Privacy & Access Control

Free + Pro - Core functionality is included free. Features marked with (Pro) require MediaVerse Pro.

MediaVerse provides privacy levels for media items, albums, and collections. Access checks run on every REST API call and on the explore archive query.

The upload form offers up to five of them: Public, Members, Followers, Friends (only when the BuddyPress friends component is active) and Only me (private). The others apply to media inside a group or space, or are set by add-ons. The full vocabulary a write is allowed to store is PrivacyService::supported_levels() - as of 2.6.1 public, members, loggedin, followers, friends, group, space, private, dm and custom, filterable through mvs_privacy_levels. A level not in that list is refused at the edge rather than stored and silently ignored.

Privacy Levels

Level	Value	Who Can View
Public	public	Everyone, including logged-out visitors
Members Only	members	Any logged-in WordPress user
Followers	followers	People who follow the media owner. Followers is always available, since following is part of the free plugin
Friends	friends	BuddyPress friends of the media owner (requires BuddyPress active)
Group	group	Members of a specific BuddyPress group (requires BuddyPress active)
Private	private	Only the media owner and users with moderate_mvs_media
Custom	custom	A specific list of user IDs defined via access grants

Pro documents add one more level, this space (space) - visible to members of the Space the document’s drive belongs to. It applies to documents; media items are not space-scoped by default, though a document (or media) can be bound to a Space drive with the mvs_media_drive filter.

Owners and Moderators Always Have Access

Media owners (the post_author) and users with the moderate_mvs_media capability bypass all privacy checks. They can view all media regardless of its privacy level.

Setting Privacy on Upload

Set the privacy field when creating media via REST API:

curl -X POST https://yoursite.com/wp-json/mvs/v1/media \
  -H "X-WP-Nonce: NONCE" \
  -F "file=@photo.jpg" \
  -F "privacy=friends"

For group privacy, also include group_id:

  -F "privacy=group" \
  -F "group_id=42"

Changing Privacy After Upload

curl -X PUT https://yoursite.com/wp-json/mvs/v1/media/123 \
  -H "X-WP-Nonce: NONCE" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"privacy": "private"}'

Custom Access Lists

custom privacy limits a media item to a list of specific people, each with an optional expiry date. The free plugin checks that list when someone opens the item, but has no screen or endpoint for building one. MediaVerse Pro uses the same list for document sharing. Expired entries are cleaned up by cron or with wp mvs cleanup-expired.

How Media Files Are Delivered

Since 2.6.1, photos, video and audio are sent straight by your web server, without loading WordPress for each file. This keeps busy pages fast and uses far fewer PHP workers.

Each stored file has a long random name (16 random characters) that cannot be guessed, and MediaVerse only gives the address to people allowed to see the item. When an item becomes more private (for example Public to Members, or Members to Only me), or is trashed, flagged or rejected, its files get new names, so any address shared earlier stops working. Making an item more public keeps its names.

Some files always go through a permission check on every request, using a time-limited signed link (/wp-json/mvs/v1/serve):

• message (DM) attachments
• documents and SVG images
• downloads, so download counts and file names stay correct
• files saved under a readable name, if the site chose to keep original file names (the mvs_filename_strategy option)

Files saved before 2.6.1 under readable names (older video covers, imported files, uploads kept under their own names) are given random names automatically after the update, in the background, newest first. Nothing is needed from you, and links shared earlier keep working. Until an item is converted it keeps using signed links. Deleting a video now also removes its cover’s source image, which older versions left on disk.

It turns itself on only when it is safe

After updating, MediaVerse checks once (on the next admin page load, then daily) that your web server sends a random-named test file from wp-content/uploads/wpmediaverse/. Until that check passes, every file keeps using signed links, exactly as before. Existing links keep working either way.

• Apache and LiteSpeed: MediaVerse updates the folder’s .htaccess so only random-named media files are served directly; everything else stays blocked. A .htaccess you edited yourself is never changed.
• nginx: nginx does not read .htaccess. Tools > Site Health shows the rule to add to your server configuration when it is needed, for example when an older MediaVerse rule blocks the whole folder.

To keep every file on signed links, add add_filter( 'mvs_direct_media_delivery', '__return_false' ); to a small plugin.

Signed link lifetime

Signed links last 1 hour by default (the mvs_signed_url_ttl option, in seconds; there is no screen for it). Links for non-public media stay the same for half of that time, so browsers can reuse a downloaded file instead of fetching it again.

Filtering Privacy Access in Code

Use the mvs_privacy_can_view filter to extend or override access logic:

add_filter( 'mvs_privacy_can_view', function( $result, $media_id, $user_id, $privacy ) {
    // Grant access to premium subscribers regardless of privacy level.
    if ( null === $result && wcs_user_has_subscription( $user_id, '', 'active' ) ) {
        return true;
    }
    return $result;
}, 10, 4 );

Return null to let the built-in logic run. Return true or false to override it.

Explore Archive Privacy Filtering

On the explore archive (/media/), MediaVerse applies automatic privacy filtering through a SQL clause on its own mvs_media_index table (a privacy IN (...) OR post_author = current gate shared by every explore surface), not a WordPress posts_where filter:

• Logged-out users see only public media.
• Logged-in non-moderators see public, members media, and their own media (any privacy level).
• Moderators (moderate_mvs_media capability) see all media.