Media Servers | Communifire Documentation

Communifire has advanced storage settings which allow you to store videos, photos, files and content files on your own storage devices. If you're worried about your web server not having enough space, use this area to take the heavy load of data off your web server. 

About Media Servers

1. Photos Section: All photos (including thumbnail images, album cover pictures). This also includes user profile picture and avatar picture.
2. Videos Section: All video files (including original video files and the converted .flv files, as well as thumbnail images).
3. Documents Manager (Files section): All documents. These can be any file types (like .doc, .jpg, or any other format).
4. CMS Section: All attachments added to content (i.e. CMS pages, articles, blogs, etc).

Default Media Servers

The Communifire Installation process creates the following default media servers:

1. https://your_application_url/Assets/Uploaded-Photos: Used for photos and user profile images
2. https://your_applicationurl/Assets/Uploaded-Videos: Used for videos and related files
3. https://your_applicationurl/Assets/Uploaded-Files: Used for documents in the Files section
4. https://your_applicationurl/Assets/Uploaded-CMS-Files: Used for attachments

You can easily change these media servers per your own unique requirements.

Add Media Server

1. Click the gear icon > Control Panel > System > Media Servers.
2. Select a Site: The domain this media server will store media for.
3. Select a Media server type: The media type this server should store.
4. Enter the Media server root URL: The website name or virtual directory of your media server (set via IIS).
   • Example: If you want to create a storage location to store all your user photos at this location: C:\MyStorageFolder\UserPics, then first you need to create a virtual directory referencing this physical location. If you created the virtual directory/website as https://PhotoMediaServer.com, then enter that URL in this field.
   • Make sure that the new media server network location you add has read-write permissions set for the account which will write to that location (via IIS Worker Process/UserAccount).
5. Enter the Media server IP address. (Optional)
6. Click Save.

How to Set Media Servers for Storing Different Files

Let us assume you want to store photos and videos both in different locations, and on different hard drives. For example, you may want to store all user photos on C:\UserPhotos and all videos on D:\UserVideos. First you would need to create two virtual directories (or websites) in IIS to map these two physical locations. Let's say you created:

1. https://your-community.com/userphotos: This maps to C:\UserPhotos physical folder.
2. https://your-community.com/uservideos: This maps to D:\UserVideos. (Note: The hard drive can also be a network mapped drive residing on a different server.)

Just make sure that the new media server network location you add has read-write permissions set for the account which will write to that location. (IIS Worker Process/UserAccount)

Next you need to create two media server entries adding the virtual directories.

Then you need to "tell" Communifire "to use" these media servers while storing photos and videos uploaded by the user. For this, perform the following steps:

1. Select the media server to store photos from the list. In this list, all media servers would be listed and you need to select the right option. (For example select https://your-community.com/userphotos to store photos)
2. Click the edit icon to edit the media server.
3. Set the site, media server type and the media server URL for photos.
4. Click Update.
5. Perform the same steps for updating media server for videos.

After setting these options, all user photos will get stored at C:\UserPhotos and videos at D:\UserVideos.

Edit Media Server

1. Click the gear icon > Control Panel > System > Media Servers.
2. For a media server, click the edit icon.
3. Make changes to the media server.
4. Click Save.

Delete Media Server

1. Click the gear icon > Control Panel > System > Media Servers.
2. For a media server, click the delete icon.
3. Click OK.