elFinder, a File Manager for WordPress

So far so good. No problem. It's just that it's a quick, simple change and I didn't want to have to open an ftp program, download the file, change it and upload it again. For small changes to files like this, it's quite handy to have a web file manager at hand.

Back in my Joomla days I used eXtplorer, a great file manager written in PHP with a frontend in ExtJS. We have a post dedicated exclusively to it:

// read alsoeXtplorer, a file manager in PHPJune 3, 2012 · 12 CommentsOften you need to make small changes to files or fix permissions, and being able to do that...

As explained in the post, eXtplorer even has a plugin for WordPress, but it doesn't work on version 3.3.2.

Looking for more alternatives, I found a plugin called wp-FileManagerwhich, just from looking at the screenshot, made me reject it. Forgive the prejudice, but my experience says that, with rare exceptions, programs with a "clunky" interface like this plugin's aren't updated often or are very amateurish.

wp-FileManager, would you install it?

elFinder
After discarding wp-FileManager, without even installing it to test, I finally found a great replacement for eXtplorer. elFinder even has practically the same features as the other one, which are:

• Common operations on files stored on remote servers (copy, move, upload, create file/folder, rename, etc)
• Two view types: list and icons
• High performance on both the client and server side
• Multiple file upload
• Standard methods for grouping file selection using mouse or keyboard
• Context menu
• "Hot Keys" for most actions
• Move/Copy files using Drag & Drop
• Working with compressed files
• Preview for most file types
• Edit text files and resize images
• "Places" for favorites
• Directory size calculation
• Thumbnail creation for image files running in the background
• Easy integration with web editors (elRTE, CKEditor, TinyMCE)
• Flexible configuration of access rights, allowed file types for upload, user interface, among others
• Extensible
• Simple JSON-based client/server API

I installed it on WordPress 3.3.2, despite a warning saying it hadn't been tested for this version yet, but everything worked well. I liked the plugin and I recommend it!

Some Screenshots

Icon View

List View

File upload

Image resizing

File preview

Text file editing

Context menu

The elFinder can no longer be found in the plugin search within the WordPress administration, but you can download the zip and install it manually. I installed it successfully on version 3.4.2. Download from this link.

That's it! I hope you find it useful as I did.