Nice, but …

  • GMRobbins

    (@gmrobbins)


    2 months, 3 weeks ago

    I was excited to see your plugin in the new section here and downloaded it. to check it out.

    It was an easy install with good instructions with easy-to-understand shortcodes. It took a while to get the yellow and red banners away, but I learned more about the shortcode with each try. If I may offer an opinion on some of the features, I liked the image quality and speed. I ran through most of the shortcodes; I was hoping gallery mode meant a grid of images with pagination. In carousel mode, I feel it would be best, if clicking on one of the 3 panel images, it took you to that particular image’s full, non-cropped image.

    I am not sure if any of these suggestions could be accomplished by shortcode, but I thought I would give you some feedback. Appreciate your work!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Jan Zeman

    (@janzeman)

    2 months, 3 weeks ago

    Hi @gmrobbins,

    thank you very much for trying the plugin and for taking the time to leave such detailed feedback.

    Yours is actually the very first review I’ve received for this plugin (or any plugin) – I’m not a professional WordPress developer, just building this as a small hobby project for a community site I help run. Your comments were super helpful, so I spent a full day going through them one by one.

    Based on your notes I have:

    • Completely reworked the Settings page to make the onboarding clearer and more example‑driven.
    • Introduced “What this plugin does (and what it does not)” section
    • Added a new mode called carousel-to-single. In this mode the carousel behaves as you suggested: you see multiple photos in a row, and clicking one opens that specific photo in a single fullscreen image viewer.

    You’re absolutely right that many people expect a “gallery mode” to mean a grid of thumbnails with pagination. This plugin deliberately focuses on rendering one album per shortcode (single viewer or carousel variants) and leaves the overall page layout to the theme or block editor. The very top of the Settings page now explains this explicitly.

    For grids + pagination across many albums, I’m using exactly that pattern on our community site: https://vkodani.cz/foto/

    That page is built with the core Query Loop / grid layout, and each grid item simply contains one [jzsa-album] shortcode. I now mention this approach on the Settings page as the recommended way to build grids and archives.

    A true built‑in “grid mode” might make it on the planned features list, but for now the intended setup is: Use your theme / editor for the grid and layout, and let the shortcode handle the album viewer itself.

    I hope the new version (1.0.3) feels better aligned with what you had in mind.

    Have a great day,
    Jan

    Plugin Author Jan Zeman

    (@janzeman)

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    Hi @gmrobbins,

    I added a new mode=”grid” option which gives the grid of images with pagination as you originally expected.
    There is also mode=”carousel-to-single” now which opens only one of the images in full-screen.

    Feel free to check those in the new 1.0.7 version.

    Kind regards, Jan

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

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