Thanks for your question. As you have discovered, WordPress does not “attach” a Media Library item to a post/page when you make it a Featured Image. I believe that is because you can make one item the Featured Image for multiple posts/pages. The same issue can occur when you insert an item in the body of a post or page, again because you can insert the same item in multiple posts/pages.
This WordPress behavior is part of the motivation for developing MLA’s “where-used” reporting features. I faced the same issue in our own web site and I needed a way to find and eliminate items that were truly “orphans”.
You can reach your goal in either of three ways:
- Use the “Set Parent” feature of the Media/Assistant submenu table “Attached to” column to assign the appropriate parent for those items shown as “Featured in”. This will remove them from the “Unattached” view.
- Simply skip over those items when selecting the items you want to use in the Bulk Actions “Delete Permanently” action.
- Install the “MLA Insert Fixit” example plugin and use the “Attach Featured In” tool in the “Attach Media Library items” section to attach the items automatically. This will also remove them from the Unattached view.
To install the example plugin for the third alternative, navigate to the Settings/Media library Assistant Documentation tab and click the “Example Plugins” button. You will see a submenu that lists all the example plugins and give you a “one-click” action for installing them.
You are looking for “MLA Insert Fixit” plugin. Find that plugin and hover over the title in the left-most column. Click the “Install” rollover action, then go to the Plugins/Installed Plugins submenu and activate it just like you would for any other new plugin.
Once that’s done, navigate to the Tools/Insert Fixit screen and scroll down to the “Attach Media Library items” section, where you will find the “Attach Featured In” tool. You can click the tool to apply it to all of your unattached posts/pages, or you can use the “First Post/Page ID” and “Last Post/Page ID” text boxes at the top of the screen to test it out on one or a few of your posts.
I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you have any problems or further questions regarding the above suggestions. Thanks for your interest in the plugin.
