Picasa Albums For WordPress
Picasa Albums For WordPress 3 helps to easily import, display and manage your public Picasa Web Albums right in your WordPress site. Picasa Albums creates custom Picasa Web Album experience right on your site. Picasa Albums allows blog owners to outsource image hosting to Google's global CND, saving on traffic and hosting costs and reduce server load associated with static content.
Overview
Picasa Albums For WordPress gives you full control over how you Picasa Albums displayed in your blog by adding custom post type "Albums" to your WP 3.0. Once Picasa Albums imported, you can rearrange images, hide images and/or change album cover image. Users can add specific album description and control which albums to display on the site. Picasa Albums Settings page allows to set thumbnail size, max image size and cropping options for your images.
Outsource storage
If you looking to ease the load on your PHP server by serving static content (images) from CDN or simply short on space on your hosting, Picasa Album is great solutions for you. All images are stored on Google's servers and served to users directly. Picasa Albums does not store any images on your server.
Use multiple accounts
Picasa Albums allows you to import images from any number of Picasa accounts, so you can combine all of your family's pictures in one place. This feature also comes handy if you have more than 1Gb of pictures to share and do not feel like paying for hosting. Create multiple Picasa accounts and display all images on your site.
You in control
Picasa web albums is a great service, but sometimes you need more granular control aver your images. This why why Picasa Albums allows you to decide:
- Which albums to show
- Album's title, url, description, thumbnail and thumbnail size
- Which images in the albums to show, images order, thumbnail size and maximum images size
- If own multiple Picasa accounts, you can import from all of them
Limitations
Obviously I would like to deliver ultimate solution that will solve all you problems regardless your software/hardware, but some times it is just not possible. This plugin has been designed specifically to work on latest WordPress 3 platform, therefor it will not work work on older instances (you should update, it is in your best interest, even if you do not need this plugin). Here major downfalls so far:
- WordPress 3 and newer
- PHP 5 with CURL enabled and JSON support (most web hosters have it)
- mod_rewrite is required and you must use permalink.
Good to know
This plugin includes
Fancybox and uses it to display enlarged images.
Help me make it better
Like it or not, drop a line in comment bellow. If you have an issue post it on
issue tracker @ github.com.
Love the plugin idea, but it isn’t working for me.
I have fixed the issue. My bad. Please download new version from github.
A lot of people seem to have this problem.
Under settings you cant reach the editing menu…
http://blog.extia.fr/wp-content/plugins/picasa/picasa.admin.php
http://theluckycookiecompany.com/website/wp-content/plugins/picasa/picasa.admin.php
I’m not sure why it has to has to accessible. There’s no such file.
Settings page available @ http://yourblog.zone/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=picasa-albums
Hi,
I am using WP 3.0.3 and just installed the Picasa Albums plug-in. It worked in that as soon as I uploaded an album from my picasa website, it showed up as a post. I would like to place the album on a different page, and hopefully several albums on the same page.
I can’t seem to be able to figure out how to do this. I tried to create a new “album” post, but “album” didn’t appear in the drop down menu. I also looked for something in the album settings and didn’t see anything.
Any guidance is appreciated.
jerry
Looks like one of the filters is not firring. I will take a look into comparability with other plugins and let you know what can be done.
Thanks! If you need a list of active plug-ins, just let me know…
Dear Mikhail.
First, thanks for developing this plugin, i really do like the idea. BUT, i just cant get it working. The plugin installs smoothly, but when i try to import my album, its like the plugin gets struck, and just keeps loading, without doing any progress.
I have both tried posting in my picasaweb ID with and without @gmail afterwards, but it seems like its not importing the albums.
Best regards.
Christian
I’m officially swamped this week. Will try resolve all the issues and try to help every one as soon as I have a sec to look over the code. Sorry.
Hi, Mikhail. I don’t now if this behavior is on purpose, but my http://www.mysite.com/album page is based on the layout of my index.php (that i modified) and not based on the layout of archives pages. Thank you for your amazing plugin.
It looks like you can add “has_archive”=true to $args array on line 95 of the plugin.php, but I can not guaranty that it will work. It looks like this key is not supported in 3.0.4
Thanks Mikhail. This plugin really useful. But some of the themes cannot display the /album page properly, since the content appears as the_excerpt instead of the_content. I tried to add a filter right under the add_filter(‘the_content’,array(‘wpPicasa’,'picasa_album_filter’));
add_filter(‘the_excerpt’,array(‘wpPicasa’,'picasa_album_filter’));
it works nice, but I’m not the expert on writing wordpress plugin, pls see if you consider to include this in your next update.
The other problem is, the published album becomes “draft” again after clicking the “import”. I’m using the wordpress mu 3.0.4
BTW, I suggest adding the followings, allow to access unlisted album. The layout of the album page organize as a grid of cover images instead of posts…
thanks again.
add_filter(‘the_excerpt’,array(‘wpPicasa’,’picasa_album_filter’)); is a good idea. will add.
I will remove album update all together.
Access to unpublished albums is good idea, but i want make simple things work first, before adding even more complexity.
Probably I’ll add more layout options once all major issues are resolved.
Okay, very sorry for the stupid question here, but I cannot figure out how to get it to work. What is supposed to go in the Import field? Whenever I put anything in it (google acct name, full URL to the album in Picasa, etc.) the Import button instantly becomes grayed out. What am I missing? Thanks!
You doing every thing right. Once you enter picasa user name, scroll down and hit save. Once saved, click import. Do not change your user name. This was done to enforce user ID saving. Probably this will go away soon as I want to save user id in album properties, so users do not have to keep track of where images came from if they want to reload them from album.
