[Wordpress Plugin] Live Flickr comment importer

A comment is what a blogger wants! Show me a blogger who denies this and I will show you a liar This plugin allows importing of comments made on a Flickr photo into a Wordpress post of your choice. There is another plugin that I found which allows such imports but it has a few drawbacks which I did not like

It relies on the Recent Activity RSS feed from flickr
The title of the post on your wordpress blog should match that of your flickr photo
It worked only when you did stuff on the admin side, technically speaking it is hooked to the admin_head
Old comments could not be imported

The Live Flickr Comment Importer Plugin on the other hand

Uses the Flickr API via the excellent phpFlickr class
Can automatically detect Flickr photos embedded in the post.
Can also use a custom field in the post to import comments thus your Photos and posts need not have the same title
Comments on multiple photos can be imported in a single post
Also imports the flickr user icons / avatars
The comments are imported whenever anyone sees a post where comments are to be imported
Allows import of even the old comments
Can cache the results of flickr API

Installation

Upload the folder ‘live-flickr-comment-importer’ into your to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ folder
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
To configure plugin options start by clicking on ‘Configuration Page’ link near plugin name or ‘Settings’ -> ‘Live Flickr Comment Importer’ navigation link.
You will have to enter and your flickr API key for this plugin to work. Flickr API key can be got from http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/create/apply/
For caching of Flickr API results and thus in turn a better performance ensure that your plugin directory must be writable by webserver.
Follow the instructions given on the configuration page on how to import comments into a post

Known Issues

Sometimes the ordering of comments imported is not the same as that on the flickr photograph. I have no idea why this happens but this appears to be an inconsistency from flickr – correct me if I am wrong

Probably coming in next version

~~Automatic scanning of post contents for flickr picture URL~~ Done in V1.3
Replying to a flickr comment on post – will post the reply to flickr as well

Patches, bug reports and feedback most welcome

Download Here

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You’re currently reading “ [Wordpress Plugin] Live Flickr comment importer ,” an entry on SANIsoft – PHP for E Biz

Published:: 12.15.09 / 2:52pm

Category:: PHP, Wordpress

Author:: Tarique Sani

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Jon Zenor 1.2.10 / 5:03pm

I am excited to try out this plugin, but am running into a problem. When trying to activate version 1.1 I get this message:

“Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.”

Any ideas?

Tarique Sani 1.2.10 / 6:21pm

Thanks for trying out – can you please let me know which version of Wordpress are you using and which version of PHP is there on your server?

Daniel Chetroni 1.3.10 / 11:25pm

Great job !

Richard Dutton 1.5.10 / 9:06pm

EXACTLY what I wanted, many thanks! I’ve been struggling with the other flickr comment script you mention and was really not at all happy with it.

laihiu 1.11.10 / 9:03pm

can’t wait to try this out!

“Replying to a flickr comment on post – will post the reply to flickr as well” – that would be SO awesome

just one question: would it work with WordPress 2.6.5?

Tarique Sani 1.12.10 / 8:55am

It may not work in Wordpress 2.6.5 – Reply to comment will be there in the next release

Andy Bexx 1.12.10 / 3:32am

Hi, I also get the same error as Jon? – “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.”

Tarique Sani 1.12.10 / 8:56am

@Andy I will ask you the same question as I asked Jon which version of WordPress and Which version of PHP are you using?

TwoLittleWitches 1.17.10 / 12:34pm

I had the same error… deactivated all my plugins first and tried again… it worked. Then reactivated the other plugins.

But the link to get a Flickr API key is dead. ;o(

Tarique Sani 1.17.10 / 2:28pm

Thanks for trying out the plugin and thanks for giving the idea of deactivation and reactivation – Indeed the link to get a Flickr key is now dead – However a new key can still be obtained from http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/create/apply/

Andrew Mein 1.18.10 / 2:27am

Great Plugin, can’t wait for the new features planned, especially replying to a flickr comment on post

Anish 2.12.10 / 11:09am

When I enter the API key. I get this error

Fatal error: Class ‘phpFlickr’ not found in /home/anishk/public_html/wp-content/plugins/live-flickr-comment-importer/live-flickr-comment-importer.php on line 125

Please help!!!

