Flickrpress is a widget/shortcode function to display items from Flickr in the sidebar or within pages and posts. This widget supports:
- Flickr RSS feeds
- Photostream
- Filtering by tag
- One or more photosets
- Favorites
- Displaying random items
Other features:
- Choose from three different thumbnail types
- Lightbox/Thickbox are supported
- Data is cached locally to lower server load
- Secure Flickr API used, to eliminate the risk of damage to your server, unlike some other Flickr widgets
- Flickrpress is a multi-widget, so you can use more than one instance (e.g., one in your sidebar, one in your footer)
- Use as a shortcode to insert into posts and pages — multiple instances supported in the one entry
Flickrpress uses the excellent phpFlickr library.
Download
Download Flickrpress at the Wordpress site.
If you like Flickrpress, please consider buying one of my products.
Installation
- Unzip the package, and upload
flickrpressto the/wp-content/plugins/directory - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Add the ‘Flickr Widget’ to your sidebar and configure, or see the ‘Shortcodes’ section for information on use in pages and posts
If you wish to use content from anything but an RSS feed, you will need a Flickr API key. This can be obtained from Flickr
If you wish to use Lightbox, you must first install the Lightbox plugin.
Shortcode
Shortcodes are snippets of text that can be inserted into pages and posts. These snippets are replaced by various generated content. Flickrpress provides a ‘flickrpress’ shortcode to display images from Flickr within a page/post.
Available parameters:
| type | One of: ‘rss’, ‘photostream’, ’sets’, ‘favorites’ |
| url | URL for RSS feed |
| api_key | API Key for types other than RSS |
| account | Account name, email or ID |
| sets | Comma-separated list of photoset titles |
| tags | Comma-separated list of tags to filter by (for photostream view) |
| view | One of: ’squares’ (view as squares), ‘proportional’ (proportional thumbnails) , ‘large’ (large thumbnails) |
| count | Number of thumbnails to display |
| paging | ‘true’ to show page navigation, to move back and forward through pages of images (implemented using AJAX) |
| random | ‘true’ to display randomly |
| lightbox | ‘true’ to use Lightbox |
| columns | Number of columns of images to display |
Example:
[flickrpress type="photostream" api_key="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" account="michaeltyson" count="30" paging="true" lightbox="true"]
Styling
Flickrpress comes with CSS styling, but if you wish to modify its appearance, such as adding frame borders, simply style the
“flickrpress-container” class. See style.css for more.
Changelog
1.0.2
- Added Thickbox support
- Compatibility fix for PHP 4
1.0.1
- Bugfix in navigation javascript encountered when Lightbox isn’t installed
1.0
- Implemented AJAX-based navigation through pages of images
- Added shortcode documentation
- Caching for shortcode and php calls
- Removed ‘css’ option in favour of always including CSS
- Fixed conflict between shortcode and widget versions
- Fixed bug in loading all photostream items
0.3.2
- Fixed a warning when using shortcode
0.3.1
- Fixed a packaging snafu
0.3
- Support for use outside of sidebar
0.2.1
- Bugfix for displaying random favourites
0.2
- Now able to be styled as described in http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/css-decorative-gallery/. See style.css for more info.
0.1.1
- Bugfix for when only 1 random image shown
0.1
- Initial release
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116 Comments
Whoops, meant the < li > tags.
great plugin, I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time. I’ve run into two issues though.
1) I can’t get lightbox to work, I installed lightbox2 and I tried the lightview plus option as stated in this blog in the comment and neither are working. The images are just opening up as a single image instead. Any ideas? I won’t die if this is how it has to be, but I just really like lightbox effect. (ps, i’ve gotten lightbox to work on my flickr galleries within a post/page just not within the sidebar – same issue with other side bar flickr widgets i tried)
2) I want to use the large images option but I have some horizontal shots. Is there any way to take out the scroll bar that forces it self for horizontal shots and/or to restrict the longest side of the photo to a pixel lenght?
Thanks so much!!
