by
NerdCow
0 (0 reviews)
External Image Importer – Import Remote Images to the Media Library
Automatically import external and remote images into your Media Library on save and rewrite the URLs to local copies. Built SSRF-safe.
External Image Importer ranks #25,632 among WordPress.org plugins with 20+ active installations, is #1,973 of 4,976 in the Utilities & Tools category, and was last updated Aug 6, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.
Tested up to WP 7.0.6 (Current: 7.1.2)
v1.0.2
Current Version v1.0.2
Updated 1 month ago
Last Update on 06 Aug, 2026
Refreshed 7 hours ago
Last Refreshed on
#1,973 of 4,976 in Utilities & Tools
Top 50% by installs
Rank
#25,632
—
No change
Active Installs
20+
+900%
KW Avg Position
84
—
No change
Downloads
278
+1 today
Support Resolved
0%
—
No change
Rating
0%
Review 0 out of 5
0
(0 reviews)
Next Milestone 30
20+
30+
7,369
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8,000,000
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- Version
- 1.0.2
- Last Updated
- Aug 06, 2026
- Requires WP
- 6.0+
- Tested Up To
- 7.0.6
- PHP Version
- 7.4 or higher
- Author
- NerdCow
Support & Rating
- Rating
- ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 0
- Reviews
- 0
- Support Threads
- 0
- Resolved
- 0%
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Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about External Image Importer – Import Remote Images to the Media Library
No - this is a core safety behaviour. Every download is verified to be a genuine, decodable image of the expected MIME type before any URL is rewritten. If the downloaded file is not a real image (for example a geo-blocked placeholder page or an error document), it is discarded and your original external URL is left exactly as it was. A broken local copy is never put in place of a URL that was working.
Yes. A single save hook (wp_insert_post_data) covers both the Block (Gutenberg) editor - which saves via the REST API - and the Classic editor.
Yes. It runs per site, so each site's external images are imported into that site's own Media Library.
They are preserved. The plugin only rewrites image URLs and remaps the attachment ID stored in Gutenberg blocks; it does not touch your alt text, captions or any other attributes.
JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, AVIF and BMP. SVG and ICO are excluded by default for security (SVG can embed script, and ICO is a common smuggling vector). If you fully trust your sources you can extend the allowed set via the auei_allowed_extensions filter, but doing so is at your own risk.
No. The plugin uses no external services and contains no tracking or analytics. The only outbound HTTP requests it makes are to the image URLs that already exist in your own content, purely to download those images into your local Media Library.
It imports the full-size original. WordPress content usually references a scaled image (for example photo-1024x670.webp); the plugin strips that -WxH suffix, fetches the full original, and lets WordPress regenerate every registered size locally - so you have the thumbnail, medium, large and full versions, just like a normal upload. The image in your content is then rewritten to the local copy at the same size it referenced, so the layout is unchanged. It also remaps the attachment ID stored in the block ("id":N / wp-image-N) to the new local attachment, so the editor's image controls keep working and no stale or colliding source ID is left behind. Both behaviours can be turned off with the auei_import_full_size and auei_remap_ids filters.
No. Before downloading, the plugin checks whether the image already exists in your Media Library and reuses it: by the exact remote source URL it previously imported (stored in _auei_source_url post meta); and by exact filename against your whole Media Library, including images you uploaded normally, not just ones this plugin imported. Point 2 is the important one for the dev-to-live workflow: if the destination already has the images (for example the page was partly built on live before), they are reused instead of re-uploaded as duplicates. Matching is on the exact stored-file basename, and only when a single unambiguous match exists, so an unrelated image is never picked. Turn filename reuse off with the auei_reuse_by_filename filter if you prefer always-fresh imports.
Add the domain to the whitelist with the auei_whitelisted_domains filter. Whitelisted domains are never imported and their URLs are left untouched.
Yes - that is a core design goal. The built-in SSRF guard blocks requests to private, reserved, loopback, link-local, ULA and CGNAT addresses, plus the cloud metadata endpoint, and requires every resolved IP of a host to be public before any fetch happens.
