Frequently Asked Questions
The questions MediaFlow gets asked most — about URLs, the free tier, expired licences, uninstalling, automatic folders, and performance on a large library.
Top-level answers for MediaFlow. For feature-specific questions, each feature page also has its own FAQ.
Will this break my media URLs?
No. The plugin never moves a file and never rewrites a URL. Folders are stored as a hierarchical taxonomy on the attachment, which is the same mechanism WordPress uses for categories.
See How folders work.
Do I need a licence at all?
No. Manual folders — creating, renaming, nesting, reordering, deleting, and filing media into them — are free and unlimited. A licence adds the features built on the content scan: automatic folders, the “where is this file used” answers, duplicate detection, the importers, ZIP downloads, folder colours and icons, per-role visibility, and plugin updates. See Free vs Pro.
What happens when the licence expires?
Nothing is deleted and nothing is hidden. Your folders stay exactly as they are, you can still create and edit them, the Media Library still filters by them, and every file is untouched. What stops is the Pro feature set, and plugin updates.
Activate a licence again and all of it resumes immediately, with your structure intact.
If the licence server itself cannot be reached, MediaFlow keeps its Pro features for three days rather than switching them off over an outage. See Working without a licence.
What happens if I deactivate or uninstall the plugin?
Deactivating changes nothing: your media and content are untouched, and your folders are still there when you activate it again.
Uninstalling also leaves everything alone unless you tick “Delete all folders and settings” on the settings screen first. Your media files are never deleted either way.
Can I rename an automatic folder?
No, and that is on purpose. An automatic folder mirrors a page, a post or a category, so renaming it by hand would put it out of step with its source at the next refresh. Change the slug of the page, post or category instead and the folder follows.
Why can I not drag media into an automatic folder?
An automatic folder answers the question “where is this file used?”. Dropping a file into it would state something that is not true, and the next refresh would remove it again.
Manual folders accept drops; automatic ones do not.
What happens to a post in several categories?
You choose on the settings screen: its primary category (a primary category set by Yoast SEO or Rank Math is used when present), its first category, or a folder under every category it is in.
See the Settings reference.
Does it slow down a large site?
Editing one page rescans one page. A full sweep of the site only happens when you press Refresh now, and it runs in small batches so it cannot time out.
The folder tree loads folder names and counts, never the attachments themselves, so the sidebar stays fast on a large library.
Do I need Elementor or WooCommerce?
No. Both are optional. MediaFlow can find media inside them when they are installed, and it never loads either one.
Can one file be in more than one folder?
It has one manual folder — the one you put it in. It can appear in any number of automatic folders at once, because those record where it is used.
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