The image on this post has the file location https://www.organicweb.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/wordpress-300x300.png. I however uploaded the image to my WordPress website in September 2016. Also, when uploading files I’ve selected the Organise my uploads into month- and year-based folders option by going to Settings then Media from my WordPress dashboard. So why has WordPress saved the image to the October 2010 directory when the image was uploaded in September 2016?
What occurs in WordPress is that the image is uploaded to the directory reflecting the date of the post and not when the image was uploaded. In my example above I uploaded the image when editing a post published in 2010 and therefore the image has been saved in the 2010 directory on the server.
Oddly enough this is actually a feature rather than a bug. WordPress is designed to save images to the directory date of the post rather than the dates of when the image was updated.
What a STUPID ‘feature’! Like many of the odd decisions by the makers of WP. Take this example. I wanted to re-use an image to save re-uploading it. Using the inspector in the browser I could see the url of the image – a folder dated Dec 2015. Going to the Media library and calling up that month, no image. The image is in the folder as I confirmed by FTP. After hours of faffing I found that Media library is showing the image in May 2016, for the reasons you outline above. And it’s no use trying WP’s own search.
So thanks WP. More time wasted by your perverse approach to ‘useability’!
Thanks for this, it cleared the issue up! I schedule my posts many months later so that they don’t accidentally publish before I’m done!
I’m with carnethy, what a Lame “feature”. It’s causing me a lot of grief here.
I have an issue in my custom theme. Direct media library upload saving in wrong month date folder (2017/03) when current date is 2018/09. But when I upload images through post it goes to the correct folder.
I have tested in default theme working fine. So the issue is in my custom theme. But I am not sure where to look at. Help is much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.