There are a number of other Lightbox-like plugins that you can use as well, each with a slightly different flair than Lightbox.  One of my favorites is Shadowbox JS.  Very similar, and you don’t even have to change your Rel setting.  There’s also Fancy Box, Thickbox (not a bad choice since the script is being loaded for the PhotoSmash forms anyway…this reduces your overall load times for your visitors), Gray Box, Slim box, you could get old naming them all…and many of them are very cool!

At long last, I have the first version of PhotoSmash Extend almost ready to go out the door.  While I have enjoyed providing PhotoSmash and the support for it for free, I plan to charge a small fee for PhotoSmash Extend.  99% of users who want PhotoSmash features will find everything they want in the main, free plugin.  I think there are somewhere aroud 1,000 active users of PhotoSmash, maybe a few more (at least that’s how many usually upgrade in the first couple of days after a new release).  Nearly all of those users will have everything they need in PhotoSmash itself, but there might be some who want these advanced features.

Enough rambling…so, what’s in PhotoSmash Extend???

Create New WordPress Posts on Uploading an Image

This is the hallmark feature of PhotoSmash Extend!  It gives you the ability to create a new Post when someone uploads an image to a PhotoSmash Gallery.  Here are a few of the configuration options:

• Use attributes in the normal photosmash Shortcode to turn on new post creation for a particular upload form: [\photosmash create_post=newpost\] (without the slashes…can’t figure out how to write a shortcode that doesn’t look like a shortcode to WordPress )
  • The attribute is:  create_post;  the value is the name of the custom layout to use for building your new post
• You create an html template in PhotoSmash Custom Layouts that will be used for new posts…you can have as many as you like and invoke them in the shortcode above
• Add preview_post=true to the shortcode to show the user a Preview link to the new post after upload is complete
• Control who can create new posts:  Admins, Authors/Contributors, or Subscribers
• Control the default status of the new post:  Pending, Draft, or Published
• Show a multiple-select list box of your WordPress categories (options for setting the category parent node – does all categories by default, excluding categories, setting the depth of the hierarchy to show, and setting whether it is multi or single select – multi select by default)
• Allows setting a Custom Field in the post for a post thumbnail
• You can use a standard form or a custom form for this upload.
• Your new post template can be as complex as you like and you can use standard and custom fields at will…it can even include shortcodes (like a new photosmash gallery within the new post)

So, it’s pretty flexible.  You’re creativity is pretty much set free on this.

Module 2: Set Text/Image/Ad/etc Inserts to Display within a Gallery

This module of PhotoSmash Extend lets you set up special inserts to display within your galleries.  You control what you want the insert to be…you can specify as many different ones that you like and it will rotate through them.  So, you could set a Google ad, an image, and some other kind of message for one Insert Set and assign that set to a gallery (or as many galleries as you want).  Those galleries will display those 3 inserts starting on the image # you specified to start and skipping X number of images until it shows the next one.  You can put a limit on how many inserts get show, and the gallery will loop through those 3 inserts until it hits your maximum # of inserts for the page.

Create unlimited number of insert sets and assign them to galleries.  Each gallery can only be assigned one Insert Set.

Probably helpful to somebody out there.

If you’re interested, send me an email at byron at whypad . com.

Cheers,

Byron

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

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.

The documentation will be coming soon…I promise!