Issue: Attaching a new image to a wiki is confusing or even impossible

I think the only good way that this can be improved is to merge the upload overlay down into the image select overlay, possibly making it like so:

1. Click editor button.
2. Overlay opens. Overlay has tabs "Choose Existing File", "Upload New File" (if permission to upload). It's possible the styling options can be tightened up so they don't use as much room.

But yes, I'm aware that it doesn't use the style of other XenForo dialogs. As you've noted, this is an inconsistency across platforms, where the dialog is styled like a forum page rather than as an editor dialog. We've been putting off fixing this style inconsistency since it was more important to get the core stable, and at least it looked like a page from the same forum.

I still have to fully investigate the XenForo uploader, but if even that's possible, it would only be a style change. Due to issues discussed elsewhere here ad nauseum and that I know you're aware of, a forum attachment system cannot be shoehorned to function as a true wiki attachment system, so we cannot simply "use the XenForo uploader" as it is. They are completely different in almost every way.

Unfortunately all the add-ons you mentioned are paid add-ons, so I cannot just see the way they do it in terms of their interfaces. But I really doubt they have an editor button that lets you scroll through existing uploads or that you can upload to XenMediaGallery directly from the editor of a regular forum post. That is the purpose of this editor button in VaultWiki. And that's what you're talking about in your post above. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm sure XenMediaGallery functions like most gallery systems where you must click an upload button when you are actually visiting the gallery. VaultWiki has this function as well. Simply go to a wiki area, and in the Create New drop-down, instead of "Page" click on "Attachment".

I am accepting this task so that the following can be completed:
1. Tabulate the insert image overlay to reduce the need for the extra overlay, and to make the upload option in this overlay more visible.
2. Update the style of the overlay to be more in line with the style of other editor dialogs.
3. Possibly update the style of the upload field in both the overlay and the attachment editor to look more like XenForo's uploader.

Feel free to login to my development site and look into how the other addons do it.
Well sort of. Its the other way around. XenMediaGallery let's you insert gallery images into forum posts. The user browses through available media and selects what he wants to insert into the forum post. This happens all inline. I think you will find it interesting to see this approach.
Showcase uses XenMediaGallery's functionality to insert images or albums. But also allows default xenforo image uploads.
XenReviews uses custom image fields, which insert an uploader under the editor and in a tabbed interface.
I offered you a xenreviews license, because I think it would be handy for many reasons. This is one of those reasons. After XenReviews is released to the xenforo resource manager, the other reasons will become more prominent. Because there will be a number of related feature requests for Vaultwiki.

in regards to the xenforo uploader that any addon uses: is it not possible to use the same uploader, but to still use the vaultwiki approach of storing it?
At least then it feels like the same software.

I encountered another issue that makes the attachment system confusing. On my site the editor has the following buttons for adding files:

1. XenForo Image button
2. XenForo Media button
3. XenForo Insert button
4. XenMediaGallery bbcode button
5. VaultWiki File bb code button

The editor show this in all places, including in forum threads, XenReviews, xenforo resource manager, which all have their own image uploaders.

As you can imagine this setup will confuse members and will lead to images uploaded to the wrong places. I'm not sure how this can be improved. Is there a setting to turn the VaultWiki File bb code editor button off outside of VW?

I just wanted to chime in and say that I agree that image uploading is the weakest part of VaultWiki. I had been considering purchasing XenMedia Gallery to see if I could avoid it altogether.

My recommendation would be drag and drop support, and then all you have to do is enter a name for the image.

Yes, in the Syntax Manager, locate the FILE BB-Code. One of the settings there controls the non-wiki editor.
Drag-drop support sounds interesting. I avoided it in the past because other drag-drop functions we tried turned out not to work so great.

Here is a summary of other improvements I've brought up in other conversations:

- It loads too slow for my liking. Thumbnail display should be deferred until the dialog is already open and the given thumbnail is in view.
- Thumbnails should be tiled to save space, not in a list as they are now.
- It should be tabbed (Existing image vs New image), rather than the current [+] icon opening another popup.
- There should be simple switch for a gallery mode (where you can pick/upload multiple images at once).
- The controls for everything could be tightened up.
- Support wiki attachments and URLs in one BB-Code. For many users it can be confusing to use one BB-Code for attachments, one for external images.
- The "Selected image" summary should show the relevant thumbnail rather than only the name.

