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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

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

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.

  1. always back up your Wordpress before making any modifications.
  2. Extract the files. Place the benjamin-sterling-galleries directory into wp-content/plugins/
  3. Login to the Site Admin and go to Plugins and active Benjamin Sterling Galleries
  4. 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

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

You might want to rename the folder “benjaminSterlingGalleries” instead of “benjamin-sterling-galleries-0.7″. It took me a minute to realize why it wasn’t working after I uploaded the default named folder to my web server.

December 8th, 2007 at 7:41 pm | Link

Greg,
Thanks, I am still trying to figure out how they set things up over at workpress. I think I will change the folder structure all together because it keeps getting changed when I upload.

I will try to do that tonight, thanks.

December 8th, 2007 at 8:21 pm | Link

I like your plugin and was wondering if you thought of adding the option to pull the pictures from a local directory instead of from Picass or Flickr?

December 9th, 2007 at 5:02 pm | Link

Kevin,
That is one of my “I would like to do” elements for this plugin. I want to set up two more options, to pull in images from entered url and from what a user already has uploaded to their site. But I wanted to wait on putting any more additions into the plugin till I started getting feedback from people like you. Did not want to put in the effort if no one liked it.

If you have more suggestions, by all means, let me know. If I get more interest I will be working on the plugin more in January and updating the instructions.

December 9th, 2007 at 5:10 pm | Link

can we see a demo somewhere? anyone using it want to show off?

December 11th, 2007 at 4:57 am | Link

@ovidiu: I guess a demo would have been useful, here if goes:
http://galleries.benjaminsterling.com/wp-admin. UN/PW: test/test.

December 11th, 2007 at 10:55 am | Link

I’m trying to use this and think I have it setup OK but the function_exists(’bsg_gallery’) returns false. Any ideas?

My directory is called benjaminSterlingGalleries and the script is called benjaminSterlingGalleries.php. I can’t see a function called bsg_gallery() anywhere in the code?

Cheers in advance.

December 12th, 2007 at 3:15 pm | Link

Mike,
Being the brilliant person that I am, I made changes to the code prior to the release and did not update BSG usage page, I will make that change and update the plugin.

There are actually a few more things that I notice that may make the gallery not display correctly, so I am going to make those fixes today and have them posted.

The changes will not require you to uninstall the plugin, so you will be able to keep what ever work you did already.

Sorry about this.

December 12th, 2007 at 3:47 pm | Link

perfect plugin, I guess I will be using it for future projects as I love flickr and love galleries! thanks so much

December 13th, 2007 at 4:39 am | Link

Thanks Jez.

December 13th, 2007 at 10:21 am | Link

When I enable it, widgets drag’n drop don’t work anymore. Your plugin looks awesome, but a fix would be great. :P

December 13th, 2007 at 3:57 pm | Link

@Lunks,
That is not good at all, can you point me to the theme you are using so that I can test it out and see what I can do to fix it?

December 13th, 2007 at 4:03 pm | Link

add me on msn, lunks at msn dot [ohmygod] com

December 13th, 2007 at 6:52 pm | Link

i just try your gallery..
but i have some problem.. when im build gallery from picasa, plugins just stuck with comment
Loading your images, please wait…
im try with your website, it’s work..
what happend with my web.. :(

December 15th, 2007 at 4:04 am | Link

Hi, I have downloaded http://downloads.wordpress.org…..leries.zip, installed and activated the plugin.
If I post my RSS - URl, nothing happens. There is just this message “Loading your images, please wait…”
The URl is OK, I tried it successfully in your DEMO. Do I need to download something else?

December 16th, 2007 at 7:07 am | Link

@Ndro/yj,
Is it giving you any errors? What browsers are you using?

December 16th, 2007 at 12:48 pm | Link

Just for you to know, any themes I’ve used do not work. It’s a problem regarding widget.

December 16th, 2007 at 1:31 pm | Link

Lunks,
Thanks for the heads up, I am working on the fix right now. It seems to be the conflict between prototype and jQuery.

