Distributor 2.1.0 tackles two long-standing frustrations for teams syndicating content across WordPress sites: in-content images that still pointed back to the origin site, and duplicate media files piling up on destination sites when the same image appeared in multiple posts. If you rely on Distributor to push content between sites in a network or across connections, this release should make your destination sites cleaner and more self-contained.
In-content image URLs now follow the content
Previously, when you enabled the option to distribute all images attached to a post, Distributor would copy the image files over to the destination site — but any image URLs embedded in the post content still pointed to the origin site. That meant your destination site was silently hotlinking back to the source, which is bad for performance, resilience, and SEO.
In 2.1.0, when the “distribute all images” setting is enabled, Distributor now performs a search-and-replace on the distributed content so that image URLs are rewritten to point at the newly imported media on the destination site. Distributed posts are now properly self-contained, with no lingering dependencies on the origin.
No more duplicate media on destination sites
If you reuse the same image across several posts and distribute those posts to a connected site, earlier versions would import a fresh copy of that image for every post — quickly cluttering the destination’s media library with duplicates. Distributor now checks whether the image already exists on the target site before importing, reusing the existing media item instead of creating a new one.
Other changes worth noting
- WordPress minimum raised to 6.5 — Make sure your sites are running WordPress 6.5 or newer before updating.
- Tested up to WordPress 6.7 — Distributor is now verified against the latest WordPress release.
- AMP connection display fix — A JavaScript error in the Show Connections AMP template has been resolved.
For developers
There is one behaviour change to be aware of: the default value of the dt_sync_media_delete_and_replace filter has changed from true to false. Previously, when an existing media item was found on the destination site, Distributor would delete and replace it; now it will leave the existing item in place by default. If your workflow depended on the old behaviour, you can restore it by filtering dt_sync_media_delete_and_replace to return true.
This release also adds a WordPress Playground blueprint, making it easy to spin up a multisite demo environment with Distributor preinstalled — useful for testing, demos, and contributing.