Editing intro images

Question

I've got a great number of articles to which I have to add various intro images from one specific folder. As I understand it, I have to open each article in backend, go to "Images and links" tab, at the "Intro image" field open the media dialog, each time manually navigate to the correct folder, choose the image, close the dialog and save the article.

My question: Is there any way to streamline the process? Either some extension that would enable batch editing intro images of multiple articles at once, or some way to just copy, paste and slightly change paths to the image files in the Article Manager (I find it greatly annoying that the Media form field doesn't allow direct editing of the path).

I'll greatly appreciate any advices.

Answer 1

I've wanted to edit the intro and full image paths directly myself. They are simply fields with a readonly attribute, and you can actually enable them with a couple of lines of jQuery:

jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
    $("#jform_images_image_intro").removeAttr( "readonly");
    $("#jform_images_image_fulltext").removeAttr( "readonly");
});

Simply add this code to your admin template, and you'll be able to edit the image fields directly. Saves a couple of seconds each time...

I made a small admin plugin for my own use that implements this (and a couple of other "hacks", like a delete image confirmation in the media manager). Let me know if your interested in testing it.