So, anyway, like I started to say, I’m wrapping up the latest version and I just put in the whole WP Gallery integration code and now I’m thinking, “it’d be great to let users link the standard layout to the Attachment page…it’s so useful, and I just love it…hmmm…I think I’ll add that before we release….it’s not much code, anyway.”  So, I add the options to the admin pages and am testing them out when….what the!?!?  There’s already options for linking the image/caption to the Attachment pages.  When did that get in there?  Does that even work?  I don’t remember writing that….huh.

I guess that settles it.  I recently had somebody tell me ever so tenderly that I shouldn’t add another single feature until I clean up PhotoSmash (you can read that one here).  And you know what, they were right.  When you can’t even remember all the features you’ve already added, it’s time to take a step back…and in this case, do some serious code cleaning.  This was on my “next up” list anyway (see the Facing Future post in case you doubt), but those things are confirming what I knew in my heart.

So, even though I’ve basically finished the Photo Sharing features (the Pixoox features), I have them turned off in the upcoming version.  I’m not totally satisfied with the security model of creating a new user for requesting sites…I don’t really give them a way to claim that new user if they don’t provide a good email address, so that’s a bit of a bummer.  Also, I’d really like to force everyone to use Twitter oAuth as the security mechanism, but don’t have a clue as to how to begin that.

So, that’s on hold.  If anyone wants to beta test it, let me know and I’ll get it going.  I’d really like someone who knows this stuff to consider how to implement the security mechanism.

Further, I really want you guys to have your very own iPhone apps for your sites…custom branded and the works.  But I’m a total noob with iPhone dev.  I’ll post a plea on that later, but the Pixoox piece was part of building an API for PhotoSmash that the iPhone app could use.

At any rate, that’s where we’re heading!

Cheers,

Byron

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It is great!

It might sound a bit strange for the author of a Photo Gallery plugin (PhotoSmash) to be extolling the glories of another, 100% available to all WP users without lifting a finger, photo gallery.  But it’s not strange at all, in fact PhotoSmash works great with the built-in gallery features and your Media Library.  The upcoming version (v. 0.8.00) will offer the ability to display your PhotoSmash galleries using the default WP Gallery functionality out of the box.

So, you can display the standaard WP Gallery and have the PhotoSmash ‘Add Photos’ link right there to let your users upload new images to the gallery.

Every Rose…

So, this is awesome, right?  But the downside is that some of the other fantastic PhotoSmash functionality isn’t available in the WP Galleries.  For instance, the Custom Fields cannot be displayed in the WordPress Gallery.  You can still use that functionality and all the other PhotoSmash goodness in other places, even with galleries that you designate as WordPress Galleries, just by supplying the photosmash shortcode with:

gallery_type=normal

which will override the Gallery Settings type.

Using PhotoSmash and the WP Gallery Feature Together

A couple of ways you can set view a PhotoSmash Gallery as a WP Gallery…First, you can make that gallery a ‘WordPress Gallery’ in Gallery Settings by setting the Gallery Type.

But what about normal galleries?  Can you display them as WP Galleries? Oh yes, if you want to show a normal gallery using the WordPress Gallery feature, you can simply add one of these to your photosmash shortcode:

gallery_type=wp

or

wp_gallery=true

Customizing the WP Gallery Display

If you want to change the way the WordPress Gallery looks, you can add to your shortcode:  wp_gallery_params=” … “  where the ‘…’ is any of the WP gallery shortcode parameters.  Here’s the WP Codex tutorial on how to use the gallery shortcode: http://codex.wordpress.org/Gallery_Shortcode

PhotoSmash is just running that shortcode, so you can use anything you see in the Codex.

Why Do I Still Need PhotoSmash?

Well, PhotoSmash offers some very useful and unique functionality, including: ability to let users upload images to galleries, ability to create completely custom gallery layouts and custom upload forms (with custom fields), contributor image galleries, ratings, favorites, etc, etc.  But perhaps one of the most unique functions is its ability to be used as a WordPress Gallery.  There’s lots to love in both galleries, and the beauty of it is that you don’t have to choose.

Comments on Photos

So, now there are 2 ways to get comments on your Photos.  1) You can use the WP Gallery feature of PhotoSmash; or 2) get a Smashly.net membership ($25/yr) and get access to the PhotoSmash Extend plugin which gives you the ability to create new posts with each uploaded image (very flexible…uses a custom layout, complete with custom fields, etc, for the creation of the new Posts).

This has been a highly requested feature, and now you’ve got some options.

The Long Run

Matt Mullenweg (http://mm.tt), the founder of WordPress (if that’s the right word), said somewhere that he uses the built-in WP gallery functions because they’re guaranteed to work forever.  There are some very good Photo Plugins out there, check out the venerable NextGEN Gallery if you haven’t already (with a million+ downloads, you probably have ), but they aren’t core to WordPress.  Matt’s comment has merit.  So, even if you’re using NextGEN or PhotoSmash or any of the other plugin galleries, consider if you can use them in conjunction with the WP gallery.  As far as PhotoSmash goes, you can, and that’s a good thing!

Happy blogging!

Byron

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!

This is still a bit of a work-in-progress, though it should be functional and future changes should be transparent to you.

PhotoSmash Star Rating Features

• Standard 5 star system
• Gallery specific settings
• 2 default positions: overlay top of image (as seen in image above), or after caption
• Allow anonymous ratings, one per IP address – set this in PhotoSmash Settings (bottom of first tab). It’s global to all galleries that have
• Toggle switch allows user to hide/show all ratings per gallery
• To enable a gallery, go to Gallery Settings and edit the gallery, then set the Rating type option at the bottom of first tab
• Hovering over pops up a little info box on the overlay display
• Feature in the works: I’m working on adding a rating type for vote up/down type ratings.  This will allow photo contests and other applications
• Feature in the works: Sort by highest rated images
• Need to get Widgets going to have a Highest Rated widget

Feature that would be nice: right now, this system doesn’t show partial stars.  If anyone wants to take this on, that would be great!!

WordPress has some great star rating plugins for rating comments and posts, e.g. GD Star Rating and WP-PostRatings, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find one that could be plugged in to use for rating images with PhotoSmash.  I ended up adapting some code from a  jQuery rating prototype that Karl Swedenberg put togther here, itself based on code by Ritesh found here.

Special thanks to Milan of GD Star Rating for the use of the stars used in the gallery!

Appeal for Help!

If anyone wants to improve the rating system, I am definitely open to some help!  Ideally, the ratings would display partial stars, as mentioned above.  Also, the ability to select other star sets….and if anyone creates star sets that they would be willing to share with the community!

Let me know in the Help page if you find any problems!

Cheers,

Byron

Simple fix:

1. Go to PhotoSmash Settings.
2. 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.

This symptom can have a couple of different sources.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.
4. 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!

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

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

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!