Wordpress-ios: When moving a post from one site to another, we should keep the media.

[diegoreymendez]

Description:

Right now we're planning to delete all media when moving a post from a site to another. While this is acceptable as a temporary solution, it doesn't really offer our users the best experience. It's highly likely that when someone moves a post from a site to another, they'll want to keep the media as well.

Proposal:

The options I see are:

• Upload all images regardless of their original URL.
• Just use the original URLs without moving anything.
• Let the user pick which images to upload, and which images to leave in their original location. (would make the post moving process require additional UI elements)

Additional info:

This is a discussion issue. Technical tasks will be spawned once a decision is made.

The current solution makes sense in that it was a good compromise to get the feature out there quickly.

/cc @catehstn, @rachelmcr, @astralbodies, @aerych, @jleandroperez, @SergioEstevao, @mattmiklic for opinions on this.

[astralbodies]

Option 2 - use the original URLs - isn't viable due to issues with visitor stats & private sites that could affect visibility.

Wonder if there is a way to trick the API into accepting an existing URL of a media asset in the uploader instead of having to send the bytes across the wire. Maybe something in Photon?

The other option is to consider site picking before composing a post in a flow to prevent us from even having to handle this scenario.

[aerych]

The other option is to consider site picking before composing a post in a flow to prevent us from even having to handle this scenario.

This is the best way to address the problem imho, make the site choice explicit before starting to draft a post. We have the site picker today because the editor flow allows for some confusion about which site they are creating a post when tapping the button on the tab bar. Maybe we just remove the confusion.

Upload all images regardless of their original URL.

Just to be clear, this would be upload all images (and potentially video?) that had been uploaded to the user's blog, but leave alone any media linked from external sources (e.g. flickr)?

[mattmiklic]

This is the best way to address the problem imho, make the site choice explicit before starting to draft a post.

Users with >1 site will be used to interacting with a site picker after clicking the Write button in Calypso. If they add a new post directly from within a site's Blog Post's or Pages list, then we could probably bypass the picker. We should still probably indicate the site being published to when publishing, though that's a bigger can of worms.

[diegoreymendez]

The other option is to consider site picking before composing a post in a flow to prevent us from even having to handle this scenario.

So just to be sure we're on the same page: am I correct to assume we'd be basically removing the ability to move posts between sites, but we'd be making the site-picking more explicit?

Additionally: users will still be able to copy-paste complete posts, which works by uploading all media to the site you're pasting to (because clipboard data contains images, not URLs to images).

[diegoreymendez]

Another thing that I believe is important is that if we want to keep the (post transfer) feature, I'd really consider bringing it out from the editor and have it in the post list instead.

The rationale is:

• The editor screen feels really overcrowded, and
• Transferring a post is not really part of editing a post (any more than trashing a post is).

[catehstn]

+1 to what @mattmiklic said.

[catehstn]

I would also be in favor of just uploading content again and not worrying about what was already uploaded.

[diegoreymendez]

Can we all agree to these steps?

1. Add a site picker for when the user taps on the + icon in the middle of the bottom toolbar.
2. Remove the site transfer feature from inside the editor.

If so I can create an issue for these.