December 16th, 2007 at 2:35 pm | Link

There are no errors. Nothing happens after klicking on Button. I see only that Message “Loading your images, please wait…”, but I think it will not load anything. Perhaps, my host does not supply that plugin? Am I the only one, who have such a problem? An error Message would be helpful, if The Images could not be read, or smething.

December 16th, 2007 at 3:39 pm | Link

I have installed BSG and created a gallery from Picasa. In the BSG window it works great!

Two things, however:
Drag and drop of widgets is disabled.
The code listed under BSG usage gives an error (unexpected :) and the sidebar does not display.
Wordpress 2.3.1, Heckerpad 10 theme originally.

I like this gallery better than any I’ve seen, but I cannot get it to work in my sidebar.

Thanks for all your work on this. I like where you have gone with it.

December 16th, 2007 at 3:41 pm | Link

@dsbach: Thanks for the great feedback, I am working on fixes for both of those issues right now, hopefully will have a fix tonight.

@yj: is it possible you can set me up with a temporary login to view plugin on the admin side? Email me at benjamin.sterling [at] kenzomedia [dot] com if you can. I would like to be able to see the problem outright.

December 16th, 2007 at 6:10 pm | Link

Ben,

Email has been sent.

Good luck! And Thanks!

db

December 16th, 2007 at 6:36 pm | Link

@David: thanks for the info, I see what the issue is with the sidebar function. I need to play with the code a little more to take some things into account.

December 16th, 2007 at 8:34 pm | Link

Thank you, Benjamin!

db

December 16th, 2007 at 8:57 pm | Link

conflict with Admin Supermenu plugin who is neutralized

PLAIN TEXT
HTML:

testing further

December 17th, 2007 at 4:00 am | Link

wordpress/wp-content/plugins/benjamin-sterling-galleries/benjaminSterlingGalleries.php on line 136

error message with the new 1.0 version?

December 22nd, 2007 at 8:44 am | Link

Hi, I don't really know, if it works for me. But is it possible, to save the xml File on my host and try to load it then? Perhaps there is a Problem with reading the xml on a different host?
What do I have to change, if I want to read out a URl like.. ...myhost.com/xml/5132317112930100081.xml ?

December 23rd, 2007 at 10:24 am | Link

yj,
The plugin is set up to take in JSON formated information from picasa and flickr and with the most recent release, it takes what is currently in your database. So basically the plugin takes the flickr or picasa rss url and changes it to point to the JSON formated information and then parses it. So unless you upload every photo that is in the xml file you are referring to to flickr, picasa or to your wordpress, it won't work.

Is this xml file from another photo system like flickr or picasa?

December 23rd, 2007 at 1:00 pm | Link

This xml file is from picasa.
I saved the rss page to my hard - drive. It automatically saves it as a xml file. then I uploaded the xml file to my webserver and entered the URL in the Galleries Builder. But it doesn't work with the patch to my uploaded xml file. It doesn't work with this URl at your demo, too :).

I thought perhaps my host blocks reading files on different server, so I tried to read the rss/xml File at my webspace.. I can't activate Akismet Plugin because of such kommunikation problem. Perhaps this is the reason, why the rss Url can't be read.

It's not so bad if the plugin does not work for me. I can use a different Gallery. It is just a good idea to use your plugin, because I save a lot of Webspace if I just link to my picasa pictures and I save a lot of time with multiple upload which you can use at picasa.

Perhaps someday the Plugin will work for me, too. :)

December 23rd, 2007 at 1:58 pm | Link

yj,
I am very curious why this is happening on your server. But all is not lost, we have a few options, some easy, some not so much.

The easy:
You can use my jQuery Album Parser plugin that will act in a similar way: Album Parser . You will need to edit your header.php file thru wordpress or with a visual editor, but you can add the jQuery framework as well as the Album Parser plugin and what ever gallery plugin you like that is on my site and use the same link to your picasa account.

