My thoughts on this plugin

  • inTOWN

    (@intown)


    10 years, 3 months ago

    Last night I bumped into your plugin while I was looking for a Nextgen alternative. Even though Nextgen was the only plugin I can think of that is capable to manage large amount of photos, albums and galleries I was not satisfied for several reasons:

    I could not find a way to have more controle over the content out put: I would like to be able to place an album, a gallery, a collection of galleries or photos in several places. For example: on my homepage I want the three latest uploaded galleries. But on my photo page I would like 3 albums (in my case the three albums represent years) including their galleries.
    I managed to do this all by making my own php files with $nggdb codes (and due to lack of documentation about that I was delivered to the forums), but the last thing I could not figure out was how to get the album titles only on the photo page. This is because once someone clicks through to a gallery, the page(-slug) is the same and thus the album titles I’ve put there now also show there while they are not supposed to.

    So after a week of full time struggling I decided that Nextgen is not a plugin for front-end developers like me. It’s for the website user and it’s not theming friendly.

    Then I bumped into your plugin and I was happily surprised. Your plugin looks clean in the backend, there are many options and I love the amount of documentation and your great forum support. You seem to be very passionated about your work and that shows!
    I wasn’t looking forward to re-upload and organise my thousands of photos once again, but I gave it a try. I just want to share with you my findings:

    Backend:
    There are a lot of setting that made me‘dizzy’, but in the end I was happy they were there. It shows you have thought of the many different options your plugin users might wanna have. The only thing I could suggest here is that you adjust the slide outs a little bit: that once someone clicks a ‘chapter’, the header background of the active slide lightens up and other chapters close. This only for a better overview.

    Lightbox
    I have seen other posts about it: also I would like to use another ‘lightbox’ service: I already had built in Fancybox (a more cleaner version of lightbox) and I am a strong believer in web site performance so I would like plugins to give me the option to choose wether or not to install extra jQuery, since I tend to put my jQuery in one file. The option to disable the lightbox and to put my own class is there, which is great, but in order to use Fancybox for a group of images (like a gallery) including image navigation within the popup, the image need to have a “rel=“. Unfortianataly that rel is removed once I deselect the Lightbox option.
    So I had no other choice then to adjust the core code, to add my own rel. But that’s not the best option obviously.

    Theming:
    Just like in Nextgen, maybe even more, this plugin seems to be mostly build for the plug and play user and theming options (database functions) lack a bit. Even though there is an option to put wppa-theme.php in my theme, it does not give me the possibility to change things around within the album or galleries.
    For example: I would like the cover title to be within the cover link, so I can make a nice hover effect (to have it only show once someone hovers a cover) and since I already use a grid system in my website, I would like to be able to add a class to the boxes. At the album page, I would like to create the same look and feel: have a grid system of galleries within an album and make it look nice and clean. CSS won’t cut it.
    Once again I bumped into the problem of not being able to add album titels to the photo page > those also show up on the gallery page. Big bump, because that was the main reason for me to find this plugin.

    I think I won’t be able to use this plugin for these reasons. I know they seem not so important, but I am building this website for a client and I need to be able to build a website that fit’s their needs.

    But I would like to compliment you on your fantastic work. I strongly believe that it is and will be THE alternative for Nextgen. Keep up the good work!

    http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-photo-album-plus/

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Author Jacob N. Breetvelt

    (@opajaap)

    10 years, 3 months ago

    You can use a different lightbox, you only have to change the lightbox keyname in Table IX-A6. And have the other lightbox active.
    You will not be able to scroll in the alternate lightbox the slideshow if you have set Table VI-B5 to lightbox, as this requires re-init of the lightbox on the fly, and most lightboxes do not have that feature api-available. It is there for ‘lightbox3’ ( If that plugin still exists due to license problems in the past. )

    Once again I bumped into the problem of not being able to add album titels to the photo page > those also show up on the gallery page. Big bump, because that was the main reason for me to find this plugin.

    Can you explain better? I always am willing to implement user requests, but i do not exactly understand what you mean. Photopage is that slideshow? and gallery page, do you mean the thumbnail display?

    Thread Starter inTOWN

    (@intown)

    10 years, 3 months ago

    Hi Jacob,

    Lightbox
    VI-B5 was set to the plain photo file. My fancybox worked but when set to photo file it would not show up navigation. When I hard coded a rel=”myrel” it did work. So in the future it would be great if I could add that rel.

    Templates
    Photopage is the template which holds my albums, it’s not the slideshow as I am not using it.
    It’s a page made under pages with the slug ‘fotos’, and it has assigned a php template called “Photos”.
    In that page I did :

    <?php /* Template Name: Page Photos */ ?>
<?php get_header(); ?>
// need a title here called 2014
<?php echo do_shortcode('[wppa type="album" album="3"][/wppa]') ; ?>// this is a parent album
//Underneath I would like all sub-albums
//need a title here called 2013
<?php echo do_shortcode('[wppa type="album" album="2"][/wppa]') ; ?>// this is a parent album
//Underneath I would like all sub-albums
//need a title here called 2012
<?php echo do_shortcode('[wppa type="album" album="1"][/wppa]' ) ; ?> // this is a parent album
//Underneath I would like all sub-albums

    I can call the titles, but once I click through to a gallery within the album, the title is still there, since also the galleries use the same template.

    With gallery page I mean: once I clicked a cover in my album, so for example with breadcrumb:
    Home > Fotos > 2014 (album) > Gallery 006

    Plugin Author Jacob N. Breetvelt

    (@opajaap)

    10 years, 3 months ago

    When I hard coded a rel=”myrel” it did work. So in the future it would be great if I could add that rel.

    Please do not destructify the code. If you have a question on how to, please ask.
    If you enter myrel in Table IX-A6 ( Lightbox keyname ) this is done automaticly for the links where you enterlightbox in table VI.

    once I click through to a gallery within the album, the title is still there

    You can link the thumbnails to a different wp page – on a different template if you like – by specifying a different page in Table VI-B2, i.e. one without the titles.

    btw, if you want the album names in the page template directly, you can use:

    <?php echo wppa_get_album_name( $album_number ); ?>
Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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