Welcome to the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Today we’re looking at Media Management.

If you work with content at NZRT, you are going to be touching media files constantly. Images, videos, documents — they all live in a managed system built around WordPress and a handful of carefully chosen plugins. Today we are going to walk you through how that system works, how files are organised, and what the rules are for different types of media.

Let’s start with the big picture. NZRT uses the WordPress media library as the central hub for uploaded files. On top of that, there are a few key plugins doing important work. Featured Image Plus handles the automatic cropping and sizing of featured images. SmartSlider Three is used for building and displaying hero sliders, including video sliders. There is also a YouTube importer that pulls in video content from YouTube. Together, these tools give you a solid, repeatable workflow for managing visual content across the site.

Now let’s talk about how media is organised, because structure matters here. Every piece of media belongs to a combination of three things. First, a module. The modules at NZRT are Customer, Sales, Finance, HR, Supplier, and EDM. So when you are uploading something, you should know which of those modules the content belongs to. Second, media is categorised by type. That means images, videos, or documents. And third, it is sorted by purpose — whether it is a hero image, a thumbnail, or a background image. Keeping those three dimensions in mind when you upload or label anything will save a lot of confusion later.

On to image sizing, because this is where a lot of people get tripped up. There are three sizes you need to know about. Featured images should be twelve hundred by eight hundred pixels. When you upload at that resolution, the Featured Image Plus plugin will automatically crop and position it correctly wherever it appears on the site. You do not need to manually crop — the plugin handles it for you. Thumbnails are three hundred by three hundred pixels and those are also auto-generated from your upload, so again, you do not need to produce those separately. The third size is the original full-size file. You should always keep this in the library as an archive copy, even if it is larger than what the site currently displays. That archive copy gives you flexibility if requirements change down the line.

Now let’s cover video, because NZRT supports a couple of different approaches depending on where the video lives. If the video is on YouTube, you embed it using the YouTube importer shortcode. You do not download and re-upload YouTube content — you link to it. That keeps file sizes down and lets YouTube handle the streaming. If you have a self-hosted video, that goes in as an MP4 file directly into the WordPress media library, just like any other upload. And if you are working with the hero sliders on the site, those are managed through SmartSlider Three, which can display both image and video content as part of its slider templates.

So where does the actual content live on the back end? There are a few places to know about. First, there is a folder called ColorChart and Images — this is where you will find the module category JPGs and the colour chart PDF that support NZRT’s visual brand standards. Second, there is a SmartSlider folder that holds the images and templates specifically used by the slider plugin. And third, everything that gets uploaded to the site lands in the WordPress media library itself. Those three locations together form the complete picture of where media assets are stored.

Zooming out to the bigger context — all of this media work exists to support NZRT’s content strategy. The goal is consistent visual branding across the site, with imagery that is appropriate for each module and video content that adds value to the pages where it appears. When you follow the organisation structure and the sizing rules, you are not just keeping things tidy — you are making sure the site performs well and looks consistent no matter which page a visitor lands on.

If you want to dig deeper into any of this, the related areas to look at are the Content Strategy documentation, the SmartSlider Templates reference, and the Featured Image Plus notes. Those three resources give you the detail behind the decisions covered in today’s episode.

That’s it for this episode of the NZRT Wiki Podcast. Thanks for listening.