Will the ability to search the media library be added to the Xperience By Kentico CMS at all?
Will the ability to search the media library be added to the Xperience By Kentico CMS at all?
Having chatted to other Kentico developers where I work I understand that there may be plans to remove the Media library from XbyK but just wanted to confirm if there might still be any additions made to the existing Media Library (like adding search functionality)
Environment
- Xperience by Kentico version: [28.3.1]
- .NET version: [8]
Answers
@dddruzynski
It's unlikely that many large investments will be made to the Media Library in Xperience by Kentico (v28.4.1 at the time of this comment).
The long term goal for media asset management is to focus 100% on the Content hub, which means we will eventually deprecate the Media Library and recommend using content modeling (custom content types, content item assets, and the Content hub).
All of our current UX improvements for content management are related to the Content hub** and in the future you'll see specific UX improvements for media management.
For now, if you have a small number of media assets, modeling them with content types and using the Content hub might be the best approach. If you have a large number of media assets then using the Media Library will serve you better.
If you have items which you would like to protect behind a login, use the Content hub.
If you have items you'd like to broadly share links to, I'd also recommend the Content hub, combined with a URL shortener service. Or, maybe link to a landing page for that media asset, which helps give context (description/publication date) for the asset and makes the visitor engagement more sticky.
I think the balance will tip, unanimously in the favor of content modeled media later this year, but we won't deprecate the Media Library until the Content hub is clearly a great replacement.
** Upcoming Content management improvements in the Content hub
Sean - is it worth clarifying what the path forward would be if/when Media Libraries are deprecated? Kentico will provide a migration path to the newer/replacement, or will it be up to the team implementing/maintaining the site to migrate themselves?
@liamgold
Great suggestion! Here's our current plan:
First, we'll improve media management in the Content hub by adding things like folders for organization, thumbnail views, APIs for developers.
Once we have shipped enough features that the UX for marketers and developers is better in the Content hub than the Media Library, we will "sunset" (deprecate) the Media Library. It will be included in the product, and fully supported, for another 12 months.
At the same time, we'll include a migration feature in our Universal Migration Toolkit, which will enable teams to decide themselves when they want to transfer content from the Media Library to the Content hub - maybe you do it in stages.
Developers will need to update their content querying code to retrieve media URLs (and metadata) from the Content hub instead of the Media Library. This also opens the opportunity to include more content in your custom media content models and begin to use localization, workflows, ect...
Classic folders in the Content hub arrives next month and most of the other features I mentioned will come over the next few months, so it could make sense for you to start using the Content hub for media today, if you are starting a new project.
If you want to see an example of how you can start to bridge the gap today and start using the Content hub for media, check out this customization in the Community Portal source code.
To answer this question, you have to login first.