Benjamin Sterling Galleries: Wordpress Photo/Image Gallery Plugin for Flickr & Picasa

November 20, 2007

Benjamin Sterling Galleries: Wordpress Photo/Image Gallery Plugin for Flickr & Picasa

by Benjamin Sterling in Photogallery, Plugin, Wordpress, Wordpress plugin, jQuery on November 20, 2007 @ 12:47 am

New Version and Name Change

The “Benjamin Sterling Galleries” plugin has been renamed and recoded with a ton of new features. The new URL is http://benjaminsterling.com/photoxhibit/ and although support will still be given for this version (1.6.2) I would suggest you checking out PhotoXhibit

Comments for this post are closed, please go to PhotoXhibit for support.

What is it?

A godsend plugin for anyone who wants to add a photogallery to their website using Wordpress and jQuery.

Download (current count: 1,810)

Download Benjamin Sterling Galleries Version 1.6.2

Download zip version

Features

Pull in photos / images, thumbnail and large size, from just about everywhere
- from flickr via rss or their json api
- from picasa via rss
- from a local folder
- from photos / images already in the Wordpress database
Ulilizes the jQuery JavaScript framework’s power and a ever growing list of great photogallery plugins
Drag and drop reordering of gallery images
Change functionality of your photogallery with few clicks of the mouse
Combine photos from multiple accounts and services
Embed your gallery in posts or anywhere on your site
Galleries are 508 compliant and will degrade nicely when JavaScripts are turned off
Preview your gallery on the fly

Resources

Demo/Dev install (test/test)
- Wordpress 2.3
Support
Timeline
jQuery Gallery Plugins Used

History

While wordpress does have a ton of image / photo galleries, I felt that none of them really gave you control over everything in an easy unobtrusive way. Not to say this this plugin is the is all be all, but it will get there.

In my hunt to find a good one for my wife and installing all the ones that I thought had what was needed, I found that none of them made it easy. My wife is a very smart woman, so when she gets frustrated with something it most likely not her. So after a few months of her beating me, I decided to build some jQuery gallery plugins which you can find on this site. This was able to keep her happy for a bit, but I had to go in and make changes everytime she wanted to add and image or take one out. After doing this a few times I decided to just put together a quick plugin that will take in the images via a picasa feed provided by her and let her do the changes her self.

After showing this plugin to a few other developers they suggested I should make it into a full fledge plugin and well, here it is.

Prerequisites

Wordpress 2.1 or higher
A Flickr account and api key or
A Picasa account or
Images in a local directory or
Images in your Wordpress database

Aside

Although this plugin was test on a pc in IE6, IE7, FF2, and Opera 9.24 and on IIS6 PHP5, Apache PHP4 & PHP5 and feel comfortable that this plugin will work flawlessly, I am the creator of the plugin, thus, I am naturally going to use it the way it is supposed to be used and not have any issues. That is where you come in, any and all comments and concerns should be posted asap and I will build up a punch list of fixes. Also, if there are jQuery or even other Javascript libraries that have nice photo / image gallery plugins, let me know and I will see what I can do to add that into the mix.

Timeline

Here is a brief timeline of what I hope to accomplish and in what order. There is no exact date for each release, but the time between each release should not be more then two months.

1.2 current release
1.3
- Add more Picasa interaction
  - interactions tbd
1.4
- Add more control of the style for each jQuery photo gallery plugins
  - The thought is to possibly have all the styles embedded in the database
    and then have those styles transfer over when
    you create a gallery.
- Add better control over parameters for jQuery photo gallery plugins
1.5
- Add the ability to change the alt text for each image no matter where
  the image is from
  - The thought is to possibly have an edit icon appear when mousing over
    an image

Installation

If you have ever installed a plugin, then this will be pretty easy.

always back up your Wordpress before making any modifications.
Extract the files. Place the benjamin-sterling-galleries directory into wp-content/plugins/
Login to the Site Admin and go to Plugins and active Benjamin Sterling Galleries
Then it can be configured from the BSG menu that you should now have on the top menu bar.

More Info

Let me try to explain what this plugin actually does; it builds image galleries or photo galleries. Wow, I know, that was descriptive. But since you look like you are still puzzled by how it actually works, I will go into a little more detail. Say you have a Picasa photo album with all these really nice photos that you want to add to your site either in a post or in the side bar. But, you don’t want to use the “slideshow” feature that they provide. Well, with this plugin you simply use your rss feed link for your Picasa photo album and paste it into the lovely interface that is provided by the Benjamin Sterling Galleries plugin. Then you select what size thumbnails you want to preview and you click a button and wham, you have all your images/photos listed on the page. You double click on the ones you want to add to your gallery, you fill in some info, select the style of gallery you want and click another button and wham, you have a preview of the gallery that can be added to your Wordpress. What? You have a Flickr account too? Well if you did not click the button to add you gallery yet, go a head and paste in the url to your Flickr rss feed and click the first button and there you go, a list of your Flickr photos. Double click on the ones you want and click build gallery and there you go, a photogallery with both your Flickr AND Picasa photos!

The other nice thing about this plugin is that you can re-order the images you want in your gallery. Simply click and drag the images you want to move around and put them wherever you want in the gallery.

Ok, with out rambling too much more, let me ask for your help. What do I need up with? Well, my instructions are very minimal, do I need more? I only have four photo / image gallery plugins installed, do I need more? If so, which ones do you like? And why? Is there a feature that is needed/that is missing? What is it?

The download link is below, please leave comments to help me make this plugin better.

Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/pl.....galleries/

My muse S.Sterling http://www.neurosesgalore.com

Tags: flickr, image gallery, jQuery, photo gallery, Photogallery, php4, php5, picasaweb, Plugin, plugins, slideshow, Wordpress

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154 Responses to “Benjamin Sterling Galleries: Wordpress Photo/Image Gallery Plugin for Flickr & Picasa”

1. Jeff

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t be able to “get to those links”, do you get an error 404 page or something?

Try this instead…I just posted it instead of keeping it as a draft.

http://www.rotheblog.com/arcad.....dianapolis

This link should replace the post that starts out

Ok….after looking through what you have, I think this is what would personally work for me, what I would like to see.

I see, for Picasa, when you choose “Empty”, there is no surrounding Div, obviously…hence the “Empty”…..
January 15th, 2008 at 12:30 pm | Link

2. Benjamin Sterling

@Michael: I think you posted to the wrong post here so I will reply here.

So, is it working correctly for you now?

I am not sure why you are not able to update an old post, that is very odd, I will need to test that myself.

@jeff: I can’t get to that link you provided. Can you post a link to a working example?

When Michael say tag, he is referring to the [gallery=1] tag and php is the code that can be used in the sidebar.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:20 pm | Link

3. Jeff

@Michael

What do you mean “tag” and “php”. I know what PHP is, but these terms, are you referring to the process of building an album from images you have locally, or are you connecting to an online photo reservoir like Picasa or Flickr?
January 15th, 2008 at 11:18 am | Link

4. Michael Workman

Man… this thing looks like it will be wonderful. I have installed version1.6.2 everything in building albums and such seems to work fine. HOWEVER, neither the tag or the php work for me. I just get a blank posting with no error messages at all. I have the rich editor turned off and the tags and php were copied letter for letter…and i am using the matching album id’s. Is there something simple i am missing…cause this thing is some great programming work. Thanks in advance
January 15th, 2008 at 11:14 am | Link

5. Jeff

I guess maybe I don’t understand, with the jQuery Gallery Viewer II, the thumbnails don’t display in a nice box anymore…at least not for me. Should they?

http://www.rotheblog.com/?p=1619&preview=true
January 14th, 2008 at 3:21 pm | Link

6. Jeff

Ok….after looking through what you have, I think this is what would personally work for me, what I would like to see.

I see, for Picasa, when you choose “Empty”, there is no surrounding Div, obviously…hence the “Empty”.

And when you chose “Div”, it surrounds each image in a div called bsgDivWrapper.

I would like the option to have all of the images surrounded in one div called bsgDivWrapper, not each image. This way, I could write rules to nicely display the images…

.bsgDivWrapper img{
border:1px solid #cfcfcf;
padding:4px;
margin:4px;
float:left;
}

And they would also flow inline next to each other. As it sits right now, here is the rule I am using..

.bsgDivWrapper{
border:1px solid #cfcfcf;
padding:4px;
margin:4px;
display:block;
float:left;
}

Then I have an issue with the images not clearing, and me having to add a clear into every post.

I am just basically looking for formatting possibilities.

What do you think, do you think other users would use this too? Or am I being too specific here?

http://www.rotheblog.com/?p=1613&preview=true
January 14th, 2008 at 3:17 pm | Link

7. Jeff

Yes, when I chose “Picasa” I wasn’t getting the basic / advanced options anymore. But whatever you did in version 1.6.2 fixed that….

Man, there is a ton of functionality in this, you have done a lot of work, even incorporating the lightbox and thickbox.

Still trying to figure it out, especially the display formatting seems really barebones.

Oh, you might want to change the text when you click Picasa, when you get to chose your options, it says Flickr.
January 14th, 2008 at 2:42 pm | Link

8. Benjamin Sterling

@Micheal: I tried to use a shortcut that bit me in the butt, can you download 1.6.2, this was fixed.

@Jeff: I am not sure I understand what you are saying? You click the radio button for picasa and you are not getting a “Picasa Options” form area appear; is that correct? Is your browser popping up any errors?

@Jim: I am still new with svn and did not explicitly tell it to include those files; I just uploaded the fix.

@All: I really appreciate your patience and helping get all these bugs out.
January 14th, 2008 at 2:02 pm | Link

9. Jim

I just downloaded and activated version 1.6. I had no problems activating but did when I try to build a gallery. I am testing locally and the old version 1.2 did work. But now I get:

2Warning: bsg::include(D:\Program Files\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\benjamin-sterling-galleries/common/js/core.js) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in D:\Program Files\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\benjamin-sterling-galleries\common\inc\bsg.php on line 293
3
4Warning: bsg::include() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘D:\Program Files\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\benjamin-sterling-galleries/common/js/core.js’ for inclusion (include_path=’.;d:\Program Files\xampp\php\pear\’) in D:\Program Files\xampp\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\benjamin-sterling-galleries\common\inc\bsg.php on line 293
5
Can you help with this? Were there files from previous versions that need to be there?
Thank you, jim
January 14th, 2008 at 9:10 am | Link

10. Jeff

Ben,

Awesome new look inside.

Couldn’t get things to work, but it is probably something simple…I entered my userid and saved that, and went to build gallery (Picasa), and when I hit the radio button, the menu doesn’t drop down before. I don’t know if that is a change, but even when I click “generate” it doesn’t do anything. I thought it might once it had my userid, but nada.

Anyone else having this issue? Anyone else tried it yet?

But as a start, the “about” section is looking for a file that isn’t in the directory - about.php?
January 14th, 2008 at 8:44 am | Link

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benjaminsterling.com

November 20, 2007