Great plugin. Can you tell me the PHP code to use in template files? I know you said it was in the documentation but I don’t see it, sorry.
Hi,
I’m currently styling the widget to use in my blog sidebar.. please could you tell me how I can get the thumbs to be totally square (I want the border to be consistently spaced around the thumbs) there is added space at the bottom of the thumbs and I don’t know how to get change this in CSS..
Looking forward to your reply
Many thanks!
The one thing that the WP community has not come up with is a widget that can group all your profiles for people to follow. I tried this one called follow me and it works ok but I rather do the static image things for now.
good post
Great plugin. I love it! Just one remark\bug: when using it in a page (http://www.iz5gsv.it/fotografie/) it appears that when switching to the next page (using the navigation link at the bottom right) the following page is correctly generated, however: a) the navigation links are never regenerated b) the lightbox doesn’t work anymore and clicking on a thumbnail just the photo is displayed.
More, if I may dare a suggestion for improvement, I would love to have the possibility to open the flickr page by clicking on the image displayed inside the lightbox window (instead having the box closed).
Keep on the good work!
—Alex
Hi Alex,
You don’t appear to have lightbox installed, unless I’m missing something (I’ve added a link to it above under ‘Installation’). Thanks for the heads-up about the navigation links – I found and fixed the bug, which occurs when there’s no Lightbox installation.
That’s a good suggestion – I’ll work it in soon.
Hi Michael, thanks for sorting out my issue. Actually (I don’t know why!) I believed the lightbox was already installed.
I’ve now installed it and it works perfectly. I’ve also updated the plugin to version 1.0.1 and the navigation links are now OK.
Thanks again!
—Alex
I said that too quickly.
When used in a page it does have a strange behaviour: To reproduce the issue: a) open the page (http://www.iz5gsv.it/fotografie/) b) click on a thumbnail, it is opened via thickbox c) navigate to the next page and click on another thumbnail, the photo is opened via lightbox.
More, sometimes it happens that opening a photo, closing it and opening another one, the thickbox seems to go in a loop with an endless waiting…
Hope this would be helpful
—Alex
Hi!
Wow, that’s daring of you – Thickbox and Lightbox? I suspect that may come under the heading of ‘unsupported installation’ ;-)
Try removing Thickbox is all I could suggest – unless I’m missing something, I’m pretty sure they’re not really designed to be run side-by-side.
Flickrpress keeps Lightbox working across different pages of items by calling Lightbox’s setup routine on the new images – it won’t work with Thickbox, which has a different interface.
Maybe it is my fault in describing my issues.
I’ve not installed thickbox, I swear! I just suspected that something different from lightbox was running as the interface I see when clicking on a thumbnail in my sidebar or in the first block of thumbnails in my photo page is visually different from the one I got when opening a thumbnail in the second page of photos onward…
Maybe I’m unable to explain it clearly (unfortunately English is not my mothertongue…)
—Alex
Ah, I see! No, you describe perfectly well – on closer inspection, it looks like something is including Thickbox, but I can’t tell what! Emailing you for more debugging.
POST SCRIPTUM= looking at your travel blog (enjoy Sicily! if you would ever drive north up to Florence let me know!) I definitively realized that the plugin is not correctly working on my blog. It may be the template or any other strange defect…
—Alex
Thank you so much for the updated plugin. Was able to re-activate on my blogs and simply works like a champ now in both pages and sidebar, without conflict.
Wishing you many miles of safe travels in your adventures.
Cheers.
Hello Michael!
First, thank you very much for your simple yet incredibly useful plugin.
I’d like to request a feature, perhaps for a future version: add the option to include a link for the reader to see the rest of your photos on your flickr page, something like “See more of my pictures on flickr” to be shown after the thumbnails in the sidebar.
That would be sweet!
Regards from Brazil!
Hi Alexandre,
Cheers – Glad to help! I’ll work it in; in the mean-time, you may be able to achieve the same effect using a text widget (without a title).
Hi Michael, excellent plugin, thank you very much. I wanted to report a minor issue… When using thickbox and an image has an apostrophe in its title, the html/alt text break out. This happens in the actual thickbox, not in the rendered thumbnails.
