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Using PhotoQ for a photo blog

Posted by & filed under Blog.

PhotoQ is nice to use as a /album to use for your digital camera, either as a public or a restricted one if you plan to post all your private pics.

Download the latest version, it is at the time of writing a beta  but I have had no issues yet.

Install other as needed.

Config

Play around with some config settings before you upload all your pictures, changes in configs result in reprocessing all your pictures.

I added a full-size custom size so I keep my original pictures.

I configured the theme to use the extract image ( a  200×200 max image) pointing to a lightbox link with a larger version 800×800 max).

The title (caption) links to the main article which displays a 1000×1000 max ) picture with a standard link to the full-size image (maybe lightbox can be configured to re-size to be able to fit on the screen)

I need to make the picture used for the list of pictures in the admin panel (for quick editing/tagging etc)

I added a category Highlights so you can have a showcase of your nicest pics. With a few modifications you can make those highlights the pictures that show up when people visist your site.

I used a modified tanzaku theme, after the mods (a new article) it displays pictures on the front page  with (a lightbox plugin installed) a popup window to a larger version.

Mass editing:

as pictures are added to the collection you can add tags and catagories, you can also do that later , either on individual pictures or on slected pictures when you are working through the admin panel

I am using it as an archive so I store all my images there, I don’t throw a lot of images away. If needed I hide them from view by making them private.

If the collection is spanning more that a few years a plugin that allows for archives that have years and the n months is also nice

Some Warnings:

PhotoQ cannot rotate images for you,and although images are added to the Media Libary, it does not use those images, so rotatation in the Media Library won’t help you.

So make sure that you rotate beforehand (if not allreadye done so when you upload the pictures from your camera). Also be aware that some graphic programs rotate the images when you view them but only on screen, they do not tell you if the image is properly rotated.

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Protecting your blog, a few notes

Posted by & filed under Plugins.

When you are using as a site with data that you don’t want everybody to see you might want to avoid public access to the site. to the rescue:

Askapache protect: I could not configure it so not tested.

Password Protect Plugin for WordPress : “This plugin will force all visitors to login before accessing your WordPress site. It also adds a message on the login screen explaining that login is required” (David Marcucci) So users already need to be registered.

Absolute Privacy has a lot of options, certainly worth to check out. According to the author: “Absolute Privacy turns your WordPress into a fully private site where you control who has access. It’s perfect for family blogs, private communities, and personal websites. You can lockdown the entire site or create a members only area, moderate new registrations, force users to enter first/last name and choose their password during sign up, and more!” His Site If I test it I will review it too.

Password Protect WordPress Visit plugin site There is a free and a premium version.  The free version allows you to have  one password. The premium version allows for more and allows for custom logos and screens. The free version does the trick for me.

If I wanted to I could replace the delivered logo with my own, and probably hack the code to get the premium options.

Absolute Privacy
applications-system

A WordPress setup for photographs

Posted by & filed under Plugins.

My collection of from my digital camera’s is getting quite big. I have tried flickr Gallery and a few other things but they just did not do100% of  what I wanted.

I think I can do this with by doing the following:

  1. The right theme: Tanzaku maybe.
  2. a plugin to add photographs:
  3. Read a directory
  4. Check if the pictures are already in the database.
  5. add them to the media collection in a structure based on Year/month/day reading the Exif data.
  6. create custom posts with information from the Exif data
  7. So I need a custom post with extra fields.

The custom posts should have fields for filenames, show/not show, geolocation, maybe combined with a google map.

Code to add a post automatically:

global $user_ID;
$new_post = array(
    'post_title' => 'My New Post',
    'post_content' => 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...',
    'post_status' => 'publish',
    'post_date' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
    'post_author' => $user_ID,
    'post_type' => 'post',
    'post_category' => array(0)
);
$post_id = wp_insert_post($new_post);