delphiknight

MediaFlock scans your WordPress posts for externally hosted media files and imports them directly into your WordPress media library. After import, it automatically replaces the old external URLs in your post content with the new local URLs, ensuring all your media is served from your own site.
<h4>How It Works</h4>
The plugin uses five complementary URL extraction strategies to find external files in your content:
<ol>
<li>Regex pattern matching — Scans raw post content for URLs matching configured file extensions.</li>
<li>HTML anchor tag parsing — Extracts URLs from <code><a href></code> links pointing to external files.</li>
<li>Media tag parsing — Finds external sources in <code><img></code>, <code><video></code>, <code><audio></code>, and <code><source></code> elements.</li>
<li>Srcset attribute parsing — Detects external images referenced in responsive <code>srcset</code> attributes on <code><img></code> and <code><source></code> tags.</li>
<li>CSS background-image parsing — Extracts URLs from <code>background-image: url(...)</code> declarations in inline styles and <code><style></code> blocks.</li>
</ol>
<h4>Key Features</h4>
<ul>
<li>Batch scanning — Processes posts in configurable batches (10-200 per request) to handle sites of any size.</li>
<li>Dry run mode — Check file sizes via HEAD requests before committing to an import.</li>
<li>Duplicate prevention — Already-imported files are detected and skipped automatically.</li>
<li>Dead link detection — URLs that returned errors on previous attempts are tracked and auto-skipped.</li>
<li>Resume interrupted scans — If a scan is interrupted (browser closed, timeout), resume exactly where you left off.</li>
<li>Progress tracking — Real-time progress bars for scanning, importing, and dry runs.</li>
<li>Import logs — Every import attempt is logged with status (success, error, skipped), timestamps, and details.</li>
<li>CSV export — Download filtered logs as CSV for offline analysis or reporting.</li>
<li>Retry failed imports — One-click retry of all previously failed imports.</li>
<li>Dashboard statistics — Overview of total imports, success/error/skipped counts, disk space used, and top errors.</li>
<li>Configurable file types — Choose which file extensions to scan for using a Select2 tagging interface.</li>
<li>Multiple URL filters — Restrict scanning to specific external servers by adding one or more base URLs.</li>
<li>Post type and status filters — Target specific post types and statuses (publish, draft, pending, private, future).</li>
<li>Quick Scan — Spot-check a single post by entering its ID or URL.</li>
<li>Permission levels — Restrict plugin access to administrators only or open it to editors and above.</li>
<li>Internationalization — Fully translatable with English and Georgian (ka_GE) translations included.</li>
<li>Clean uninstall — Removes all database tables and options when deleted.</li>
</ul>
<h4>URL Replacement</h4>
After importing a file, the plugin replaces the external URL in your post content. It handles multiple URL encoding variants to ensure no references are missed:
<ul>
<li>Standard URLs</li>
<li>HTML entity-encoded URLs (<code>&amp;</code> instead of <code>&</code>)</li>
<li>URL-encoded paths (<code>%20</code> for spaces)</li>
<li>Fully encoded path segments</li>
<li>Protocol-relative URLs (<code>//example.com/...</code>)</li>
</ul>

MediaFlock

Scan WordPress posts for external media files and import them into your media library with full control and detailed logging.

jmarreros

This Plugin allows to use an external image as Featured Image, this can be especially useful if you house your images in another location.
This Plugin is compatible with Nelio External Featured Image Metadata, so you can reuse your data in case you want to uninstall Nelio Plugin.

External URL Featured Image

It is what I was looking for: simplicity.

$external_image = get_post_meta( $post->ID, '_dcms_eufi_img', true );

Works well for me

Use an external url image as Featured Image for your posts, pages, and other kind of post types.

MediaFlock vs External URL Featured Image