Thanks for your instant fix, I recommend to modify the insertAlbums, moving the ‘post_status’ => ‘draft’ to the if(intval($id) > 0){…}else{$post['post_status'] = ‘draft’;
so that my published albums won’t become ‘draft’ again.
Besides, at picasa_album_filter, when ($options['image_thumbcrop'] == ‘yes’ && isset($aImage['thumbnail']) ) is true, I suggest to set the image width and height as $aImage['thumbnail']['image_thumbsize'] instead of $aImage['thumbnail']['height'], because sometimes the image width and height is smaller than image_thumbsize, that will ruin the layout of the photo list.
good work, thanks again!
Thanks for feedback.
I believe function insertImage was updated in v.1.0.5 not to mark imported albums as draft, but I will look into it.
I will into filter function as well. Thanks.
Im not getting this. What do I put in the import field? No “save” appears after putting something in it, and the “import” button becomes gray.
Im missing something here.
Save button is all the way on the bottom of the page. Once you typed your username, scroll down if you have to and press “Save Changes”
I have to apologize. I was messing around with the wrong Picasa plugin.
Using Genesis Frame work / Studio Press-Landscape – and the /album page defaults to the home index.php.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
I’m not familiar with Studio Press, so it is hard to say what is not working. I would think they use rewrite rules that conflict with plug (or plugin has rules that conflict with framework).
Hi, do anyone get the same error message: Warning: preg_match() expects parameter 2 to be string, array given in [...]/wordpress/wp-includes/post-template.php on line 200
And how do we import private albums? thanks
sorry but it seems to import nothing!
i put my user Id -> save -> import ..nothing
(wp 3.1)
thanks
will update to 3.1 and try. Will keep you posted.
thanks! i’m waiting..
Just updated WP to 3.1 and plugin to 1.0.4 via wordpress update on my demo instance. it works as expected. Do you have CURL enabled on your server?
Thanks for the plugin-I love the idea. However, I have the same problem as the most recent commenter. I have wp 3.1, and I enter my id, press save, and then when I try to import…nothing. Any help would be great!
As I mentioned bellow, it works on my instance with 3.1 and lates version the plugin.
Try using FireBug, so see what is happening with ajax request that does import. Let me know if it throughs any errors or just dies.
thank you very much for the plugin! I can import albums and they show up on the page, but i get the following error, any ideas?
Warning: strpos() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /XXX/public_html/wp-includes/query.php on line 3504
this is tough one. There are number of reasons that can cause this including other plugins.
I installed this on my site. I can view the albums after publishing (http://www.seelke.net/album/slcspring2011/), but they are not added to the archive and if I go to http://www.seelke.net/album, it shows me the home page.
Thanks for any help!
I’m not sure why that will happened. I have not done much testing on custom WP-themes. I would think that main reason for this is that your theme does not use single.php.
function that controls filter on customer side is on line
function picasa_album_filter($content){
and it fires on single only
if(is_single()){
again, it might be not the case, so feel free to correct that function to make it work for you.
Can we get a fully functional demo uploaded so we can see its functionality?
Cheers
it is on my to do list.
Is it possible to use “Catogories” and Tags with the album? and how do you add that? right now it makes a post – but I cannot tag it or catagorize it..
Nope. Albums behave like pages right now. Theoretically it is possible, but I have no plans on implementing this in near future.
If you implement this, please share with others. cheers.
it is defiantly doable. it may not as straight forward as in normal posts, but doable.
you can se how it is done on this site:
http://www.pashaspr.com/location/the-bar/
i’ll try to have post about this as soon as I have some time.
Hi, thanks four your great plugin. I have a question: images doesn’t enlarge. What can be wrong? I need to do something more about fancy box? I’m using wordpress 3.2.1
Please consider this suggestion: put a link to Settings more visible.
Greetings.
This is the error I got:
Agente de usuario: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB5; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Fecha: Fri, 5 Aug 2011 21:17:45 UTC
Mensaje: Excepción lanzada y no recogida
Línea: 17
Carácter: 11966
Código: 0
URI: http://sufi.cl/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.6.1
this problem should go away in v.1.0.6
Issues has been addressed in v.1.0.6, please update.
I’m sad. Doesn’t work in Avenue Theme, when is configured to magazine: http://exemplo.radbox.net/album/
I guess, I do not have resources to test anything more than stock theme. If you manage to get it working, please let me know and I’ll make the changes.
Hi Mikhail
thank you for your useful plugin.
I am able to import all of my public albums and to see them in a custom menu, but I am not able to see all my gallery on a page or a album on a post.
How can I obtain it ?
i’m not 100% what are you asking for. Do you want to show gallery inside the post? If yes, then there is no easy way. It is planned feature, but I have no guaranty on when I get around to implement it. Right now this can be implemented via custom taxonomy and some custom code in post template, but I do not have exact how-to guide right now.
I don’t know what’s happening, but some pics doesn’t load. Here’s an example: http://clubeendorfina.com.br/?album=voltainternacionaldapampulha A lot of them are not appearing. Some albums doesn’t show any picture. I verified, all my albums are public, so I can’t figure out why this is happening.
I’m sorry about my bad english. And thank you for the plugin!
Hi there! it works perfectly, thanks! However it doesn´t seem to be able to display the videos in the album. Is there any way around it? I really wish I could display the alum videos as well. Thanks!
Nope. The idea was to show images so videos are omitted on purpose. I have not looked into showing videos, so not sure if it is enven a good idea.