Reducing Your Media Library Usage

Do you keep running out of space on your site?

All of the university sites have a 150-200MB media library storage limit with a few outliers that required more space. The media library is only meant for images that are currently being utilized on your site. It is not recommended to use the media library as a storage space for your photos or documents.

Follow this step by step process to reduce your media library space usage:

1. Delete all duplicate images. Many sites have multiple versions of one photo uploaded.
2. Delete all social media icons. The social media icons should be embedded into your site using the code managed by IT Services and Marketing. Learn more about how to use the externally managed social media icons.
   • Having the social media icons managed outside of your site leaves you more room in your library and allows the university to update a social media logo in the event that the platform’s logo is changed or rebranded.
3. Delete all old graphics not currently being utilized on your site.
   1. Download all old graphics not currently being utilized on your site.
   2. Add them to your departmental google drive in a website backup folder.
      • It is important that the google drive account used in backing up documents and files is a departmental google drive. Do not use your personal university account. If you were to leave the university, all of your files in your google drive will be deleted and the department/college may lose access to those files forever.
   3. After you have them backed up on google drive, delete them from your site.
4. Delete old photos not currently being utilized on your site.
   1. Download all old photos not currently being used on your site.
   2. Add them to your departmental google drive in a website backup folder.
   3. After they have been backed up, delete all old photos off of your site.
5. Delete all documents including DOC, DOCX and PDF files.
   1. Download all documents from your media library.
   2. Add them to your departmental google drive in a website document folder.
      • It is important that the google drive account used in backing up documents and files is a departmental google drive. Do not use your personal university account. If you were to leave the university, all of your files in your google drive will be deleted and the department/college may lose access to those files forever.
   3. Relink all documents on your site to the new google drive URLs.
   4. After you have them backed up on google drive and have updated all the links on your site to the new google drive links, delete them from your site.
6. Look through all of your currently uploaded images and graphics to see which ones may be taking up a lot of space.
   • It is possible that you have one photo that is taking up 1MB or 2MB of space. If you find that to be the case, download that file and reupload it at a different size or resize it in the media library to a smaller size. See the photography tips if you are seeing this issue.

After going through the steps above, do you still not have enough space? Please submit a MyHelp ticket to request your site be given extra storage space. Please note that you will have a web team staff member audit your media library before you will be given the extra space. The team member will work with you personally to ensure you are utilizing the space efficiently.

Last updated: 2/20/2023