Tarique Sani 2.12.10 / 11:20am

Thanks – the bug has been fixed in V1.3 which should be available for download in a while. I you can’t wait just change the word phpFlickr to t_phpFlickr on line 125 and it should work

Anish 2.12.10 / 5:18pm

Thanks a lot for your quick reply.. Tarique…
Its working now.. A great plugin indeed..

I’ve added you in flickr )

decepive 2.15.10 / 10:31pm

I can get this to work well recognising a photo in a post but nothing seems to happen using custom field flickr_photo_id, the value I use for flickr_photo_id is the number at the end of the url for the photo, I’m assuming I should be able to import comments no matter what the content in the wordpress post just by adding the custom field. Is there something else I have to do?

Tarique Sani 2.15.10 / 11:32pm

Yes flickr_photo_id is the number at the end of the url eg: In url http://www.flickr.com/photos/tariquesani/4350223643/ the flickr_photo_id is 4350223643 and yes you should be able to import the comments no matter what the content is… Looks like you have found a bug. I will look into it tomorrow and fix it. Thanks

Jon 2.16.10 / 12:46am

Hi Tarique, I think I might be running into the same issue as decepive. I’ve configured the plugin successfully and added my flickr_photo_id to a couple posts, but yet, no comments are coming through. I thought it might only work for new comments made on my photos, but regardless of comment age, nothing is coming through. Any ideas?

Jon 2.16.10 / 12:56am

Additional information:
PHP – 5.0
Wordpress – 2.9.1

deceptive 2.16.10 / 3:56am

OK thanks, I managed to download ver 1.2 and can confirm it works, but only on my test blog. On my photoblog where I’d like to use it I’m using phootQ for the photoblog posts and I can not get any version to work (1.0,1.1,1.2 or 1.3) so I guess there is some incompatibility with photoQ

Tarique Sani 2.16.10 / 7:12am

@Jon @deceptive – there will be a new version later in the day today which should solve the flickr_photo_id issue. I don’t know about compatibility with photoq though. More on that once this bug is fixed.

Tarique Sani 2.16.10 / 10:48am

Hey Jon, deceptive try out the development version from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/live-flickr-comment-importer.zip – Have just committed a fix to the bug.

Also deceptive for photoQ uncomment the lines 29 and 30 in live-flickr-comment-importer.php and see what errors you get.

Jon 2.16.10 / 5:54pm

Hi Tarique, unfortunately it doesn’t look like anything has changed for me. I removed the original version, uploaded the new files, reconfigured the plugin, but yet, none of my Flickr comments are showing up.

Tarique Sani 2.16.10 / 7:49pm

Hey! it is working!! See http://jonathanfean.com/blog/2010/02/day-261-valentines-day-url/

Jon 2.16.10 / 7:32pm

I’m not sure if my comment made it through, but I have uploaded the new files and nothing seemed to change.

Thanks.

Jon 2.16.10 / 7:41pm

Question: Aside from activating the plugin, adding my API, adding the custom field to my post, is there anything else that I need to do? I was doing some additional reading and it mentioned that I need to add some code to my page.php file. Is that something I need to do?

Thanks!

Tarique Sani 2.16.10 / 7:44pm

@Jon as mentioned in the comment above uncomment the lines 29 and 30 and see if it is gives any error.

Also is it working with embedded photos?

You don’t need to add any code to page.php – where did you read that?

Jon 2.16.10 / 7:55pm

Wow, that is strange, I guess it just started working? Hmm, I didn’t do anything else, so I’m not sure how it started working. This is great! Question, if you look at the comments, there seems to be a thumbnail of the image right next to the comment. Any idea where that is coming from?

As for adding to the page.php file, I saw something about it here, http://www.boosten.org/using-custom-fields-in-wordpress-posts/.

Thanks again and let me know what you think about the little thumbnail showing up.

Jon 2.16.10 / 8:02pm

Alright, sorry to take over all of the comments, but one last question. Does it take a while for the comments to show up in my posts? I have added ids to all of my posts and some show up, some don’t.

decepive 2.16.10 / 8:03pm

Thanks for your speedy response, I can confirm the latest version now works. The problem I was having with photoQ was that I wasn’t using the_content() but a mixture of photoQ’s custom fields to build the post, I solved this by adding:

$content = apply_filters(‘the_content’, $content);
$content = str_replace(‘]]>’, ‘]]>’, $content);
get_the_content();

Which fixed the problem without replicating the content.

