Recently one of our reader ask me how he can download entire WordPress media library as he wants to keep a copy of backup of media library on his local system.
Though you can always have full backup of your entire WordPress site.
If you want to download all images and media files from your WordPress media library, this isn’t very hard task. In this article we will show you, how you can easily download entire media library from WordPress using the traditional FTP method and a free plugin.
Download Media Library using FTP
You can use any regular FTP client (FileZilla) to download media library in WordPress.
Go to your favorite FTP client and login to your WordPress FTP account.
Once you are login, navigate to the folder /wp-content.
Here, you will find different folders like uploads, plugins, Themes, etc. Since all the uploaded media items stored into Uploads folder.
Now you can simply drag and drop the folders into your desktop and content will automatically downloaded.
Depending upon the media library size, the download may take few moments to complete.
Once download completed, you will have your media library folder on your local machine.
Moreover, if you have access to your cPanel, then you can zip the entire Uploads folder using the cPanel file manager and then download it using the FTP client.
This process will actually speed up the download process.
Download Media Library Using a Plugin
You can use a plugin to download your entire WordPress library, if you are not easy to go with typical FTP method.
First thing you need to do is install and activate downML – Download Media Library plugin.
Upon activation, you will notice a new menu item in your WordPress admin bar labeled ‘downML’.
It’s a simple plugin, there are no specific settings or configurations. Simply, open the DownML page by clicking on the menu item “downML.” Simply click on the link “medialibrary.zip.” it will automatically create a zip file with all your media library.
When your download is ready, you will see a page with the link to medialibrary.zip file. You can download this file to your computer.
Once download completed, you can extract it to get your entire WordPress media library.
That’s all we have to do and it is way simple to download media library from WordPress using the FTP client or a plugin like DownML.