FLW Image Meta Cleaner

Who it’s for

  • Site owners and editors who want clean, readable image titles and alt text without manual work.
  • Agencies and freelancers maintaining client sites with messy libraries full of hyphenated filenames.
  • Accessibility and SEO-minded teams that want consistent, human-friendly metadata at scale.

Why this plugin

  • Fixes the common mess: Hyphens and underscores are replaced with spaces, then converted to Title Case for clarity and consistency.
  • Automates what matters: Cleans new uploads automatically; bulk-fixes existing images from a simple Tools page.
  • Focused and safe: Only touches image Title and Alt fields—no file renaming, no captions/descriptions, no surprise side effects.

Key features

  • Auto-clean on upload: Image attachments are cleaned as soon as they’re added to the Media Library.
  • Bulk cleanup tool: Run in batches of 100 to safely process large libraries.
  • Smart defaults: If Title or Alt is blank, the plugin uses the filename (without extension) as a starting point.
  • Consistent formatting: Hyphens/underscores → spaces; extra spaces collapsed; Title Case applied.
  • Change report: After each batch, see which images changed (last batch cached for 10 minutes).
  • Images only: Skips non-image attachments by design.

Requirements

  • WordPress: 6.5 or higher
  • PHP: 8.0 or higher
  • Plugin dependency: FLWSecureUpdates must be active
  • Permissions: Admins (manage_options) can run bulk cleanup

Compatibility

  • Media Library: Works with standard WordPress image attachments using core post_title and _wp_attachment_image_alt.
  • Themes/Plugins: Compatible with anything that reads core image Title/Alt fields (e.g., most SEO and accessibility tooling).
  • No file operations: Does not rename files or regenerate thumbnails.

What it’s not

  • Not a file renamer: Filenames remain unchanged.
  • Not an SEO suite: Only cleans Title and Alt; does not manage focus keywords, sitemaps, etc.
  • Not a caption/description editor: Leaves those fields as-is.
  • Not AI-based: No generated text; purely deterministic formatting.
  • No EXIF/IPTC rewriting: Only updates WordPress metadata fields.

Quick Start

  1. Install & activate FLW Image Meta Cleaner and ensure FLWSecureUpdates is active.
  2. Automatic cleaning: Upload a new image—its Title and Alt will be cleaned immediately.
  3. Bulk clean existing images: Go to WordPress Admin → Tools → “Clean Image Alt & Title,” click “Run Cleanup (Next Batch of 100).”
  4. Review changes: Check the on-screen report of updates after each batch.
  5. Adjust manually if needed: You can still edit any image’s Title or Alt in the Media Library.