Use the same Assets library across multiple sites

Question

I'm developing two sites to work off the Multi-Site Manager in EE 5.2.2 and ideally would like them to share the same image library as the same logos, adverts and some other images are used on both sites, handled by several content authors who will manage content across both sites. I've configured the EE File Manager on both sites to point to the same directory for the top-level image folder: {base_url}/images/uploads/ and I've installed the Assets add-on v.3.3.3 (from EE Harbor) as the means to manage the image library.

My issues are:

(a) When you make a change in Assets on Site A (upload a new image, create a new sub-folder, etc) you have to manually update the index in Assets on Site B in order to see the changes reflected there (or vice versa), a step that content authors would have to remember to do all the time in order to see the up-to-date library;

(b) This is duplicating the folders and files in the Assets tables in the EE database - which kind of defeats my aim of not having duplicates of the same image file across both sites.

I expect one workaround might be to have shared images just stored in Site A's library and reference their url when displaying on Site B but the content authors are not going to be fiddling with code like that.

Does anyone know of a way to avoid those two issues or is that just how it works in MSM?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Unclear what benefit you are getting from using Assets, but I think that is complicating things for you.

Have you considered using buzzingpixel's "Treasury" add-on to manage your image storage alongside Ansel? From what I understand it should be possible to configure Treasury to store all the images in a single location (e.g. S3, local server) and access them directly from Ansel's interface(s).

My understanding of the Treasury / Ansel license (and Assets too I think) is that they are sold on a 'per site' basis - so you'd need to buy two of everything for it to work with your configuration.

HTH