Have you tried:
– deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).
– switching to the Twenty Eleven theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.
– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.
Thread Starter
Hopper
(@faithfilly)
I just went through all those proceedures to resolve excessive CPU throttling. I wish I had noticed the file name annoyance before going through all that.
Thank you for the tips. I won’t give up until this is solved somehow.
Thread Starter
Hopper
(@faithfilly)
I finally noticed what triggered all these uploads and odd file names! When I changed themes, the new theme automatically created thumbnail images for post previews. The theme followed the links to photobucket to grab the photos for creating thumbnails. After it did so, it stored them in the uploads folder of the month I installed this theme.
That explains why I don’t remember having done it! I didn’t do it. The theme did. It also explains why every time I deleted them all, they came back. The theme needs these renamed files for its thumbnails.
This also explains why my CPU was being throttled. Because there were massive amounts of images being imported, it was wrecking havoc when combined with the plugin broken link checker. I have thousands of links. When that plugin was installed and active in my blog, it was always checking for broken links. Add that action to the theme fetching hundreds of photos because of my ignorantly deleting what I thought were ‘extras’… that answers the mystery of what all was going on behind the scenes!
Thread Starter
Hopper
(@faithfilly)
I thought I solved the mystery, but since reinstalling my blog, I see I was wrong.
I did all the procedures recommended to see if maybe plugins caused the duplicating. That doesn’t seem to be it.
I did a fresh install of wordpress. Then I imported .xml files and selected the option to import and download attachments and images.
The only files in the /wp-content/uploads/year/month directory were the ones in a couple of posts done in gallery format (these images are in the media library).
The files in the /wp-content/uploads/2011/thumb-cache directory contains the thumbnail images displayed when listing previews of posts.
The directory where the duplicated and renamed images get created are in the present month (e.g., december –> /wp-content/uploads/2011/12/)
Is it normal for thumbnail images to reappear renamed in the uploads directory for the month an import is done? If so, why? They are renamed with a long string of letters and numbers.
This means hundreds or thousands of extra unnecessary duplicates. It’s already bad enough wordpress media library takes one uploaded image and turns it into 6-9 identical images (of different sizes).
I can’t find any explanation of this. Is there any way to stop the duplications? Is it wordpress or a theme doing it (I use suffusion).
I will not use gallery any more. Nor will I upload images using wordpress media library. Instead, I plan to stick with FTP uploads and manually link the image to the post.
Deleting the duplicates only results in the automatically coming back.
Is it normal for thumbnail images to reappear renamed in the month of uploads an import is done?
Yes
If so, why?
Because these smaller images are generated by WordPress.
wordpress media library takes one uploaded image and turns it into 6-9 identical images (of different sizes).
No. WordPress itself only creates 4 (at the very most). The rest are being created by your theme.
Thread Starter
Hopper
(@faithfilly)
Thank you so much for this information! I should have asked a lot sooner.
I thought I was doing something to cause this. I hope hosting companies are understanding and tolerating this insanity.
One last question:
Will all these duplicates slow anything down?
No – they won’t. They only thing they consume is storage space – which is usually cheap in comparison to bandwidth.
Thread Starter
Hopper
(@faithfilly)
I switched hosting companies and noticed my site loads a lot faster now. I’m glad to know that won’t be lost because of these ridiculous image replications.