My members are still struggling with the Vaultwiki attachment system.

The main problem is that it makes something simple overly complex. My members are not advanced wiki editors but forum users. They are used to Facebook like easy UI functionality not to Wikipedia like complex functions. We use Vaultwiki exactly because of this. Otherwise we would use Mediawiki. My forum users are easily deterred by overly complex functionality.

What we really need is a simple way to attach attachments to wiki articles, without having a 'true wiki attachment gallery'.
Just a normal upload button and a drag & drop function so that members can add images and links by drag & drop.
No image pages that add a second image gallery to our sites.

Please consider this because I know that I am far from the only admin struggling with this.

Amen, my members are used to the XenForo attachment system. Please let's just use that. Way back in the day, that's why I went with the NuWiki system was that it used the same editor and attachment system as the main forum system (vb 3.x)

My Vaultwiki 4 installation went live in September 2017. I ran VW3 until February st 2017.

Since going live 4 months ago my members have added 0 wiki attachments. People unfortunately are not using it at all. My members simply are not able to use it, as they do not understand it at all.

They expect a similar UI as on the rest of the site. They try to upload the image to the page they are editing, look for the 'Upload a File' button and they try to drag & drop an image into the editor like they can on the rest of the site. But this doesn't work so they stop right there.

Some of my members are using the forum attachment system and the XF Media Gallery to add pictures to Vaultwiki. Because that's what they can understand and are used to. They need functionality similar to simple forum attachment uploading. It should work and look the same.

On my site I have an articles system, blog, reviews, social groups, downloads, media gallery and all use the same simple method of uploading directly to the page they are editing and this is what my members can understand.

For my members this is a regression from how it worked for VW3. They used to be able to upload attachments to their wiki articles and are no longer able to do so.

I'm facing the same problem. I used to see about 40-50 new entries a month, now I'm seeing 3 or less. The uploader and insertion system just needs to be the same interface as xenforo.

Our wiki does not get a lot of input, but we do have a few authors that are willing to put in the effort.

I pitch it to the users as a "composition system" as distinct from the posting system and try to emphasize the increased utility of the image space over attachments. To further emphasize this we restrict post attachments to thumbnails by default but allow the attachment code to be edited to =FULL.

It would be nice if it were a bit smoother. I have not yet worked through the editing sequence to insert an image from the image space and configure it for the particular article that it is about the be used in. An overlay of some kind to manage the parameters would be a benefit.

We have all the XenForo elements installed but have not yet done anything with Resource Manager and have done very little with the Gallery.

At the moment I am trying to figure out how to better integrate the wiki with the subject areas of the forums. The indicators do not wok because all our forums are at least two nodes below the top and I cannot style the wiki icons to recognize new material.

[ IMG ] references on our site are all transient since we convert them to attachments when the post is filed. As a result the image data file structure holds all the original images locally. It would be very nice if we could just reference an attachment when we want to create a new IMAGE article. It might be very useful for our less ambitious users if those IMAGE articles were created on the fly (in the background) whenever they put an attachment in a wiki article.

I suppose I could modify the XenForo attachment system to generate wiki IMAGE articles automatically whenever an attachment was filed, but that is almost certainly overkill.

If you use the editor button to insert an image from the image space, there is an overlay that does exactly this.

Unless I am misunderstanding what you're doing, it is entirely possible to use different wiki status icons based on the new or old state. If you are using static images, design two different images for new vs old. If you haven't massively modified the icon HTML, all icons use either the vw-icon-old or vw-icon-new classes. Simply update your CSS rules accordingly to set the alternate background-image.

On the image issue, I am trying to convert the blogs from my old site to wiki articles. Here is a link to an example where you can see the ATTACHMENT to IMG reference that I have done with back end queries. https://mb.nawcc.org/wiki/How-Elgins...otional-review

I do not really understand why an IMG reference in a wiki page cannot be used to automatically create a wiki image file. The name could be the filename from the IMG reference or any other agreed name with a serial number for each image in the article.

I had not anticipated this being so difficult.