Or you can hard code the path to your xml file directly into the plugin, I would suggest you update to the newest release of the plugin and go to /plugins/benjamin-sterling-galleries/common/inc/bsg.admin.php and change this function:

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
  1. function get_album_json($url = NULL){
  2.             $url = str_replace(array('rss_200','rss'),'json',$url);
  3.             if(strpos($url, 'flickr') === false){}
  4.             else{
  5.                 $url .= '&nojsoncallback=1';
  6.             }
  7.             return file_get_contents($url);
  8.         }

To:

PLAIN TEXT
PHP:
  1. function get_album_json($url = NULL){
  2.     $url = 'pathToXMLFile';
  3.     return file_get_contents($url);
  4. }

The other thing you need to do is go back to where you got your rss feed and instead of downloading the xml, you need to download the json feed. So change the url from "?kind=photo&alt=rss" to "?kind=photo&alt=json".

Let me know which way you want and let me know if I can help more.

December 23rd, 2007 at 6:01 pm | Link

Hi!

This plugin sure looks nice.
I have a problem though..
I have uploaded some images locally to my server and when I enter the path and chose locally I get the following error:
There seemed to be an error in the execution of the URL provided; please select another one and try again. If problem presists, please submit a bug.

Any ideas?

December 25th, 2007 at 4:37 pm | Link

Thank you Benjamin,
I'm a little busy at the moment, but I will try it as soon as possible.

I see there is a new field "Locally ", you have build in an error Message, if there is a problem with the URL and there is no widget problem anymore.

Nice Work.

December 26th, 2007 at 5:04 am | Link

kaamos:
You don't need to put a url into the url field if you are going to be grabbing images locally. I should probably make the more clear. Can you just check the local radio button with out adding a url and let me know if it works?

December 26th, 2007 at 12:26 pm | Link

To use the Locally option, what goes in the URL field? and what folder should photos go in? I tried putting the folders location and also leaving it blank and it didn't work. I got this :
There seemed to be an error in the execution of the URL provided; please select another one and try again. If problem presists, please submit a bug.

Thanks,
Kevin

December 26th, 2007 at 8:27 pm | Link

Kevin,
I am still trying to put together some good docs on the latest release, so I understand your frustration.

I just uploaded an change to the layout of that page so that it will make more sense. If you are using the "local" radio button, you do not have to provide a url. The plugin will look into the database for anything that is an attachment and either a jpg, png or gif and will display it. It will be going off the default Wordpress thumbnail system.

Can you try the latest release (1.0.2) and let me know if that works. If it does not, can you let me know what version of WP you are using and if you have any other plugins that manipulate the way wordpress does it's thumbnails and uploads?

December 26th, 2007 at 10:50 pm | Link

I tried the latest release (1.0.2) and get this error message: There seemed to be an error in the execution of the URL provided; please select another one and try again. If problem presists, please submit a bug.

But it can be that it works fine for other people. There are so many options off in my phpInfo perhaps that is the reason.

December 27th, 2007 at 12:59 pm | Link

I will try version 1.0.2 and let you know if it works. If I can make a suggestion, I would rather see it allow you to point to a specific directory so that other plugins or photo plugins will work.

Thanks.

December 27th, 2007 at 2:04 pm | Link

@yj: I really can see why this would not be working on your server, you are running with php 5 which is my testing environment. I will touch base with you via email in a bit to see if we can work thru this issue if that is ok with you.

@Kevin: That was going to be my original course of action, but I could not think of a good way to get "alt" information. I think it will be pretty easy for me to set up, but as it stands now, there will not be any title/alt information. If you have any suggestion on how that may be achieved, I am open for suggestions.

December 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pm | Link

It's ok. I'am happy If this problem can besolved.
thank you

December 27th, 2007 at 2:59 pm | Link

I have sent you a mail with some login data.
I hope it helps you a little, if you can make some tests on that server.

December 27th, 2007 at 5:36 pm | Link

yj,
I looks like your server has URL file-access is disabled, which means, as it stands now, the plugin won't. I am using file_get_contents to echo out the returned data from the feed you submit. I am working on an alternative method that should help in your situation but I am not sure if I would be able to get that down today. I will ping you want I do and maybe you can test it out for me.

