(22/4/2008)
Crossroads is a plugin that adds Flickr functionality to your WordPress blog entries. It utilizes the Flickr API to pull sets and images from Flickr. A quick summary of the features it provides are:
Features
- Ability to pull in Flickr images or Flickr sets into each blog posting
- Ability to show all images in clickable thumbnails below each blog entry
- Integration with Lightbox 2.0 javascript image engine, Highslide JS or Greybox
- Flickr photo comments shown for each blog entry (toggled via AJAX)
- A few transitions effects courtesy of the Scriptaculous Effects Library
Crossroads should work on any 2.1+ WordPress version.
Installation
To install Crossroads, simply unzip the folder into your WordPress plugins directory. From the dashboard, enable the plugin and then configure it from the options panel. You will need a valid Flickr account to configure Crossroads.
Basic Usage
Someday soon we’ll make this easier, but right now to add images or sets to a blog post you have to put in a special HTML comment. Here’s an example blog posting:
This is a sample blog posting.
<!-- flickrimage: 10240241 --><!-- flickrset: 102424 -->
The important thing to notice is the two HTML comments at the bottom. The first instructs Crossroads to show image 10240241 from Flickr, while the second instructs Crossroads to show all images from the set 102424 from Flickr. These numbers can be found in the URL on the Flickr web page while viewing either an image or a set. For example, when viewing one of my photos, the URL in the browser is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/duanestorey/377020411/
As you can see, the number at the end is 377020411. This is the number you would enclose in a flickrimage HTML comment. The rest of the features (thumbnails, javascript image previews, flickr photos comments, etc) all occur automatically. You can add as many images or sets to a blog posting as you like.
Next Version
The following are some features that we’re working on for the next version:
- Speed optimizations
- Local caching of images
- Flickr group tags
- Exposing your flickr contact list and recent photos
Testimonials
Joe Marconi, Editor at HIFI Live - I run an event/photo blog called HIFI where I write about our upcoming events around New York City as well as put photos from those events and photos from random photo shoots. WordPress, as amazing as it is, doesn’t have a great photo handler so in order to streamline my process I started using Flickr (my absolute favorite website for photography!).
That’s where the Crossroads plugin comes into use. It provides a seamless integration between Flickr and WordPress so I can keep my users at my blog and not forward them on to the Flickr page just to view the photos.
Jonathan Lumb, Traveller and Writer on InChina - After having tried many different ways of putting photos onto my blog - including self hosting and manually inserting Flickr photos into entries one by one, one day I stumbled upon the Crossroads plugin and it seemed to fulfill all my requirements and was a much cleaner solution. Setup was quick and now I am able to host all my photos at one location (Flickr) and dynamically insert full sets (or albums) of photos into my WordPress posts using only a single line of code. If you add on the fact that Crossroads makes use of some lovely Javascript effects for displaying your photos in posts, it must be said that Crossroads is one great little plugin that integrates smoothly with any WordPress installation.
Melissa Hathaway, Photographer, MelissaHathaway.com - As a photographer, I’m always looking for ways where I can reduce the number of steps that it takes to post my images to my Wordpress blog. I know there are plug-ins to bulk load images to the blog but I also love the look/feel of Lightbox within Wordpress blogs. While I’ve had a Flickr account for a number of years, I haven’t really been using it until I attended a photographer workshop recently and discovered that almost all of the photographers in the workshop post on Flickr. So, in my search of finding a better way to manage my photos with respect to sharing photos on my blog, I stumbled across BraveNewCode’s Crossroads Plug-In. I get the best of both worlds - I now in just a few simple steps, can post my images to Flickr to show off to potential clients, family, friends and fellow photog buddies AND with a swift copy/paste…voila! They’re in my blog in a nice Lightbox interface. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Revision History
2.2 - Updated branding
I get an error when tryin gto authorize Crossroads to use my Flickr account:
This is what Flickr says:
”
Oops! Flickr can’t find a valid callback URL.
An external application has requested your login credentials and permission to perform certain actions on your behalf, but has failed to include all the required data.
You don’t really need to know what this means, except that you can’t use the application until this problem is fixed. (It’s a third-party problem, not a Flickr problem.)
