Announcing KB Easy PicasaWeb, a new plugin for WordPress and WPMU, the simplest way to display a Picasa album inside a page or post. Just put a link to your album in a post; this plugin does the rest.
There are many PicasaWeb plugins for WordPress; I counted 8 of them before writing this plugin, and tried using several. So why use this one? Unfortunately, most of the other plugins are annoying. Either they have poor documentation, or they require you to insert funny things into your posts, or they are slow, or whatever.
Why use this plugin?
KB Easy PicasaWeb is the easiest, fastest, most visitor-friendly Picasa plugin for WordPress.
- Easiest: This plugin does not require you to insert funny markup into your posts–all you need is a link to a PicasaWeb album, and the plugin does the rest.
- Fastest: The plugin uses efficient caching to keep your blog’s pageloads quick.
- Most visitor friendly: The plugin uses PHP, not JavaScript, so it won’t cause errors or annoying movement when loading. (If you’ve used JS-based PicasaWeb plugins, you’ll know what I mean.)
How it Works
I wrote KB Easy PicasaWeb so that there would be an easy, fast way to embed PicasaWeb albums into pages and posts. This is all you do:
- Download and activate the plugin.
- Write a post (or edit an old one). Somewhere within it, create a link to a PicasaWeb album (on a line by itself).
- Done. This plugin finds your link, recognizes it as a PicasaWeb link, and converts it into a nicely-formatted series of photos (with captions).
Want the photos to be larger or smaller? No problem–just go to Options->KB Picasa and change the size.
Why it’s Quick
The first time you view a post with photos in it, you’ll notice a short delay (less than 5 seconds, typically) while the plugin pings PicasaWeb to request the album information. But unlike many other PicasaWeb plugins, the delay occurs only once–the results get cached locally by the plugin for future use.
What you need
- Any version of WP from 2.0 through the current development version (2.4), or WP-MU
- A Google PicasaWeb account
with photos in it
Screenshots
Here’s a shot of the options page (click to enlarge):
Here’s a shot with image size set to 160 pixels. The text under each photo is the caption that I typed at PicasaWeb (click to enlarge):
Same idea, but with image size set to 400 pixels (click to enlarge):
Demo
Want to see it in action? Look at photos of Hyrum (or the photos category on my off-topic blog).
Download it
Here it is: KB Easy PicasaWeb
15 comments »
Hey, thanks for the plug-in, looks like it is just what I’m looking for. However, after activating it when I go to my Options page and select it there is a message that says, “Sorry, but you do not have a recent enough version of PHP to use this plugin.” I checked the PHP settings on my website and it indicates that I’m using 5.2.4.
Any ideas?
thanks
Try the v1.1 of the plugin. I just uploaded it in response to your comment.
I was using the domdocument and domxpath classes, which I thought were a standard part of PHP 5, but apparently they are not. I have replaced them with regular expressions. As such, the plugin should now work all the way back to PHP 4.
Hi, really nice plugin! Just the one that I was looking for :)
Do you think you could add an option for a nicer layouot - ie. display the (smaller) thumbnails in two or three columns?
Adam, Your plugin is perfect for one of my client’s who uploads lots of photos to a weekly blog post. They can upload quickly, add captions easily and the automatic sizing is neat and tidy. However, they need to diplay at least 2 if not 3 images beside each other or it will talk forever to scroll down and see them all.
Is there a way to do this using your plugin?
Sounds like you are both asking the same question. You might be able to accomplish that just by tinkering with the CSS that the plugin outputs. Next time I update it, I’ll try to remember to add an option for columns. I don’t know when i’ll have time to work on it next, though.
HI again.. i tried it again with all the rules followed… but i still can’t get it to pop up with images on my blog.. hmmm
oooooh okies fixed the problem :) thanks for the wonderful plugin
Glad you got it working. Anything you figured out that I should add to the FAQ?
hmmmmm nothing in particular actually…. because I didn’t realise that links with the first letter caps also matters. Totally love your plugin and recommending it out hehe
Mario and Jo,
Try version 1.2.
Have just tried version 1.2 as suggested.
Brilliant. The 2 column layout looks much better and the captions are still nicely in place so thank you.
Reckon you could tell me why it won’t work on my site? I’ve followed instructions as close as I know how.
Thanks.
Herb, you’ll need to be way more specific. Otherwise, all I can suggest is that you look at the faq.
Hello,
I’m trying this plugin and finding it less easy than I anticipated. So I’ve posed some questions to clarify a few things.
When you describe a clickable link, do you mean it has to be an anchor tag? (e.g.
<a href></a>)(Other tags might include IMG, IFRAME, OBJECT.)
Does it also have to have text between the open and close tags? (e.g.
<a href>text here</a>Can the link be put anywhere (e.g. a sidebar, a widget, etc) or only in a page/post?
I haven’t played with it enough to have found answers to any of these questions yet.
David, please read the instructions. If you’re still confused, check the FAQ.
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