December 27th, 2007 at 7:12 pm | Link

Thank you very much for your work. You are spending a lot of time on this plugin. Take as much time as you need, there is no reason to hurry. But this is not the end of the world for me if it doesn't work at the end. I am using a server, which has many restrictions. It borders on the miraculous if I find scripts which are working on that server. Don't loose much time on finding a way to make it work for me, I feel guilty somehow if you do :)

December 27th, 2007 at 8:38 pm | Link

@Kevin: I just implemented a directory transversing feature in the 1.1b release, would you mind testing it out an let me know what your thoughts are on it? You can get it at the download page for the plugin.

@vj: Version 1.1b also has what I posted to your server, just in case you wanted to grab that release.

December 28th, 2007 at 1:33 am | Link

I have not expected a working plugin this morning.
It seems, that all works fine for me now. I also tested Version 1.1b.
There is a 4th entry "BSG Dummy" at Version 1.1b, it needs a dummy.php, which does not exist. I guess, it is just a test entry which I don't need.

Thank you very much. You did a great job.

December 28th, 2007 at 5:58 am | Link

Very cool plugin. I was looking for a plugin that would help me add a flickr photo that changes daily. I was able to import the flickr feed, but that only makes a static album. Is there some way your plugin can be used to just get a daily flick photo? I'm new to feeds and maybe there is a way to just subscribe to a feed for a photo.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

December 31st, 2007 at 1:19 pm | Link

I tried to build a gallery from my Flickr gallery and it seems to be having a problem with my feed url. This is my feed url:
http://api.flickr.com/services.....at=rss_200

This is the error message:
There seemed to be an error in the execution of the URL provided; please select another one and try again. If problem presists, please submit a bug.

December 31st, 2007 at 3:23 pm | Link

Error message when I tried to enter my Flickr RSS feed, shown below:
There seemed to be an error in the execution of the URL provided; please select another one and try again. If problem presists, please submit a bug.

http://api.flickr.com/services.....at=rss_200

December 31st, 2007 at 4:56 pm | Link

@jayne,
I tested the url you provided and it worked fine, can you download and try the 1.1b release and let me know if that works for you. It seems that some servers don't have php file functions enabled which is the basic functionality behind the plugin. 1.1b will execute alternate code if the server sends back an error for the file functions.

@jim,
The plugin takes the url you provide and grabs each images information and inserts the selected images' information into the database. So, to answer your question, no, it is not able to grab random images from your supplied feed.

This is actually a nice idea though; a person can supply a link to a feed and set up the basic params and then the plugin can set up a cron job to just update and randomize. I can probably work on something like that in th coming month, but no promises.

December 31st, 2007 at 5:29 pm | Link

Benjamin - sorry for bombarding you with my problem (forgot about comment moderation). Downloaded the 1.1 and it briefly came up with the same error, then said it was working. It then loaded my ten most recent photos. Two questions: I am unable to drag and drop and is there any way for me to grab certain sets? My first ten photos aren't ones I want to build a gallery with. Also, a couple are private.

December 31st, 2007 at 5:57 pm | Link

Jayne,
What browser are you using that you can't drag and drop?

As it stands now, the system will only grab what is in your rss feed that you provide at that moment. I am working on setting up more flickr related features, but there is still a lot for me to learn about what flickr offers (I use picasa as my default). If your sets allow for rss feed directly to that set, then just provide the feed url, I have not tested this myself, but it should work.

December 31st, 2007 at 6:36 pm | Link

I'm using Firefox. When I refreshed, then I was able to do the double-click to move photos over. I'm going to have to scrutinize Flickr. When I first signed up, about 3 years ago, each set had a prominent RSS feed. Now it appears to be just a latest feed.

I may try my Picasa account as well.

December 31st, 2007 at 7:52 pm | Link

How do I delete a gallery after I have generated it?

And what does the BSG Dummy do? Right now when I click on that link I just get two error warnings.

