User blog:JoshuaJSlone/Shared Image Repository

Hey guys. Since I'd been making copies of pages at the other languages, it also meant copying over a lot of images and video for each language. I started asking around about if there were some tools to make this easier--like copy all images from a page to a second wiki, or upload an entire directory of images at once. I learned about something even simpler, though. It's not something I could find mention of in pages anywhere at the Community site, but there's a feature called Shared Image Repository.

What this does is allow one wiki's images to become accessible by other related wikis. If there's a naming conflict the local version wins out. Anyway, since the English H!P Wiki is without a doubt the main one and the one with the most images, things are now set so its images can be directly used by the other seven language wikis. As an early test of this, you can check and see that all of the front pages are now using the same images for the group links.

If you view the File: page of a shared image at one of the other wikis it will mostly look like you'd expect, with the addition of a line stating "This file is from a shared repository and may be used by other projects."

I was told that while images and audio files would work fine, since videos don't work the same way they couldn't be shared. However, in my testing they still seem to mostly work, just a little differently. If you just try to view the File: page of a video at another wiki, it will claim it doesn't exist. But once you actually place it on a page, it will work fine. It won't show the message about it being shared, but it still is. I tested this by sharing a video, then changing it here. The changed version showed up at the other wiki too.