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. yj

It’s ok. I’am happy If this problem can besolved.
thank you
December 27th, 2007 at 2:59 pm | Link

2. Benjamin Sterling

@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

3. Kevin

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

4. yj

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

5. Benjamin Sterling

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

6. Kevin

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

7. Benjamin Sterling

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

8. yj

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

9. kaamos

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

10. Benjamin Sterling

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:

function get_album_json($url = NULL){

$url = str_replace(array('rss_200','rss'),'json',$url);

if(strpos($url, 'flickr') === false){}

else{

$url .= '&nojsoncallback=1';

}

return file_get_contents($url);

}

To:

PLAIN TEXT

PHP:

function get_album_json($url = NULL){

$url = 'pathToXMLFile';

return file_get_contents($url);

}

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

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benjaminsterling.com

November 20, 2007