Again, thank you very much.
Hi Patrick – great, I’m glad it’s useful to you! I’m not quite sure what you mean there – would you post a link to a page where I can see the problem?
Hi Michael,
I really like your plugin, but I seem to be doing something wrong. I can only get the RSS feed option to work. I have a flickr API key and I have tried all the different variations on my email address, flicker ID/username in the widget settings. Are there specific options that need to be set on the flickr API key side. In flickr I see options on the key for visibility and authentication flow, do I need to set these up? Sorry, if this is more of a flickr API key question.
Thanks, Thad
Hi Thad,
Hmm, are you definitely entering the key correctly? It should be the string beside “Key” (not “Secret”) on the http://flickr.com/services/api/keys page. There is no particular configuration needed on the Flickr side, it should just work!
Hi and thanks for the excellent work. We love the ease of use with your plugin. My wife thanks you immensely as well. We did have one question, is there a way to use the plugin to show pictures that are marked private on Flickr? We were thinking about changing most of our pics to “friends-only” on Flickr but would still like to show select ones on our WordPress-site w/o having to turn off privacy for them.
Hi Mike,
Great, I’m very pleased you like it! No, I’m afraid there’s not currently a way to show private images; I’ve added it to my to-do list, though, so I’ll work it in when I get time.
Cheers, Michael
I’ve been really liking the changes to make this work in both sidebars and pages, thanks for digging into this while on your adventure.
I have two questions, if I may…
1). How do I change the size of the image loaded on the screen when using lightbox = true
2). How do I make the thumbnail sizes different for the widget vs. page application. (Say I want 150 x 150 images on a page, but only want 90 x 90 images in the sidebar).
Thanks again for making the best flickr plugin out there.
Safe travels.
Hi Mitch – great, glad to help!
.flickrpress-container .flickr_item_view_squares imgelements. Something like:.your-sidebar-classname .flickrpress-container .flickr_item_view_squares img { width: 90px; }, I think. That won’t size up beyond 75px, the size of the squares thumbnail type. If there’s enough request, I could implement more control into the plugin itself.Cheers! Michael
What’s with my English today? I mean if there’s enough demand. Trying to learn French is pushing my native language out, I think.
Hi Michael
Tried all the permutations listed in these comments, but still can’t get my photo’s to show. Help please!
You’ll need to be more specific about the issue, Jane.
Hello,
I’m trying to get the shortcode to work inside my footer, everything works on regular pages including slimbox (lightbox like jquery plugin), however the shortcode does nothing in footer besides display the shortcode text.
Thanks
I loved the plugin at 1st.
But now I’m getting this error:
wordpress/wp-content/plugins/flickrpress/includes/interface.php:84 (flickrpress_load_items()): Couldn’t get account: Invalid auth token Flickr is currently unavailable.
Tried 2 different app keys now and also different accounts.
I’ve no idea why it just stopped working.
Does the plugin handle auth tokens expiring?
I read somewhere that they can expire in 1 hour if not renewed or handled to do so.
I’m really not sure what is happeing. I’ve tried uninstalling the plugin and re-installing to see if I mucked up the code.
This is my shortcode…
[flickrpress type="photostream" api_key="4c544351f1d3cecba3553b5210d8fdb8" account="lupusqueensland" view="squares" count="10"]
Hello,
the plugin has been funcitoning perfectly on our blog since October, then over the weekend (when we last tried using flickrpress) it has stopped working. It says that our API key is invalid, however, when checking our flickr account the key has not changed. I also tried an alternative one and the settings page tells us it is invalid. What could be the reason for this?
thanks
Andrew
Hi Andrew – how odd! I suggest having a look in your server’s error log for messages from flickrpress. If you can’t get to the error log, try opening up wp-content/plugins/flickrpress/includes/interface.php and change ‘error_log’ on line 22 to ‘echo’ temporarily, to write error messages to the page. That will hopefully give you an idea of what’s going on.