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Quick start: the first scan

WirdA synchronisiertscan …rebuilds the inventory of your media files and searches for references to them. It is harmless:

A scan never writes to the file system. It reads, compares and writes the result to the database. Nothing is moved, nothing renamed, nothing deleted.

Starting the scan

Open Components → Media Organizer and click Scan. The scan runs in steps and shows its progress; on larger websites you can abort it and continue later.

How long it takes depends mainly on the number of media files and the size of your database. On a typical medium-sized website it is seconds to a few minutes.

Reading the dashboard

Dashboard of Media Organizer with the key figures after a scan
After the scan the dashboard sums up the result.
Figure Meaning Files All media files recorded in the configured media folders. Referenced Files for which at least one occurrence was found. These are in use. Files without a reference Files for which no occurrence was found. These are candidates — not a verdict. Check them before you act. Reclaimable How much space the unreferenced files occupy together. In quarantine Files already moved, waiting to be restored or deleted for good.

"Without a reference" does not mean "superfluous". It means: nothing was found in any of the enabled search areas. If a file is used somewhere that is not covered yet, it appears here as well. That is exactly what the evidence is for — and exactly why Media Organizer deletes nothing by itself.

The three reports

    Duplicates — files with identical content (same checksum), images uploaded more than once, for instance. Optimisation — images that are considerably larger than necessary. Broken references — content pointing to a file that does not (any longer) exist. Dead image links, in other words. Nothing is deleted here; the list is for repairing.

    What you should do now

    Resist the temptation to push everything unreferenced into quarantine straight away. A sensible first pass looks like this:

      Open Files without a reference. Look at a few files in detail — the evidence shows you everywhere that was searched. That gives you a feel for whether the coverage fits your website. Watch out for a notice about incomplete coverage. If it appears, an installed extension is not covered yet — then the list has to be taken with care, and deleting for good is blocked anyway. Start with a small, unambiguous selection and move it to quarantine. Watch your website for a few days. Then the rest.

      Automating scans

      Scans can run regularly through the Joomla task scheduler and inform you by email. The scheduled scan can only find and report — it never moves or deletes anything. There is deliberately no automatic cleanup.

      Where to go from here

        The review view  Reading the evidence 

        Applies to version 1.0.3.

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