing folder depth

By default, folder depth is 1 so every file will be given its own folder. Customize folder depth using umff_folder_depth filter. For example:

add_filter('umff_folder_depth', function() {
    return 4;
});

Will yield the following folder structure:

https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/c/n/k/3nae60p6f3e942b4cpvm8q/photo.jpg
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/c/n/k/3nae60p6f3e942b4cpvm8q/photo-150x150.jpg
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/c/n/k/3nae60p6f3e942b4cpvm8q/photo-300x168.jpg

https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2/x/v/5r4tnlrcodofcq3ageksmb/image.png
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2/x/v/5r4tnlrcodofcq3ageksmb/image-150x150.png
https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2/x/v/5r4tnlrcodofcq3ageksmb/image-300x168.png

How are paths generated

For all of your files, first a UUID4 will be generated. It will then be encoded into Base36 which means it will contain characters from a to z and 0 to 9. This is used as the folder name. If folder depth option is greater than 1, first n characters of the UUID are used as subfolders.

Further reading

Structuring WordPress’ upload directory to handle lots of files - Ctrl blog