=== Shashin Notes===

Shashin is a useful WordPress plugin that enables displaying of Google Picasa Album images anywhere in WordPress page.

All you need to do is to examine the author’s site.
and it is a breeze. Let’s think about it just one moment. Why install all manner of galleries on a site from your host. Choosing one album such as Google Picassa Albm to store your images and using this plugin to point to a display of your images with minor effort makes a lot of sense.

The following is excerpted from that site.

= Description ==

“Shashin has many features that enable you to display your Picasa photos in a variety of ways in your WordPress posts and pages:

* Embed a gallery of your Picasa albums, and all the photos in each album.

* Show your photos with Highslide. (An advanced installation)

* Pick individual photos to display, in any size supported by Picasa.

* Pick photos from any combination of albums to display in groups of thumbnails.

* Show thumbnails of your newest photos, from one or more albums.

* Display album thumbnails for albums you choose, or all your albums, sorted however you like. Includes links to Google Maps.

* Display any number of random photos, from one or more albums. You can also choose to exclude certain photos or albums from random display.

* Use widgets for all of the above!

* Customize the Shashin stylesheet to suit the theme of your site.”

We found shashin enabling picassa galleries is a straight forward plugin that can be enhanced by drilling further into the instructions. We appreciate that installation for this wordpress blog plugin can be operational in a very short time.

For illustration of specifying specific albums, we examine keys of albums in Shashin plugin and insert the keys to those specific albums.

We did observe that our blog site screen generation was exceptionally slow after installing this plugin. We believe this to be the delay in making the connection with picassa album.

Example of our effort when apply this plugin to our blog site Discoveries

[salbumthumbs=8|9,2,y,n]

Lewis and Clark Excursion Day 1 8 12 26-Jul-08 14:42 [salbum=8,y,y,left] Yes No Sync Album Delete Album

Lewis and Clark Excursion Day 2 9 28 26-Jul-08 14:42 [salbum=9,y,y,left] Yes No Sync Album Delete Album

Gives tag script

Examine: Shashin 2.1 – Easier Steps for Displaying All Album Photos if you use Picassa Albums. The process is straight forward.

=== Shashin ends ===

<<<sidebar>>>

In searching wordpress plugins, we veered off to self contained galleries, when the original intention was to trace available plugins that are compatible with theme of choice and work without creating SQL data base and spend all that time to make the gallery work properly.

***

We will continue searching and and testing those plugins and bypass the galleries requiring host databases.

<<<sidebar>>>

On to the next gallery plugin.

Our first intro to Coppermine was
“Welcome to Coppermine Photo Gallery’s homepage!” and then we visited Demo for cpg1.4.x. The style of the demo brings to mind the appearance of a forum. Examine gallery.net team to learn more about this plugin. The Download is available at sourceforce.net , which includes project summary, web shots, news and statistics (broken link… which prompts us to discontinue pursuing this gallery for the time being.)

Viewing this site failed to incite our interest in installing coppermine-gallery. So, we will pursue the next plugin.Coppermine is available as an application installation through our host site GoDaddy.com. So we will defer pursuing installation and demonstration of this plugin temporarily and continue on the Gallery2. Plugin.

5 >>>>>>>>

Gallery 2 “this is the official website of Gallery, the open source web based photo album organizer. Gallery gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website whether you’re running a small personal site or a large community site.”

The challenge for us is embedding Gallery2 in WordPress using the WPG2 Plugin “WPG2 is a WordPress Plug-in that embeds Gallery2 within WordPress to share photos, videos and any other Gallery2 content seamlessly into the WordPress Sidebar and Blog entries.”

So we downloaded and unzipped both gallery-2 and WPG2. Afterward we became aware that Gallery-2 was available for installation at our host site.

Embedded Album illustrates WPG2:Screenshots of a Gallery2 Embedded Page in WordPress blog. The Author’s home page is an example of album view.  WPG2:Screenshots: page 1, page 2, page 3 and page 4. The key is WordPress Plugin for Gallery2, WPG2.org , which among other links is WPG2 Quick Start Guide

Conclusion

After downloading both wpg2 and gallery2 we learned of our inability to specify the correct path between these two plugins. One of the items in quick reference guide was” 3, Move the file “wp-gallery2.php” from the /wpg2/root/ directory to your wordpress root directory, the directory that contains wp-config.php.” We searched for this file unsuccessfully.

Installing gallery2 and establishing a mysql data base on our server required about 12 steps. We were successful in installing gallery2 with db available through our host Godaddy.com. This action resulted in a working account and album for gallery 2. We proceeded with installation of WPG2 Version: 3.0.6. on same file level as Gallery2 , our first uploaded album was successful.

