Hello, I have been maintaining Simple Image Sizes for over a decade. It started as a utility tool I needed and it became a utility 80k+ WordPress sites use. This is the first time I am talking about it in the open.
For all these years I maintained this plugin because it helped me, then it helped other people using WordPress.
I worked as a PHP developer, then CTO of BE API agency, and yet I found time, mainly after work, to maintain and keep this project growing. And it helped me grow in return.
In recent years, I founded a new project: Mediapapa. Gradually shifting from services to products, internally first, then to the point where I have been working almost full-time on this new venture in recent months.
After years of maintaining Simple Image Sizes for free and helping people without asking for anything in return, I guess it’s my turn to ask for a little help from the community.
Simple Image Sizes will remain free, will keep working as it always has and stay the utility plugin we like. The only difference is a one-time, dismissible notice pointing to Mediapapa this post and the product page. If that brings a few people over who find value in it, good. If not, the plugin stays maintained regardless.
Besides, nothing changed but you’ll find a few more detailsbelow.
Nicolas Juen
What is changing, what is not
I remain the plugin’s maintainer, with support from the rest of the Mediapapa team. Everything continues to run as it has for years. There are no plans to overhaul the UI, turn the product into something else, or make it brew coffee. 😉
This is not a business acquisition. It is a move towards consistency so all my products are managed the same way. As I am both the owner of Simple Image Sizes and a co-founder and CTO at Mediapapa, nothing has really changed.
Questions about Simple Image Sizes still go through the WordPress.org support forum. I follow the threads and will answer.
What Simple Image Sizes does, and what it does not
The scope stays exactly as it is. Simple Image Sizes handles custom image size declarations and thumbnail regeneration. That is all it does, and that is intentional.
Simple Image Sizes knows which sizes to generate and how to regenerate them. It cannot tell you which files are actually in use across your site, which are duplicates, or whether anything would break if you deleted a specific image. That is a different layer of the problem entirely.
Where Mediapapa comes in
Mediapapa covers the layer Simple Image Sizes never was designed to cover: understanding your library. After you regenerate thumbnails, Mediapapa shows you what is still referenced, what is sitting unused, and what is safe to remove.
- Usage index, which files are referenced, and exactly where
- Unused media detection, filter by files with zero references across the site
- Duplicate detection with Safe Replace, consolidate copies without breaking anything
- Deletion Warnings, if a file is still in use, Mediapapa stops you before you delete it
- Media Score and Library Health, a per-file and library-wide health indicator, always on
