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Working With Media

Introduction

How MDOQ handles the media directory, and the options you have when you need to work with media.

When developing / testing very rarely is a fully replicated media directory required, for each instance. Having a full snapshot of media can increase instance creation time significantly (depending on the size of your media directory). It can also cause unexpected results when testing / releasing. In this guide we explain how MDOQ handles media by default and what other options are available to you.

 

Default Media Setup

By default MDOQ does not require a media snapshot to create your instance, yet when you visit your instance you will notice that all images still display. This is because when MDOQ creates your instances it automatically sets the media_urls in the database to point to production.

 

Benefits

  • Speedy instance creation
  • Instance still looks the same (has the same images) as production
  • Able to undertake and development / testing that doesn't require changes to media.

Limitations

  • You are unable to leverage images stored on that instance. e.g if you upload an image through the wysiwyg editor on your instance you will not be able to see/use it.
 

Local Media Setup

There are some cases (see scenarios) where a local (for your instance) copy of media assets is required. MDOQ can still facilitate this.

  1. Make sure you have a media backup
  2. Create an instance
  3. Select your instance
  4. Navigate to "Settings" > "Media"
  5. Uncheck the "inherit from live" checkbox
  6. Select "Own" as the source.
  7. Click "Save"
    MDOQ will then recognise and recreate the need components, to provide your instance with a copy of media for that instance.

Benefits

  • You can work with all media assets
 

Limitations

  • Instance synchronisations may take significantly longer. (depending on the size of your media directory)
  • Media assets are outside of source. This means that synchronizing the media component will cause any changes to be lost
  • Media assets are not included in deployments. The means that any changes you make to media directory on your instance will need to be re-performed on production.
 

Scenarios

 

Development Not Requiring Changes To Media Assets

In this case you do not need the instance to have it's own copy of media, so you can stick with the default setup.

 

Development Requiring New Media Assets

As you are only adding new assets that won't be used by anything currently on production. You can simply upload the images to production. When using the default setup they will be available to your instance.

 

Development Requiring Alterations To Current Media Assets

In this case you will need the instance to have it's own media assets.

Please take note of the limitations

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