Image Regenerate & Select Crop WordPress Plugin

Screenshots from the plugin UI

Option to Enable Placeholders

This option allows you to display placeholders for the front-side images called programmatically (the images that are not embedded in the content with their src but exposed using WordPress native functions). If there is no placeholder set, then the WordPress default behavior would be to display the full-size image instead of the missing image size, hence your pages might load slower, and when using grids, the items would not look even.

If you activate the “force global” option, all the images on the front side that are related to posts will be replaced with the placeholders that mention the image size required. This is useful for debugging, to quickly identify the image sizes used for each layout, and perhaps to help you regenerate the mission ones or decide what to keep or what to remove.

If you activate the “only missing images” option, all the programmatically called images on the front side that are related to posts and do not have the requested image size generated will be replaced with the placeholders that mention the image size required. This is useful for showing smaller images instead of full-size images (as WordPress does by default), hence speeding up the page loading.

Option to Exclude Image Sizes

This plugin provides the option to select image sizes that will be excluded from generating new image files. By default, all sub-sizes defined in the system will be allowed (these are programmatically registered by the themes and plugins you activate on your site, without you even knowing about these).

You can set up a global configuration, or a more specific configuration for all images attached to a particular post type. If no particular settings are made for a post type, then the default general settings will be used.

Reset

The reset button allows for the cleanup of all settings for this plugin. The reset will not remove the custom registered image sizes, but only the settings.

Apply the settings for the selected option

You can select the general settings that apply to all, or only one of the post types if necessary. The options for which you made some settings are marked with * in the dropdown below. When you select a post type the general options will not be editable, only those that can apply to the images attached to a post will be available for updates.

General Settings

• show small buttons on the media screen
• show the attachment sub-sizes summary on the media screen
• show buttons on the media screen in grid mode
• filter and expose the image sizes available for the attachment display settings in the media dialog (any registered available size, even when there is no explicit filter applied)
• turn off the WooCommerce background thumbnails regenerate
• bulk regenerate/cleanup execution starts from the most recent files
  • This option allows you to run the bulk cleanup and bulk regenerate actions starting from the most recent files you have in the media library until the eldest image is found. This is useful if you know when you can pause/stop the bulk actions, for example when you already run the bulk actions for older files and you only need to run this for more recent uploads.
  • By default, the bulk actions will run from the oldest to the newest files.
• do not clean up the settings after the plugin is deactivated
• turn on the custom debug log for monitoring the execution of the event

Cron Tasks

• Execute bulk actions using the WordPress cron tasks instead of the default interface
  • option to specify the number of images to be regenerated at each cron task iteration
  • option to specify the number of images to be cleanup at each cron task iteration
• Cancel all currently scheduled tasks that aim to regenerate or clean up the images.

Other Settings

• generate only perfect fit sizes
  • This option allows you to generate only images that match exactly the width and height of the crop/resize requirements when the option is enabled. Otherwise, the script will generate anything possible for smaller images.
• attempt to upscale when generating only perfect-fit sizes
  • This option allows you to upscale the images when using the perfect fit option. This allows images that have at least the original width close to the expected width or the original height close to the expected height (for example, the original image has 800×600 and the crop size 700×700) to be generated from an upscaled image.
• regenerate only missing files
  • This option allows you to regenerate only the images that do not exist, without overriding the existing ones.
• regenerate/cleanup only featured images
  • This option allows you to regenerate/cleanup only the images that are set as the featured images for any of the posts.

General Cleanup

It is recommended to run the cleanup using the command line tools.

However, if you do not have access to wp-cli on your server, you could run the cleanup actions by using the cron tasks, or, if you have a small set of images to clean up, by using the plugin dialog.

• Cleanup unused files and keep currently registered sizes files
  • This type of cleanup is performed for all the attachments, and it removes any attachment unused files and keeps only the files associated with the currently registered image sizes. This action is also changing the attachment metadata in the database, and it is irreversible.

wp sirsc cleanup

• Keep only the original/full-size files
  • This type of cleanup is performed for all the attachments, and it keeps only the file associated with the original/full size. This action is also changing the attachment metadata in the database, and it is irreversible. After this process is done, you need to regenerate the files for the desired image sizes.

wp sirsc rawcleanup

Image Sizes Options

Ignore

This option allows you to exclude globally from the application some of the image sizes that are registered through various plugins and the theme options, that you perhaps do not need at all in your application (these are just stored in your folders and database but not actually used/visible on the front-end).

By excluding these, unnecessary sub-sizes will not be generated at all.

Quality

The quality option allows you to control the quality of the images that are generated for each of the image sizes, starting from the quality of the image you upload. This can be useful for performance.

However, please be careful not to change the quality of the full image or the quality of the image size that you set as the forced original.

Setting a lower quality is recommended for smaller image sizes, that are generated from the full/original file.

Force Original

This option means that when uploading an image, the original image will be replaced completely by the image size you select (the image generated, scaled, or cropped to a specific width and height will become the full size for that image going further).

This can be very useful if you do not use the original image in any of the layouts at full size, and this might save some storage space.

Leave “nothing selected” to keep the full/original image as the file you upload (default WordPress behavior).