I am using a custom admin theme, don't know if you need to know that or not.

January 2nd, 2008 at 3:26 pm | Link

Jeff: I am working on a new release that will add delete functionality, not sure when that will be exactly but it should be sometime in the coming month.

You must be working with the 1.1b release, I was testing some new features for yj and never removed it in the beta release. I am in the process of testing out 1.2 release that will remove the bsg dummy page and replace it with some extra Flickr specific functionality; that should go up tonight.

A custom theme should not matter, I am not using built in wordpress functions to call my javascript, so there should not be any conflicts, which is usually the case.

January 2nd, 2008 at 4:02 pm | Link

Yes, I downloaded and installed 1.1b.

I like this plugin, I hope you are able to develop it more and more as time goes on. Right now I am using kPicasa for Wordpress, and although it puts all of my galleries nice into Wordpress, my customization options are limited.

If you need help with testers, let me know.

January 2nd, 2008 at 4:07 pm | Link

Jeff: I am glad you like it, I had the same feelings, the other plugins seemed to restrictive. I do plan to develop it out as far as I can go, I will be posting a new/updated post later today which will include an estimated feature timeline/roadmap.

If you have time to test out the release I will be posting tonight, have a look at l.2b

January 2nd, 2008 at 5:29 pm | Link

Great news guys, I just updated to version 1.2 which adds a lot more features for those who have flickr. Please check it out and let me know how it works out for you.

January 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 pm | Link

I see the BSG Dummy is gone, like you said.

Everything worked fine for me, but is there something in particular you would like me to look at and test?

January 2nd, 2008 at 9:22 pm | Link

Using the Advanced Photoset choice, I've put in my API key, the photoset ID, but it isn't grabbing my images. It also cycles through the following messages:

There seemed to be an error in the execution of the URL provided; please select another one and try again. If problem presists, please submit a bug.

THEN:

Ok, got the data, going to process it now.

January 2nd, 2008 at 10:05 pm | Link

I saw the listed timeline now....looks like it is a simplified overview.

If it hasn't been mentioned before, for Picasa users, it would be nice to have a "Select All" feature when generating the photos for a new gallery. Most of the time I would like to include all photos from the feed, and could skip double clicking each one to add them individually.

January 2nd, 2008 at 10:15 pm | Link

Aha! Figured out what was going on. In the set I was trying to access, there were two private photos. As soon as I changed the permissions on those two, then I could access the photos.

January 2nd, 2008 at 10:40 pm | Link

@jayne, glad you figured that out, I was trying to reproduce it and could not. Can you elaborate on the "private photos" issue? Were they in a group of other photos that were not private? If I can reproduce your situation I can probably build in an error checking for it.

@Jeff, I really like the "Select All" idea, let me see what I can do. I am also trying to finish up 1.3 stuff that relates to picasa. I think you may like; I will try to post a beta tonight if you are interested in having a look.

January 2nd, 2008 at 11:42 pm | Link

Jeff: I posted up the 1.3b version with changes for Picasa and the select all stuff http://downloads.wordpress.org.....s.1.3b.zip Let me know your thoughts.

January 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 am | Link

Benjamin - I had a set of 14 photos. The album was public, but it had two photos that were marked private. The set "cover" photo was one of the private photos. Maybe the plugin just got stuck there? Even if you can't repeat it, maybe in your documentation for Flickr you could just put in a reminder to make sure the photos you're trying to access are public.

January 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 am | Link

Will you be adding in functionality to read the comments left on the individual photos in the Picasa albums?

And, I see that most of the gallery types are ones that you developed? Would you be open to adding in some of the other ones, like Lightbox and Highslide? For example, in the case of lightbox, have it display nicely like the bottom thumbnail portion of your jqGalViewII Gallery type, but have the photos come up like the Lightbox style...

I was appreciative of the fact that you added in "Select All" so quickly. If you would like some help writing documentation or something else, let me know and I will do what I can.