There are lots of applications using the Flickr API. If you are curious about this, visit the Flickr Services page to see more examples of cool stuff. Otherwise, you might like to head to your home page…”
and this is what Crossroads says:
”
Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /homepages/38/d222872064/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/crossroads/flickr.php on line 81
Warning: file_get_contents(http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?api_key=265684b19d4442cac7c96b5c872eb50b&method=flickr.auth.getFrob&format=php_serial&api_sig=2718751ac583684a5ba31218c5128267) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /homepages/38/d222872064/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/crossroads/flickr.php on line 81
Authorize Flickr Access
Click the above link to go to your flickr account and authorize Crossroads to access photos. Once you have completed the process on flickr.com, please click the button below to finalize the process”
Look for an update this weekend that will hopefully address that issue.
Ok, I’ll be waiting for that!
Thanks!
Same issue, :(
Oops! Flickr can’t find a valid callback URL.
I tried downloading the plugin again but I still get the same error…
I’ll keep trying!
Thanks for everything!
I got quite excited finding this plugin as ALL the other Flickr/Worpdress plugins are problematic or deficient in some way.
It’s sort of working for me on my local test wordpress setup so far, but the Lightbox implementation is deficient: the standard close button doesn’t show up and the equivalent pressing of ‘Esc’ to close a lightbox image doesn’t do anything.
By the way, you have released your SVN copy in the Zip! This is bad form — could you please in future release a cleaned up, exported version? Thank you.
Having the same problem. “Oops! Flickr can’t find a valid callback URL.”
Any idea what’s the problem or how it can be rectified?
thanks
Are you guys gonna try to fix it?
I just want to now if I should wait until it’s fixed or if I should start looking for another solution…
It works fine for me.
The set disposition is really cool. Nice job.
BTW, just some ideas:
For the pictures alone, I would prefer not cutting image edges. Also, I think it would be nice to be able to choose when should we leave the black border around the image.
Let’s see what’s next ;)
Hi, thanks for sharing this plugin.
One issue: if you publish a set of images, this plugin will publish ALL the images in that set, including private!
Am I Right or am i missing something?
Thanks
Giuseppe
It used to be so only public photos were shown, but lots of users complained and wanted to share their private ones as well (for whatever reason). We’ll probably have to rethink that when we do our next version.
Concerning the file_get_contents problem I found the following solution after reading a reply by 3n1gm4 at http://nl.php.net/file_get_contents:
Original:
$rsp = file_get_contents($url);
Replacement:
function curl_get_file_contents($URL)
{
$c = curl_init();
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_URL, $URL);
$contents = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);
if ($contents) return $contents;
else return FALSE;
}
$rsp = curl_get_file_contents($url);
Inside crossroads.php, instead of using:
$some_text = $some_text . ”;
showImagesFromContent($content, $photo_text, 0);
$some_text = $some_text . $photo_text . ”;
You should use:
if (preg_match(”/<!– flickr/i”, $content)) {
$some_text = $some_text . ”;
showImagesFromContent($content, $photo_text, 0);
$some_text = $some_text . $photo_text . ”;
}
Because else the div element “mainphotoarea” will show op on every page. Although empty, Internet Explorer will give this div a height which will mess up pages.
Concerning the alternative code posted above, it should say “<!– flickr” (with 2 dashes) on the first line, else it wont work.
hi
Thanks for the good work on crossroads flikr plugin. Very timely and thoughtful
Looks like a very nice plugin. However I get the following error:
***********************
checking exists: crossroads_media/35fc100e30389ae87696e0108de083c7
Warning: fopen(crossroads_media/35fc100e30389ae87696e0108de083c7) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/ravensta/public_html/camino/wp-content/plugins/crossroads/crossroads.php on line 81
unable to open output file
***********************
Any suggestions?
HiI am trying to use your crossroads plugin on WP7.0 but the following error:
checking exists: crossroads_media/a9686eda8f1e337f627efde5566c4a00
unable to open output file
Please advise. Thanks. Sorry if I’m being stoopid here!
Chris
Please ignore above post. Now fixed. The cache wasnt permissioned.Sori!