(18 votes, average: 4.17 out of 5)
Loading ...I love the Flickr Flash Badges, but the content of the iframe that you have to put on your page is not valid XHTML. That just won’t do. So I decided to take matters into my own hands…
While I was investigating the parameters that Flickr’s flash file takes, and figured out how to change the numbers of rows and columns, as well as the size of the images in the badge.
With a little PHP tinkering, a plug-in was born!
flickr-flash-badge-widget.1.2.zip
Features
- Simple widget interface
- Easily set up to use whatever Flickr account you wish
- Easily change the size of the thumbnails
- Easily define the number of rows and columns
- Easily limit your pictures by Flickr tags
- Choose between two transitions:
- Big Then Small
- Fade
Requirements
- A Flickr Account
- A WordPress Blog
- This is a “Sidebar Widget”, so you must have the Automattic Widget Plugin installed.
Installation
- Download the plugin here: flickr-flash-badge-widget.1.1.zip
- Unzip the plugin into your /wp-content/plugins directory.
- Activate the plugin in your WordPress admin.
- Enter your Flickr account details into the widget settings on the Sidebar Widgets page in your WordPress admin (see screenshot).
- Drag the widget onto the sidebar where you want it on the Sidebar Widgets page in your WordPress admin.
Screenshots
The plugin can be seen in action on the sidebar on the left side of this page.
How can I find my @N00 Flickr ID?
One easy way is to use Big Huge Lab’s Flickr DNA page. Simply enter your username into the box and hit ‘Apply’.
Why was this hard?
Flickr has a magic variable called “magisterLudi” (which seems to be a literary reference) that changes every 24 hours. When you use their default method with the iframe, the content of the iframe contains the current value of the magisterLudi. This prevents you from just pasting the <object> tag to run the flash file on their server and bypassing their iframe. (It will work, but not for more than 24 hours.)
To solve this problem, this plugin goes to fetch the contents of the iframe from Flickr, parses it to get the current magisterLudi value, and uses that to display the flash object directly on your page, thereby avoiding the iframe and bypassing their mechanism intended to force use of their iframe.
A caching mechanism is in place to reduce these server-side calls to Flickr. By default, it will only update the magisterLudi value from Flickr every two minutes. Therefore, for two minutes (after Flickr changes the value) every day the plugin will fail. You may change this value in flickr-badge-widget.php if you wish.
Questions and Comments
You may leave questions and comments on this blog, or email them directly to me at erikwordpressplugins -at- gmail.
Indeed an interesting plugin I would love to try it. Thanks for providing this plugin.
Cheers!
Great plugin it seems. But, I find some issues like I dont find any ways to administer it through the admin console. Seems some bug in it.
Lovegin, it is administered from the “Presentation > Widgets” page in the admin. You have to click on the little icon next to the widget once you’ve added it to your sidebar (just like all other widgets).
Hope that helps. I’m fond of gin too.
awesome
Excellent plugin! I’d really like to be able to use it so that it inside the main posting with text wrapping around it. Do you know if there is any way to achieve this?
Keep up the good work
Congrats on the wedding!
I was wondering if there is anyway to modify the widget so it will pull from random pics, not just the most recent.
No hurry on an answer, even if it’s a simple “no”. I know the whole post wedding rigmarole. It takes a while to get back in the swing!
Hello erick…
thank you so much for this badge…
Hi Erick,
I just came across your Flickr plugin and first wanted to say thanks for writing it and giving it away!
I have it installed but my photos are showing up at all in the sidebar widget. I see the title of the widget, but no photos. In Firefox, I am getting this error “FlickrBadge is not defined”, even though I have defined my FlickrID.
Any suggestions or ideas why I’m not able to get it working properly?
Thanks.
I’ve never seen that error, Rob. I just re-enabled it on my blog to make sure it still works, and it does.
“flickrBadge” (with lowercase f) is the id of the <object> tag that is output into the page. Make sure that tag is in your source.
Very nice plugin, but how can I call it directly from a page in WordPress. I have an Initial page in the web and I would like to call it from there instead of putting it on the sidebar.
Thanks in advance.
Pepe, at the moment that functionality is not provided. You’d have to hack that together yourself.
I have been looking for a solution like this that i can place on any page (not restricted to WordPress). Does anyone know if something like this exists? Help Please!
Thank you.
Yes, You Can
Hola! estupendo trabajo con el widget, acabo de probarlo con un blog que me han encargado y funciona estupendamente.
un saludete desde Asturias vecino!
Me alegro, Alvaro. Gracias!
Erik, this plug-in looks GREAT in concept, but after I activate it (I’m using WordPress 2.3.2) my plug-in page in the admin console only displays a blank page. Will this work in 2.3.2? If so, maybe there is a conflict with the theme I’m using (Glossy Blue: http://www.ndesign-studio.com/resources/wp-themes/glossyblue/).
Jeff, I’m using the latest 2.4-bleeding (see bottom right of this page) version of WordPress and the plugin works great (as it did when I was using 2.3.x. As I understand it, your theme should have nothing to do with the plugin page in the admin. Other plugins work fine?
Running WP2.3.1 and K2 Theme when I try to activate the plugin I get a fatal error:
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class snoopy in /home/user/public_html/test/wp-includes/class-snoopy.php on line 40
???
thx
R. Richard Hobbs
Richard, You must have some other plugin that’s using the “snoopy” code and they are conflicting. Try removing (or commenting) the line in flickr-badge-widget.php that contains the word “snoopy”.
Love it! Thanks so much got sharing it.
