Empty message window displaying while synching

You probably got a max execution time error, since the server has a limit for how long a process can keep it busy. Usually the limit is 30 seconds. It can be increased by editing your .htacces file. This is explained in the article How to Fix Fatal Error: Maximum Execution Time Exceeded in WordPress.

The ‘spinner’ keeps spinning, is that when you are syncing or reloading the Media Library Folders page. It you are not able to display the folder tree, then follow the instructions in the Frequently Asked Questions, Folder Tree Not Loading.

For importing a large number of files into the Media Library, you can first use Media Library Folders to locate and add the new folders and then we recommend that you use the free Add from Server plugin to do the importing of files and you should not have problems with Maximum Execution Time.

Hi

Thanks for the fast and helpful answer.

It may well be that Chrome’s popup blocker is interfering with this as well.

But I’m not sure the server time limit is the problem. In my .htaccess file it is set for 100 seconds, and if something can’t complete in 100 seconds, then I’m not sure I want it to take longer, particularly when it is simply synching a directory with 38 images.

I did get an error, just now, on another directory, which said that it exceeded a 30 second time limit in what seemed to be one of the plugin’s php files – can’t copy it because the message appeared on the screen, not in a popup but in the main window, then just as I was about to copy it, it disappeared again.

There are some other issues too, but I’ll post about those separately so as to keep the topic subjects helpful for others.

Understand that lot of things happen for each file during a sync. First the plugin has to determine if a file is an existing file or thumbnail or a new original image. Then it has to add a new record to the database. And finally it has to generate a number of thumbnail images. Thus if you have a lot of files to import into the media library then the processing time would go beyond the 100 second limit. Using the Add from Server plugin would avoid this problem.

Version 4.1.9 which was released this week contains an update to the sync function that will allow it to run without triggering a server timeout error. Syncing should work with fewer issues going forward.