After installing and attempting authentication of WPG2 embedded paths, we were unable to establish the correct paths so that WPG2 and Gallery 2 would enable the WPG2 to “talk” to Gallery 2.  We joined the forum but that failed to find solution to the problem after many attempts with WGP2 Paths menu under WPG2. Even after referencing WPG2 Options G2 Paths as examples we continued to be unsuccessful in defining the correct paths for gallery2:WGP2. We also examined the quick start guide describing the wp-gallery2.php which we were unable to find in gallery2 or wpg2 file folders.

Since we were successful in installing gallery2 at least part of our objective was reached.
We are disappointed in that we were unable to complete wpg2 plugin installation, but enough time has been invested in attempts to do so. Thus far we have passed through at least six cycles in attempting to define the proper paths for validation of WPG2 3.0 Plugin. Possibly attempting this installation later, we may find the proper paths that enable WPG2 to function properly with Gallery2.

We will continue to watch the gallery forum as we deactivate WPG2 plugin for now and pursue the next plugin on the list.

Introduction to CSS-based Gallery

Build Your Own CSS-based Gallery is a site worth examining carefully. As we viewed this site we were amazed at the efforts that produced photo albums of such a wide variety of styles based on cascading style sheets. Our eyes were originally drawn to the right panel that listed “Recent Pages”. We thought that the demos in the that panel were the only examples. After viewing demos we discovered many other styles for presenting photo albums. We could spend weeks browsing this site for other useful “css templates” but our objective is to continue researching WordPress photo album plugins. We will revisit this site since we are also interested in learning by example the use of cascading style sheets. For anyone learning cascading style sheets

Check out CSS classes for font size. The cascading style sheet is imbedded in html. Examining this page and its source code is a simple example of how to manage font sizes and color with only a small effort.

A few demos were tested

As quoted on the author’s home page, “Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a simple mechanism for adding style (e.g. fonts, colors, spacing) to Web documents.” This quote was extracted
from W3C website. That site included a link back to CSSplay for examples of how to use css. From the W3C site we discovered Sitepoint providing the definition of “what is a stylesheet?”

CSS tutorial starting with HTML + CSS, is a site recommended for learning how to use stylesheets. Some photo gallery demos of CSS-Gallery that we tested were:Cross Browser Multi-Page Photograph Gallery as we mouseover the tabs, all of the images associated with that tab are displayed as thumbnails. As we mouseover each thumbnail image, a larger image is displayed. We examined the page carefully and found the author has provided the imbedded script within the header of an html file. We saved the file and placed credit icon on a development page. That link will be available on this site when posted. Since we are using our own images, we need a time budget to get that done. Images 3072×2304 were tested on our development test page without sizing images. This would be another plus factor if storage concerns were of no consequence. To conserve storage, each image will be optimized before uploading to our host site. This effort takes a large bite out of our time budget. Irfanview may be useful here for batch optimization of files. You are able to batch process original images to thumbnails with one pass and process original images to desired size without overwriting your original images. Check out the Q&A Misc on using Irfanview to do this.

An active Photograph Gallery for fast download speeds

This demo stands out because of the various thumbnail divisions at top, right, left, and bottom. Since a reference was show on an update we will examine it next.

Active Photograph Gallery for slow download speeds is the same as above. The author states “This one does not preload the images so is ready to use as soon as the thumbnails are loaded and is intended for use at slow download speeds.
The hover will just display the text information for the picture. When you want to see the full size image then click the thumbnail (which is just a small area of the full sized image rather than a reduced image) and the image will be downloaded. Because the full size image is not preloaded may take several seconds to fully display”

We tested this gallery with 5 images out of 10 using the required width of 425px for large images and 75 px for thumbnail

Photo-simple is our recommendation for simplicity as producing thumbnails is not required. We tested 500px images as optimum size and the script condenses the thumbnails as if by magic. : ) This is a mouseover of thumbnails, but we prefer selecting image so that image view remains until mouseover is beyond the image box. Note that the size of larger images may vary so we will not need to be concerned about images less than 500px by 500px. But limiting the height to 500px is recommended as it extends to the bottom of the array of thumbnails in the right panel.

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Sidebar notes: Our tests and conclusions.

When we have the time for returning to cssplay we will examine the other goodies that include menus, layouts, boxes, ozilla, Explorer, anb Opacity. All of these are worth studying to improve styling of web sites. In addition to the photo galleries menus also attract our interest, especially in creating drop down menus.

In examining 08-03-08 Not so simple gallery, we considered the following.

• Examine source code that displays a specific album for path of the author’s css file
• Bring up the css file related to the gallery being viewed and copy that file from browser to css folder for the album
• Extract and copy the script that produces the gallery to html editor.
• Select from our own image files for a photo album display and size thumbnails and full size images accordingly.
• Enable Credit by locating the link button and copying the script to the “gallery.html” This button will link back to the author’s page.

We activated Dreamweaver and created an html file linked to the saved css file identified on the site CSSPlay. We examined the demo html script for the album and adjusted the sizes of the images to be consistent with sizes viewed for thumbnails as well as larger image. When we determined where the author’s gallery demo page html script defined the image sizes for thumbnail and larger image, we sized our images accordingly.

