File management- preventing the deletion of files referenced by nodes I'm not a Drupal user normally but a client wants to move from a 200 page flat file site managed in DreamWeaver to a Drupal site.

Issue is that their secretarial staff who have been managing the site in DW want Drupal 8 to warn them before they delete a media file referenced by Drupal nodes.  This is for them primarily images and PDFs which they intend to add to the server via FTP.

Can anyone direct me to a module that provides either that warning functionality or a list of nodes referencing media and PDF files?
This is for them primarily images and PDFs which they intend to add to the server via FTP.


No... I would advise installing the Media Entity and set of modules designed for handling media.

This will allow you to add media in a way that has better treatment than core. You will be able to:


Use one file in multiple places without uploading it again 
Build displays based around media, if you need to 
Add a button in CKEditor for referencing or uploading new media


If you only upload files in an FTP, you can't do basic things, like:


Resize an image with an image style
See how many times / where an image or file is being used
Generate different displays for different files
Create Views based around media which may be mixed with access grants later on (spitballing)


Core upload fields, or FTP copying, will not grant you anything - and giving non technical people access to FTP instead of a GUI backend like Drupal is far more error prone.

Also, there is a known core issue where files can be deleted without warning, and it is suggested to set the core file system setting of "Delete orphaned files after.." to "Never". No matter how you choose to approach media management, change this setting ASAP until it is fixed.

One of the major benefits of moving from a static setup to Drupal 8 are for reasons like this.