Hide preview

This option allows you to hide from the “Image Regenerate & Select Crop Settings” lightbox the details and options for the selected image sizes (when you or other admins are checking the image details, the hidden image sizes will not be shown)

This is useful when you want to restrict from other users the functionality of crop or resize for particular image sizes, or to just hide the image sizes you added to global ignore

If you set the image size as ignored or unavailable, this will not be listed on the media screen when the dropdown of image sizes is shown.

Default crop

This option allows you to set a default crop position for the images generated for a particular image size. This option will be applied when you choose to regenerate an individual image or all of these, and also when a new image is uploaded.

Cleanup

This option allows you to clean up all the images generated for a particular image size you already have in the application, and that you do not use or do not want to use anymore on the front end.

Please be careful, once you click to remove the images for the selected image size, the action is irreversible, the images generated up to this point will be deleted from your folders and database records.

You can regenerate these later if you click the Regenerate button.

Regenerate

This option allows you to regenerate the images for the selected image size.

Please be careful, once you click the button to regenerate the selected image size, the action is irreversible, and the images already generated will be overwritten.

wp sirsc regenerate

Advanced Rules

The advanced custom rules you configure are global and will override all the other settings you set.
Please be aware that the custom rules will apply only if you actually set up the post to use one of the advanced rules, and only then upload images to that post.

Very important, this is the order in which the rules are checked and have priority: post ID, post type, post format, post parent, post tags, post categories, and other taxonomies. Any of the rules that match first in this order will apply to the images that are generated when you upload images to that post (and the rest of the rules will be ignored). You can suppress at any time any of the rules and then enable these back as it suits you.

WP-CLI FAQ

How to use the plugin wp-cli commands?

The list of wp-cli commands available with this plugin can be checked by running this command in your terminal:
wp sirsc –help. This will show you a list of the available subcommands and their current description in terms of purpose, arguments types, and order:

• cleanup
  — arguments order and types: (int)site_id (string)post_type (string)size_name (int)parent_id
  — the command targets images based on the relations with the specified post type, perhaps a parent, and performs the sub-sizes cleanup for all or the specified sub-sizes (delimited with a comma)
• rawcleanup
  — arguments order and types: (int)site_id (string)post_type (int)parent_id
  — the command targets images based on the relations with the specified post type and perhaps a parent and performs the raw cleanup for all the files, except for the full/original sub-size
• regenerate
  — arguments order and types: (int)site_id (string)post_type (string)size_name (int)parent_id
  — the command targets images based on the relations with the specified post type and perhaps a parent and performs the sub-sizes regeneration for all or the specified sub-sizes (delimited with a comma)
• resetcleanup
  — arguments order and types: (int)site_id (string)post_type (int)parent_id
  — the command targets images based on the relations with the specified post type and perhaps a parent, and performs the reset cleanup for all the sub-sizes, keeping the full/original + only the registered image sizes at the moment when the command runs

The commands can be used with two flags:

• --verbose – this attempts to give a detailed description of the execution
• --force – available for the cleanup command

How to clean up images using wp-cli commands?

To clean up all the sub-sizes for all the images in the project you can run a command like this: 

wp sirsc cleanup 1 all all 0

• 1 = specifies the site/blog id in a multisite (set it to 1 in a single site install)
• all = the post type (set it to all if you want the execution to happen for all post types)
• all = the sub-size (set it to all if you want the execution to happen for all registered sub-sizes)
• 0 = attachment parent id (leave it to 0 if you want to execute for all of the attachments, not just for the attachments of a specific post)

If instead, you want to clean up only the medium sub-size, and let’s say only for the pages, the command can be used like this: 

wp sirsc cleanup 1 page medium 0

As you can see, depending on what you are aiming to clean up, you can combine the arguments.
If you are using the --force flag for the command, the targeted sub-size will be used for cleanup, even if it is not registered in the project anymore (left behind in the project by other themes or plugins that are no longer used).

How to raw clean up images using wp-cli commands?

To clean up all the sub-sizes for all the images in the project and start again with keeping only the full/original attachment file, you can run a command like this: 

wp sirsc rawcleanup 1 all 0

• 1 = specifies the site/blog ID in a multisite (set it to 1 in a single site install)
• all = the post type (set it to all if you want the execution to happen for all post types)
• 0 = attachment parent id (leave it to 0 if you want to execute for all of the attachments, not just for the attachments of a specific post)

How to reset clean-up images using wp-cli commands?

To clean up all the files and metadata for sub-sizes that are no longer registered on your site, you can run a command like this: 

wp sirsc resetcleanup 1 all 0

• 1 = specifies the site/blog ID in a multisite (set it to 1 in a single site install)
• all = the post type (set it to all if you want the execution to happen for all post types)
• 0 = attachment parent id (leave it to 0 if you want to execute for all of the attachments, not just for the attachments of a specific post)

How to regenerate images using wp-cli commands?

To regenerate all the sub-sizes for all the images in the project you can run a command like this: 

wp sirsc regenerate 1 all all 0

• 1 = specifies the site/blog ID in a multisite (set it to 1 in a single site install)
• all = the post type (set it to all if you want the execution to happen for all post types)
• all = the sub-size (set it to all if you want the execution to happen for all registered sub-sizes)
• 0 = attachment parent id (leave it to 0 if you want to execute for all of the attachments, not just for the attachments of a specific post)

If instead, you want to regenerate only the medium sub-size, and let’s say only for the posts, the command can be used like this: 

wp sirsc regenerate 1 post medium 0