Your images and documents

The media library holds every image and PDF on your site. You upload a file once, then reuse it in as many pieces of content as you need.

Adding files

Click “Upload”, or drag files from your computer straight onto the file list. On a phone, the “Upload” button lets you pick a photo from your camera roll: handy for publishing a picture taken on the spot, no computer needed.

• Accepted formats: JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF and GIF images, plus PDF documents (a menu, a price list, a brochure).
• Limits: 25 MB per file, up to 20 files at a time.

After the upload, each file is prepared for a few moments, then shows the “Ready” status. You can keep working in the meantime.

You upload, Menestrel handles the rest

No need to resize or compress your photos before sending them. Oversized images are slimmed down on arrival, and your live site serves them in modern, lighter formats at the right size for each visitor’s screen. An 8 MB phone photo will not slow down your pages.

Alt text

Alt text describes an image in one sentence. For example: “Bakery storefront on Gambetta street, striped awning open”. It serves two audiences:

• blind and low-vision visitors: their screen reader speaks this text aloud in place of the image;
• search engines: they cannot see your photos and rely on this text to understand and rank them.

That is why an image without alt text cannot be inserted into content: when you pick one, you are asked to write the text first. To spot images that are missing it, tick the “Missing alt” filter at the top of the media library.

Describe what the picture shows, plainly, without starting with “Photo of”. If your site exists in several languages, each image has one alt text per language.

Organising with folders

The left column lists your folders. Create one with the “New folder” field, rename or delete it from its menu. A folder can only be deleted once it is empty. A file can also live under “No folder”; to move it, open its details and change its “Folder” field.

To find a file, combine the search, which matches the filename and the alt text, with the type filter (“Images” or “Files”). You can also rename a file from its details: just keep its ending (.jpg, .pdf…).

Cropping and the focal point

Open an image’s details and click “Create centered square”: a square copy is added to the library, and the original stays untouched. Useful for a portrait or a thumbnail. GIFs cannot be cropped.

The details panel also offers a focal point: the most important spot in the image, such as a face or a product. When the site has to trim the image to fit a frame, that spot stays visible. The “Focal point X” and “Focal point Y” fields go from 0 to 1: 0.5 and 0.5 mark the center, X reads from left (0) to right (1), Y from top (0) to bottom (1).

Replacing an image already in use

A file’s details show how many pieces of content use it and list the most recent ones (five at most). To swap an image that already appears on the site:

1. Upload the new image and give it its alt text.

2. Open the old image’s details: its usage list points you to the content to edit.

3. In each of those pieces of content, pick the new image in place of the old one.

4. Publish: the live site shows the new image.

The trash

From a file’s details, “Move to trash” removes it from the choices offered in content, without deleting it right away. To browse the trash, tick the “Trash” filter. The “Restore” button brings the file back as it was, with its alt text and settings.

Two safeguards:

• a file still used in content cannot be moved to the trash: this prevents missing images on your site;
• after 30 days in the trash, a file is permanently deleted.

The gauge at the top of the page shows the storage space your site uses. Files in the trash count toward that space until they are permanently deleted.