I just want to pick up PGs question:
I was wondering if there is anyway to modify the widget so it will pull from random pics, not just the most recent.
Shobba: Not that I know of. That’s just the default behavior of the flash badge from Flickr. The fact that it’s only the most recent pictures annoys me as well. If you find a way, please post it here, and I will try to incorporate it into the widget.
Only to say thanks for your work. The widget rule.
Hi,
It seems that this plugin does not work in combination with WP-dTree 3.3.1. A shame really, because i really like this plugin …
After some tweaking around it works perfectly, with WP-dtree, in widget options… Transition: big then small. That did the trick.
Btw > another flikr: http://www.lukeh.com/ seems to have figured out the random issue. You can select a random option in the way the images are shown.
From what I can tell, that “anotherFlickr” plugin is using a different Flickr API. My plugin is limited to the parameters Flickr allows for the flash badge.
Thanks for reporting back, Paul.
Nice, but I can’t get it to pull photos based on tags. I get photos not found message
Hi Erik, did you also develop the widget for WordPress.com? It’s great to have such a widget but was not able to get the images to load on my wordpress.com site (although the alt text is coming through). Turns out Flickr is using Atom feeds, not RSS. Any chance of getting the widget to support Atom, too? (Better yet, both)
Amy, I have not investigated what would need to happen to get my plugin accepted for wordpress.com blogs.
This plugin does not use Flickr feeds directly. All it does is load Flickr’s official flash badge, and then the flash application goes to fetch the photos. So there’s nothing to change from RSS to Atom.
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Looks like someone else developed that Flickr widget…sucks.
H Erik, are u still supporting this widget? It is a great widget, but recently after I upgraded to wordpress 2.5, it appears that there is a conflit with lightbox. It seems that there is something still loading at the bottom of the page each time the page is opened.
I use it, thanks for this wigdet!!
Hi Erik,
Thanks for your interesting plugin.
I have a just problem, sometimes, the widget do not show any pictures from my flickr account but only the mention “no such photos”, could you tell me what is the problem ?
Thanks,
Brieuc
This widget is very nice. I wish I could use something like this for my store items at http://www.icraft.ca/craft_boutique and post this widget on my blog. Is it possible?
So I recently started using your plugin but I must be doing something wrong. The link to my flickr is http://flickr.com/littleheart03 so I put littleheart03 in the box where it says to put the end of the url but my photos aren’t showing up. I’m confused. My site is currently down for maintenance but I can make it live if you’d like to see it.
Lovely plugin Erik.
A, I’m not sure why the Big Huge Labs link cannot find your Flickr account. The other way to find your @N00 id is to view the source on your Flickr page. I’ve done it for you, so I can tell you that your Flickr id that you need to put into the widget is “31580611@N08″. Hope this helps.
Excellent plug-in!
a) randomness is a problem acknowledged by the flickr team – but they admit it has such a low priority they have no idea if as and when it will be fixed.
Some randomness may be simulated by using the tag feature – use the flickr organizr to add a unique tag to ALL of your photos (yeah, I know!) and then add this tag to Erik’s widget set up.
Choosing a truly not-used-by-anyone-else tag is a bit challenging. And the badge still seems to prefer “newer” images. But it’s some sort of an improvement, I think.
b) Erik, a quick look at the code shows that, altho’ it’s tar/gzipped a la *nix, the files are in dos/windows format, with them there nasty ^M at the end of each line. Dunno if this’ll upset some *nix boxes?
As I said, great plug-in, a vast improvement on the stock flickr badge. Well done!
¿funciona en WP 2.5.1?
me da el siguiente error: “Failed to fetch badge info from Flickr.\n”
Does it work in WP 2.5.1?
I get the following error: “Failed to fetch badge info from Flickr.\n”
I’m not sure, Viquez. It might be a temporary problem on Flickr’s servers. Double-check that your Flickr ID is correct.
I’m trying out this widget and can’t seem to get any photos displayed.
I have the correct Flickr ID and everything but still shows a:
no such photo
ideas / suggestions?
Thanks!
btw – link to site in name.
Thanks for providing this plugin – after trying about 6 others from the wordpress directory, all of which had to many options and failed with the theme i’m using, I had joy with your plugin after finding it on a google search. It works perfect! Thanks!
Nice plugin. I’m using for my blog.
great plugin !! Thanks.
but there are some problem about tags. when i input a tag to [Tags: Box], only shows ‘no such photo’ sign.
would you please show me the way of solution?
@altoran, and you have photos tagged with ‘box’? You’ll have to provide your Flickr ID if you want me to try to replicate your problem.
Hi there,
I installed your Flickr widget and loved it. Unfortunately today, it is taking down my Featured Content Gallery so I had to unistall. Please let me know when the bug is worked out.
Thanks.
@Victoria, FCG seems to use mootools.js as their js library, so the conflict was probably between prototype.js and mootools.js. I have removed this plugin’s dependence on prototype in version 1.2, so I suspect that it might work now. Please let me know if it does.
I installed the widget, totally cool. How do I get the images to rotate to other images in my public folder? The widget seems only roll 4-6 images?
thanks in advance.
@val, that problem, unfortunately, is out of my hands. The image selection code is in the flash application that Flickr has written. As far as I know, there are no additional parameters I can pass it to make it do more than a handful of recent images. Sorry…
I used to like this so much better when it wasn’t flash. It was way more elegant.
Guess I should go back to version 1.0…
Sorry about my previous comment. Seems there’s something wrong with WP’s auto-update system.
I am using Ben Coleman’s plugin, not yours. But when I updtade, it overwrites his plugin with yours.
Sorry.