January 3rd, 2008 at 11:55 am | Link

@jayne: Thanks for that feedback, I will see if I can build in test checks for that situation.

@Jeff:
"Will you be adding in functionality to read the comments left on the individual photos in the Picasa albums?"
Not sure how that would fit into the "gallery" structure, can you elaborate on your thoughts? Maybe some examples?

"I see that most of the gallery types are ones that you developed? "
Of course, mine are the best :)

"Would you be open to adding in some of the other ones, like Lightbox and Highslide? For example, in the case of lightbox, have it display nicely like the bottom thumbnail portion of your jqGalViewII Gallery type, but have the photos come up like the Lightbox style..."
This will be the purpose of v1.4, I need to set up some way to allow for a end user to edit the css on the fly. This feature will definitely allow for more/better inclusion of those particular plugins.

In Highslide particular case, since it is not a jQuery, and other gallery scripts that are not jQuery based, I need to build in "inlcude" scripts so that BSG will grab the correct stuff with out bloat. Have not totally figured out the processes just yet. But I "think" I have an idea of my approach.

"If you would like some help writing documentation or something else, let me know and I will do what I can."
Heck yeah, as you can tell from my docs that I am not all that great with explaining my self. And since BSG is becoming quite complicated, I think I need to do a video tut also. I can set you up with editor status if you are interested.

January 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm | Link

Great plugin, works very well. Nice job! I like the choices for the gallery type and the snappy setup.

One problem, I cannot seem to edit a gallery after setup. I can create one just fine and it works great. But when I click on the "You can add more/delete images or edit the params" links nothing happens. Any ideas?

January 3rd, 2008 at 11:02 pm | Link

JJ, I missed a piece of code for people with php4; I updated the plugin (a new release of 1.3) can you grab that and let me know if it works for you?

January 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 pm | Link

Excellent! (my php ver is 5.1.6) That seems to work now. BTW, what is the optimal size/ratio for the images? I notice that they don't always fit well in the thumbnails or when viewing singly ...

Thanks!!

January 4th, 2008 at 12:52 am | Link

Thankyou for your plugin. I tried to upload a picasa album and got the following error- "There seemed to be an error in the execution and most likely is because your server does not support "file_get_contents," we will try an alternate method, please wait." Nothing happenned after I waited. I tried typing in the URL, just using Grab but nothing worked. Can you help?
THanks,
Cindy

January 5th, 2008 at 5:49 pm | Link

Cindy,
Can you post the url to the picasa account you are trying to use? Also, what version of the plugin do you have?

January 5th, 2008 at 9:20 pm | Link

Here is the url to the picasa web album- http://picasaweb.google.com/wi.....bsiteMarch

My version of the plugin is 1.3.

Thankyou

January 5th, 2008 at 9:36 pm | Link

I just tried it again and it worked. I had to retype my picasa ID in instead of using the one that was stored with my user id--which apparently had a typo. I hope I didn't waste too much of your time. Thankyou!

January 5th, 2008 at 9:40 pm | Link

Cindy, glad you figured it out.

January 5th, 2008 at 10:29 pm | Link

I'm also having the problem that was reported earlier.
The following message appears and nothing happens :

Loading your images, please wait...

Has there been a fix for this ? I'm using v1.3

I'm referring to a local path /home/user/images

January 6th, 2008 at 8:53 am | Link

Davy: I guess I should make "local path" more clear; that path needs to be a url, or an absolute path in regards to your url. Let me explain, if your "images" folder is at the root of your website url you would do http://www.myurl.com/images or just /images/. I just noticed though that the "Loading your images, please wait..." message does not go away for this option, I will have to get that fixed. Can you try it with your url and let me know if that works for you?

January 6th, 2008 at 11:56 am | Link

Benjamin,

My wordpress is available at http://myhost.com/wordpress
My images are available through http at http://myhost.com/myimages

When using the Browsable Directory option, I've tried entering

http://myhost.com/myimages
/myimages

in the "Your browsable directory URL" input field.

I just get the message Loading your images, please wait... , but nothing happens. (both on IE & Firefox).