Since the CSS-Play site has many demos, we invite you to examine the author’s many examples. We will forgo posting any of the css based albums on our test site, until we have examined the full list of photo album plugins. We will pursue css demos viewed on CSSPlay site after completing the review of wordPress album plugins listed on the original post of our Samtex test site.

Awsom PixGallery is a wordpress plugin that enables an array of thumbnail images.

Selecting a gallery results in viewing the images in that gallery. Selecting a thumbnail image increases the image

Details for this gallery is located at awsom.org

After viewing the sample gallery, the feature that caught our eyes was: ”Easily Updated: Adding or removing images is as simple as adding them to the original folder–Pixgallery detects the new or changed images and adds them into your gallery with no work on your part. You can even add entire new folders of images just as easily by uploading them.” Since we have uploaded images earlier, we are proceeding on assumption we can use the same images for this gallery.

awsom.org contains features that we will subsequently tweak. But, for the time beng, we will pass on to the next photo album.

Demonstration of the basic thumbnail image view is found at the site that we are using for testing plugins: Discoveries

]]> http://samtex.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/awsom-pixgallery-version-455/feed/ 0 samtex http://samtex.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/plugin-aniga-gallery/ http://samtex.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/plugin-aniga-gallery/#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:07:23 +0000 samtex http://samtex.wordpress.com/?p=35 ]]> ANIga gallery enables viewer to select an image from an array of a thumbnail images, and the selection generates a larger image below the array of mages. This plugin in feature rich

At the bottom of enlarged selected image is menu structure for “thumbnails and slideshow with information as to size of image, dimensions of image and number of views.” A unique feature of this technique is that when displaying the larger image, the previous image is shown as thumbnail on the left and the next images is shown as thumbnail on the right.

Our view is that this type of gallery presentation ranks with the best that has been examined thus far. But, our preference when using this plugin is to employ less background contrast. The author’s slideshow in header is very impressive!

The blogger’s e-mail link is at the bottom of page with copyright credits.

Since as stated by author “This plugin is not working with WordPress 2.5 –“we will set aside testing since WP 2.5 is the version that we are using on our test site, discoveries site.

As an offshoot of examining Flickr and Pictobrowser, our attention is now being focused on photoblogs and galleries. There are many such sites..

In pursuing research on how to present images we followed links from media.pdf provided by LVS Blogging course. Following the links, we discovered: plugins for images NextGEN Gallery We examined NextGen Gallery and performed installation for Discovering NextGen Slideshow

Then, Discovering NextGen Album followed by Discovering NextGen Single image.

We also examined a NextGen widget to add a gallery to the sidebar.

In right panel of Discoveries site http://goldinrule.com/wp1/

<<sidebar>>

In searching Photoblogs and Galleries

jarolim.com was found but blogger revealed site http://johannes.jarolim.com/yapb runs on YAPB. Which we will be testing next. Ben prepared a slideshow in the header image that was most impressive. Benjacobsen http://www.benjacobsen.com/2008/06/ Ben’s home page is worth taking the time to review http://www.benjacobsen.com/. This site uses rotating images in header as well as a photo gallery. Fantastic presentation at his photo-a-day page. http://www.benjacobsen.com/pad/

Since we have an interest in this this style of blog, we will be experimenting with this technique. And other plugins on our hosted site “Discoveries.”

<<sidebar>>

In researching this topic we found some great blogs showing images in various ways.

Examine

Photoblogs and Galleries listing of Gallery Scripts:

We will be checking our and testing the Plugins below “that are reported to have been successfully integrated with WordPress.”

• ANIga gallery
• AWSOM Pixgallery Art/Webcomic plugin
• Build Your Own CSS-based Gallery
• Coppermine
• Duh Gallery
• Gallery 2 embedded in WordPress using the WPG2 Plugin
• fMoblog – Upload and display images from your cell phone.
• NextGEN Gallery
• Phpwebgallery through Photon
• Plogger
• Qdig
• eSPG: enhanced Simple PHP Gallery
• WordPress Include Page Plugin
• Zenphoto – +WP plugin
• w3images gallery – add an useful and costumizable Images Gallery to your WP

As you read this list, we would be interested in your comments as to other galleries that are compatable with WordPress Blogs, as this is a learning process as we try each one of those described above.

]]> http://samtex.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/examining-photoblogsgalleries/feed/ 1 samtex http://samtex.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/testing-flkrpictobrowser/ http://samtex.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/testing-flkrpictobrowser/#comments Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:31:00 +0000 samtex http://samtex.wordpress.com/?p=4 ]]> testing pictobrowser

at my test site is a WordPress site hosted by godaddy.com web site host that illustrates test of pictobrowser that was successul

I attempted to copy the same script  on this WordPress site and

after saving the page, the script disappears.

If you use Dreamweaver 8 and are learning how to use it to build web pages, let’s talk.