Offloading Media on a Large WooCommerce Store

On a large WooCommerce store, offload product images in the background, on a staging copy first, and check every image size, because a store has many. Keep paid downloadable files out of a public bucket. Your store shouldn't need downtime: pages can keep using local files until each cloud copy has been checked.

What's different about a store?

• Many sizes per image. WooCommerce adds gallery, thumbnail and catalog sizes to those from your theme. A missing size may only show on one screen, such as a product grid on a phone.
• Files that change. Product images get replaced, and imports add many at once.
• Files that mustn't be public. See below.
• Real cost of a broken image. A broken product photo can cost you a sale, and you might not hear about it.

What about downloadable products?

Downloadable products are often kept in a protected folder, woocommerce_uploads, so only buyers can reach them. Public cloud storage works differently: anyone with an address can read a public file.

Keep these files on your server. Before you start, use Offloft's exclude action on them, or skip their file types, and check the result under Files. Do this before running Offload everything, or before you turn on automatic offload.

How should you plan the move?

1. Back up your database and files.
2. Copy to staging, using a separate bucket, and test there.
3. Run the pre-flight scan for a count of files and an estimate for your server.
4. Choose a quiet time. Work runs in small batches. Pause it if your server gets busy.
5. Check it finished. Look at Jobs and Issues, not only the progress bar.

Offloft detects WooCommerce and lists it on Settings → Delivery. Product images on pages, which come from the Media Library, change as pages are shown. Things WooCommerce stores for itself, such as its own generated files, may stay on your server.

What should you check afterwards?

Clear your page cache, then look at:

• A product page, its gallery and its zoom.
• The shop grid on a phone.
• Cart and checkout thumbnails.
• Transactional emails, because some mail clients keep images from when the email was sent.
• Your product feeds, if you send any to marketplaces. Check they hold working addresses.

Should you remove local copies?

Not at first. Shops and download managers often serve protected files from the server, so read the warning on Settings → Safety & local files in Offloft Pro before you turn removal on.