When you upload media in Umbraco it stores the absolute path to the media item in the database. By default the path will look something like:

/media/12335/MyImage.jpg

However, if you are running Umbraco in a virtual directory the path will also include the virtual directly prefix. For example:

/MyVirtualDirectory/media/12335/MyImage.jpg

So you can imagine that some issues might arise if you already have data in your Umbraco install and then wanted to change virtual directory paths, or even change the media location path (umbracoMediaPath) in the web.config.

Luckily it’s easily solved with a quick SQL script. These scripts will update the path stored in Umbraco created by any property type that is of a data type with an ‘upload control’ property editor.

When moving to a virtual directory

Here’s a quick script to run against your current install if you are moving from a normal installation to using a virtual directory. Note: You will need to replace all instances of ‘MyVirtualDirectory’ to be your vdir path!

update cmsPropertyData 
set dataNvarchar = '/MyVirtualDirectory' + dataNvarchar
where id in 
(select cmsPropertyData.id from cmsPropertyData
inner join cmsPropertyType on cmsPropertyData.propertytypeid = cmsPropertyType.id
inner join cmsDataType on cmsPropertyType.dataTypeId = cmsDataType.nodeId
where cmsDataType.controlId = '5032a6e6-69e3-491d-bb28-cd31cd11086c' 
    and cmsPropertyData.dataNvarchar is not null
    and SUBSTRING(cmsPropertyData.dataNvarchar, 0, LEN('/MyVirtualDirectory') + 1) <> '/MyVirtualDirectory')

When moving from a virtual directory

Here’s the script to run if you are currently running in a virtual directory and want to move to a non-virtual directory. Note: You will need to replace all instances of ‘MyVirtualDirectory’ to be your vdir path!

update cmsPropertyData 
set dataNvarchar = SUBSTRING(dataNvarchar, LEN('/MyVirtualDirectory') + 1, LEN(dataNvarchar) - LEN('/MyVirtualDirectory'))
where id in 
(select cmsPropertyData.id from cmsPropertyData
inner join cmsPropertyType on cmsPropertyData.propertytypeid = cmsPropertyType.id
inner join cmsDataType on cmsPropertyType.dataTypeId = cmsDataType.nodeId
where cmsDataType.controlId = '5032a6e6-69e3-491d-bb28-cd31cd11086c' 
    and cmsPropertyData.dataNvarchar is not null
    and SUBSTRING(cmsPropertyData.dataNvarchar, 0, LEN('/MyVirtualDirectory') + 1) = '/MyVirtualDirectory' )

Moving to a different virtual directory?

If you want to move to a different virtual directory, you can combine the above 2 scripts… first move from a virtual directory back to normal, then move to the new virtual directory.

The above procedures would work as well if you were to change the umbracoMediaPath app setting in the web.config … though most people wont change that or even know about it ;)