Smashly.net

Problem: Thumbnails link to the Post Page instead of Image

by byron on July 28, 2009 in Troubleshooting

Why do all of my Thumbnails link to the Post page instead of using the Caption Style I selected in Gallery Settings?

Simple fix:

Go to PhotoSmash Settings.
At the bottom of the first tab (General Defaults), find and uncheck the “Thumbs link to Post on Main Page” setting.

If “Thumbs link to Post on Main Page” is checked, all the thumbnails on the Main Page, Category Pages, and Archive Pages will link to the actual post that the gallery is being displayed in. Once you’re in the post itself, the linking should behave normally, but I have seen a problem with a blog that doesn’t start from the main page and that was using Ugly URLs…I’ll look into it.

Comments { 1 }

Problem: Clicking the “Add Photo” link opens up a New Page

by byron on July 28, 2009 in Troubleshooting

Clicking the “Add Photo” link opens up a New Page, usually a 404 error. What gives?

This symptom can have a couple of different sources.

Most frequently, this is a template problem. There are two template tags (PHP code that is specific to WordPress and used in Themes to make stuff happen) that should be called in all WordPress Themes…well, at least all the ones that intend to use plugins or do anything cool:
1. wp_head() – should be called in the header.php file,
2. wp_footer() – should be called in footer.php
Some of the commercial frameworks may have abstracted these calls away into their own hooks. But if you’re using a theme by one of these guys, this is probably not your problem.
If #1 is not the problem, then there might be a plugin that is causing a problem in either
1. The PHP script on the server – you’ll probably see a PHP error somewhere
2. The Javascript on the client – if you run FireFox, get FireBug and it can help you spot JavaScript errors
Try deactivating your plugins to see if you can isolate the offending plugin. If there are lots of activated plugins, I usually try deactivating big chunks of them instead of 1-by-1. Figure out which big chunk the problem is in and narrow down from there.

After you find the offending plugin, the fun begins…you can try to fix it yourself, or try to get the plugin developer to fix it for you.

Free tip: If you’re running a bunch of plugins ( 10 or more ), you might want to consider if you really need all of them…maybe not. Plugins usually require extra processing time, so in general, the fewer the faster (notable exceptions exist). All the same, don’t be afraid of using plugins, just be selective. They are the one of the greatest features of WordPress.
Another problem might be clicking the Add Photo button before the page is completely loaded. The Thickbox initialization occurs late in the page load, so you have to wait for it…I’m going to hide the Add Photo button until it’s ready in a future version of PhotoSmash.
Another issue on the user’s end might be that their browser might be blocking Javascript (or have it turned off). The upload is AJAX and requires Javascript be on, even if you’re always displaying the upload form (forgoing the Thickbox).

If you come up with some other causes and solutions, please post below and I’ll add to the list!

Comments { 19 }

PhotoSmash 0.3.01 Released!

by byron on July 25, 2009 in PhotoSmash, Plugins

contrib-gal This release brings new features, Contributor Galleries being the biggest, and bug fixes.

Check out the Change Log for all changes.

Check out the How-to for adding the contributor galleries to your WordPress blog’s Author pages!

Cheers!

Byron

Comments { 6 }

New Demo Page…and Author Galleries in 0.3.01

by byron on July 23, 2009 in News, PhotoSmash

Hi PhotoSmashers! I’ve created a new demo page here on Smashly. Eating one’s own dogfood and all that. Check it out…load some images!

Working on Version 0.3.01

In other news, the next version of PhotoSmash will bring you an option to show all contributors’ images in their WordPress Author page. I’m kind of excited about figuring out a way to enable that without having you tweak your templates with template tags. I wanted the images to show up at the top of Author page, so what I did was tap into the get_posts WordPress hook and use a little PHP array magic to “unshift” a new Post onto the posts array. When WordPress does the loop, it displays the gallery just like a gallery embedded in any other post. The gallery can use custom layouts, custom fields, etc, just like any other gallery. The only trick is that it will contain all the images by a given contributor, and it will not contain an upload form…of course ;P .

I hope to have 0.3.01 out the door to you guys this weekend!

Cheers,
Byron

Comments { 5 }

PhotoSmash 0.3 Released!

by byron on July 13, 2009 in News, PhotoSmash, Plugins

At long last! PhotoSmash 0.3 is being released in conjunction with the launch of this site. At some point, you have to go ahead and unlock the doors and turn on the lights.

If you’ve been using PhotoSmash 0.2.62 (the previous stable version), then there are a lot of new features to explore in 0.3. If you’ve been Beta testing 0.3 (which itself is a beta ), then thanks! Nothing has changed since 0.2.996 (RC3), but you’ll want to do the upgrade anyway.