First I was under the impression that "Your browsable directory URL" could be any path on the servers filesystem (something like /home/usermyImages).
But even with an HTTP accesable URL (http://myhost.com/myimages) it doesn't seem to work.

Unfortunately, I've only been using WordPress since today, and as a Java/J2EE developer, my knowledge of PHP is limited (understatement) so I can't really debug things to see what goes wrong.

My wordpress is running on a apache2 server on Ubuntu

January 6th, 2008 at 4:13 pm | Link

Hello Benjamin, it would be great if I could load a local directory, fi http://wellfield.nl/images/serie2. But the ldoading message does not disappaer an nothing happens. Just as Davy experiences. Hope you do have a solution. Thanks a lot.

January 6th, 2008 at 4:32 pm | Link

Davy:
When I go to my uploads directory for my wordpress I get a browsable page (http://www.benjaminsterling.com/wp-content/uploads/) I don't have anything uploaded there, but I did I would have folders with what ever I had uploaded. Are you getting something like this?

The code that is grabbing the image in this particular option is purely JavaScript, it is actually grabbing the browsable page and then finding all links and checking if they are links to folders or to images and will process each.

Here is a better example of what the code is expecting.
http://galleries.benjaminsterl.....t/uploads/

January 6th, 2008 at 4:33 pm | Link

Robert: Oh, I see the issue, at least in your situation, Davy let me know if you are going with the same setup.

The problems is that I was going off the assumption that everyone would be using Wordpress's default upload function which takes the full size and resizes it to a thumbnail and appends .thumbnail to it. So if I upload benjamin.jpg, WP would take that image and duplicate it and give it an new name of benjamin.thumbnail.jpg. The system I have built looks at each image and looks for .thumbnail and sends that to the browser while matching that thumbnail image up with the full size image.

So, Robert, with you current set up and the current code it won't work as expected. Not sure of a quick work around off the top of my head.

January 6th, 2008 at 4:43 pm | Link

Benjamin, thanks, now it works with the default WP upload directory.
I have another question; how can I make BSG show a first image? Now it does not show a first image, only thumbnails. I use jQuery Gallery Viewer II: http://wellfield.nl/zonder-rubriek/bsg/ (don't mind the layout of this site, it is a trial).

January 7th, 2008 at 3:31 pm | Link

Robert: I must have included an older script for that one, can you grab the updated js code from http://benjaminsterling.com/jq.....o-gallery/ and overwrite the js file in benjamin-sterling-galleries\galleryScripts\jqGalViewII and see if that works for you.

January 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pm | Link

When going to my uploaded folder using http :

http://213.118.216.34:60000/wo.....s/2008/01/

I can see the following files :

imported-photos-00074-resized.JPG 07-Jan-2008 20:54 605K
imported-photos-00074-resized.thumbnail.JPG 07-Jan-2008 20:54 22K

(file uploaded using the wordpress upload functionality).

The Browsable Directory still doesn't work.

I've tried entering the following values

http://213.118.216.34:60000/wo.....s/2008/01/
/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/
wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/01
/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/
wp-content/uploads/2008/01/

The uploading message stays on the screen as before.

When I use the option "Local Database" I am able to fetch thr images that I uploaded.

In the "Managed Galleries" tab, I'm able to previes my galleries just fine, but as soon as I write a post, and use the [gallery=1] tag, my post doesn't have any content, the gallery isn't shown, and my overal page layout is all messed up.

Drop me a mail if you have the time to look at my site, I can provide you with the necessary admin password through mail.

If you don't have the time don't worry, I'm pretty new to all of this so I'm probably doing something wrong.

January 7th, 2008 at 4:26 pm | Link

Thanks, it works with the new js file.
But now I have another question. I would like to print the big image from jqGalViewII but also the thumbnails (I use WP-Print plugin). But only the big image is on the hard copy and not the thumbnails. The thumbs do show up in the preview. I noticed this is also the case when just printing the pages from your site; thumbs are not shown then also. Do you have a suggestion for a CSS (printstyle) tag for this? The thumbs are listed with ul and li.
Hope you can help me out, I would like to print hard copies of the complete gallery including thumbs. Thanks again.

