I have brought photos back to the site, but in a new way.
I really liked Pictorialis, after I hacked it up of course, but there was still the issue of integration. Pic was a seperate installation of WP which just added to the complexity of my database structure, and produced some unwanted effects when I say, upgraded by blog installation and all the photoblog tables were modified as well, which would make the PB break.
So when I redesigned the site I decided to go another way with my photography. I have toyed with flickr and I love it, but I am a little put off by the concept of relying on a third party to host and preserve my photos. And you know, I now PAY for web server space and bandwidth so I thought I should be using it.
I have recently given in and moved to the Theme System that ships with 1.3.x/1.5.x so I sat down and looked for a way to make it do my bidding. The result is Visual Experiments. I am pretty happy with it so far, just need to work out some more styling issues. I snagged the spiffy code from Couloir and bent it to my will, combining it with the excellent pages function in WordPress 1.3.x/1.5.x and voila! Photosets.
The beauty here is that my “photoblog” utilizes the existing structure and database. I am able to fold in comments and ratings via my rating plugin (and yes I know I am behind on releasing it… so sue me. It is still forth-coming and trust me, when you get it it will be worth the wait… I hope) as well as picking up the benefits of a smaller, less complicated database structure.
The way I have implemented it is pretty elegant I think, and the effects are nice. Let me know what you think of it, pros and cons, so I can continue to refine it.
Stroll on over and visit skippy
March 1, 2007
Nice work, Chris. The fade-in is a little too slow for my tastes; but I suspect that’s a tweakable issue on a per-installation basis. It would be nice to have a tally of the number of photos in each set on the main page.
Might also be nice to have the photoset title be a link, instead of being wedged in between two links to the same destination. Same for the teaser image, perhaps.
Stroll on over and visit Chris J. Davis
March 1, 2007
Hey Skippy,
Yup, that is the case exactly.
I had thought of that initially, but gone without it. I had also considered having the number of comments listed there as well. Must go back and reconsider that.
I am a big believer in titles as links being wrong, and counter-intuitive, but I do agree with the teaser image, again another feature that was originally there but removed…
Stroll on over and visit skippy
March 1, 2007
What’s the justification against title-as-link? I know you have the unique (database) ID of each post (and comment) as the permalink for those items, but that’s not exactly an intuitive indicator for all users. Plus, I imagine there may be some portability issues if you ever migrate to a different blog package (heaven forbid!).
And when are you going to plugin-ify this so that I can use it, too?
Stroll on over and visit Chris J. Davis
March 1, 2007
As soon as I work through a couple of limitations that currently exist. I hope to have something workable to release in the next week or two.
Stroll on over and visit Rob Mientjes
March 1, 2007
Chris, amazing use of the pages! I never thought of that! Refine it, and it beats many a flat-file system.
Stroll on over and visit seriocomic
March 1, 2007
oooh yummy…I can imagine how many hours you have hacked this since I am doing the same to Pictoriallis. I hope that I get this level of polish on my efforts, otherwise I am just going to to steal/borrow/buy yours :)
Stroll on over and visit seriocomic
March 1, 2007
exceeeept….
- Obviously with JS turned off, the whole thing falls over,
- I can’t directly access any individual image without going through them all,
- There doesn’t appear to be any name/description for individual images.
Sorry for double commenting.
Stroll on over and visit Chris J. Davis
March 1, 2007
Rob,
Somehow I doubt that highly! Given time this would have been a no-brainer for a great many of you out there. I just needed to solve this problem before you.
seriocomic,
From frequenting your site, I think I can safely say that when you are ready you won’t have a problem matching any level of polish I might slap on something I do here.
Yeah there is no way around that due to the fade transition and the dynamic resizing. I am looking into writing a script that detects active js, and if doesn’t find it gives you a version that can still be accessed.
Yeah see, this is a strange one since depending on your browser and platform you can access individual pictures. Still looking into this one, as I said before I pulled the “slideshow” code from someone else so i am still pushing and pulling to get it the way I want it.
There actually is code in place for that, I just didn’t want it so I removed it. If this were to be made into a plugin and released that would of course be an included feature.
No problem, until users can edit their own comments in WP you have to double comment.
Stroll on over and visit mark
March 1, 2007
Like it! ditto for the slow fading as mentioned above. …and I liked one of the frozen tree pics and tried to fast forward to it - the image in question did a sort of fade loop! Stopping the page blanked it, but re-loading equally cured it.
lovely implementation and georgeous pictures [of the frozen stuff ;)]
Stroll on over and visit craig
March 1, 2007
Drooling in anticipation…
Stroll on over and visit Estan
March 1, 2007
Hi Chris. Really liked your Visual Experiments. Just great. I’ve been looking for a gallery implementation for wordpress but am still scouting.
Itching for that plug-in release :-)
Stroll on over and visit seriocomic
March 1, 2007
Any movement on releasing this? Or have you succumbed to the dark(flikr) side…
Stroll on over and visit Chris J. Davis
March 1, 2007
seriocomic,
Yes and No. I think for some uses flickr is the way to go, but I also think that there is a place for this plugin.
So thanks for the bump, I will get this out the door this week so people can start to bang on it and find any wholes.