January 8th, 2008 at 11:56 am | Link

Hi , I have a big problem. Now in my scenario i want to have a gallery for each posts under one of my categories. But there is a problem.. I can enter one post including one gallery. But when same page has another BSG gallery the Java script wont work... Have you noticed that ?

Hmmm so can you have multiple BSD galaries in multiple post in one page... I think this is a bug.. Please let me know why I'm having this problem

January 8th, 2008 at 3:14 pm | Link

Davy: when I go to the pages you provided none of them load for me. So my guess that the issue has something to do with that. I am working on changing the approach of the "local" browsing feature. If you can drop me a line a benjamin.sterling [at] kenzomedia [dot] com with ever info I may need, I will take a look at your set up.

Robert: Can you post your url to the image gallery so I can get a better understanding of what is going on?

Nirosha: Sadly I did not even think about having multiple galleries on one page, I would not say this was a bug but a none feature. I am working on a huge release that I am hoping to have up in the next day or so and I will put in a fix for the ability to have multiple galleries.

January 8th, 2008 at 3:47 pm | Link

Hello Benjamin,
This is de url: http://wellfield.nl/zonder-rubriek/bsg/
So thumbnails will not be printed. I guess this is to be solved by a particular CSS style tag. But which one? I believe it does not work for the moment because the thumbs are in a list.

January 8th, 2008 at 7:48 pm | Link

Awesome... I'll be looking in to that .. Thanks.. Hmmm If you need any help let me know... I'm a Sri lankan student so might not have enough money to donate any he he.. But Will help you on testing and development any time you ask... Thanks again... BSG is brilliant.. !

January 8th, 2008 at 10:23 pm | Link

Hi... i installed the version that you link to from your site. Everything seems to work fine...albums created etc. but when i try to use it in a post... i get nothing. I am new to wordpress...so maybe i am doing something wrong. What i did was create a post... and put in [gallery=1] nothing shows.. i know most plugins use some kind of [plugin] options and parameters [/plugin] style. So am i putting in the wrong tags? This looks wonderful and i have tried a million trying to find one that works... I hope this one does for me :) Thanks in advance for reading this.

January 10th, 2008 at 2:55 am | Link

n update... when i went to manage my gallery.... i saw my pics and such.... but there was also this message
Warning: main(): Failed opening 'common/inc/JSON.php' for inclusion

PLAIN TEXT
CODE:
  1. (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php/PEAR:/usr/local/share/pear') in /daniloandheather.com/systems/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/benjamin-sterling-galleries/common/inc/build.php on line 42

So maybe there is some problem with the version of my PEAR libraries on my server? I am running PHP Version 4.3.11

January 10th, 2008 at 3:07 am | Link

Ben,

Sorry I didn't reply before now to my comments about showing "comments" from Picasa galleries, and to writing documentation.

Here is what I would like your plugin to do, but I know you can do it better:) I haven't switched over to yours just yet because you are still working on some of the stuff I want, but KPicasa, as I mentioned before, is not nearly as flexible as yours is already.

http://www.rotheblog.com/?cat=.....okesOurDog

This plugin is reading my comments from the RSS feed and displaying them under the image. Then, if you are familiar with Lightbox, the title tag is used to display a message with the photo. Lightbox reads those comments when viewing the image larger. I am not crazy about how the comments are displayed below the thumbnails, but I am sure that is something I could edit if I felt that strongly about it right now.

With your albums, like jqGalViewII for example, couldn't you have the comments read from Picasa display above, or below the image? Or as a tool tip if that wouldn't add too much code to slow things down?

I don't really have screen capture software, and really don't have the time to mess around with something new. If you need something written up with screenshots, I can do that. Or if you agree with me, that video is a much more powerful medium and want to wait for someone to make a tut for you, that is fine too.

January 10th, 2008 at 11:51 am | Link