You can see it in action here.

Cheers, great plug-in.

Tarique Sani 2.16.10 / 8:05pm

The thumbnail is a feature – you can style it to hide it – very useful for posts where you have multiple photos embedded eg: http://tariquesani.net/blog/2010/02/12/rann-of-kutch-day-7-last-day-and-the-last-word/

Jon 2.16.10 / 8:23pm

Ok, last comment. First off, this is an absolutely awesome plugin, thank you so much for all your hard work. It looks like things are working for me, I was just impatient.

You mentioned I could turn off the thumbnail image, where do I go to do that?

Thanks again!

Jon 2.16.10 / 9:08pm

I figured it out. Thanks again for all your help. This is awesome!

Live Flickr Comment Importer and Twitter | Deceptive Media | A photoblog - with mainly abstract photos by Andy Bell from the UK 2.16.10 / 9:47pm

[...] My flickr comments are slowly being merged in to my photoblog posts using Tarique’s excellent Live Flickr Comment Importer plugin for wordpress. You can see results on this post, I have to add a custom field in each post for this [...]

ProphecyBlur 2.18.10 / 2:37pm

I’m not sure quite when this stopped working, but i recently upgraded to 1.3 of the plugin as well as 2.9.2 of WP

Up untill then this has been running like a charm, any sugestions on what i might need to check?

ProphecyBlur 2.18.10 / 3:17pm

Looking at the thread, do i maybe need to try your Development Version?

Tarique Sani 2.18.10 / 3:22pm

Hello PropheyBlur – yes please try the Development version…

ProphecyBlur 2.18.10 / 4:32pm

Worked like a charm, many thanks this pluggin is fantastic

Greg McMullin 2.18.10 / 8:06pm

Hi.

Its me again, the guy who let you know about the bug in 1.2! I have the development version installed now as 1.3 didn’t seem to work for me.

Anyway its pulling in all the posts fine but the flickr user icons dont appear to be imported. Which is a shame.

Is there anything I can do?

Cheers

Greg

Tarique Sani 2.18.10 / 11:00pm

Looks like your theme does not support comment avatars and hence they do not appear.

Greg McMullin 2.19.10 / 1:34am

I have them switched off right now because of the problem. If I enable them I just get the standard blank one. I can switch them back on if you wish.

Greg McMullin 2.19.10 / 1:36am

They are now switched on and as you can see there is just the standard avatar displayed.

Tarique Sani 2.19.10 / 8:40am

The code for replacing the Avatar is in the function get_flickr_avatar and relies on the comment having an email address of nobody@flickr.com – did you change any of that?

Greg McMullin 2.19.10 / 5:13pm

Not changed a thing. All I have done is changed my css to not display the thumbnail of the image in the comment.

Bizarrely the avatars show up on the management pages fine. Just not on the comments.

Greg McMullin 2.19.10 / 5:15pm

Actually scratch that. The avatars only show up in the “recent comments” int eh dashboard area. They do not appear anywhere else. This is weird.

Tarique Sani 2.19.10 / 6:33pm

Well you have changed atleast one more thing – removed the Flickr: prefix But if they do show up in the Dashboard then I would suggest try changing the theme to default and see if they show up. The problem may not be in the plugin but some plugin overwriting the Avatar again…. perhaps another get_avatar hook is active

Greg McMullin 2.21.10 / 10:04pm

It must be the theme i am using. The default theme shows the avatars just fine.

I guess I am SOL.

Thanks for your help.

Tarique Sani 2.22.10 / 8:50pm

Is it a free theme? If yes – give me the download link and i will atleast be able to tell you what is wrong

Greg McMullin 2.24.10 / 1:53am

Its the autofocus theme:

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/autofocus

To be honest its not so much of a problem. I quite like how it looks with the avatars turned off.

However…

The posts from flickr are timestaped about 11hrs too early. Is there any way to fix this?

Tarique Sani 2.24.10 / 6:59am

The timestamp issue is a bug from Flickr side, if you notice at times it is also not in the right order… Sorry nothing can be done about it.

Greg McMullin 2.25.10 / 6:16am

Yeah I figured that was the case. Shame nothing can be done. Thanks for all the help!

Samuel 3.5.10 / 3:51pm

Hey, great work!
The development version of 1.3 works for me (with the flickr_photo_id). I am looking very much forward for the sync feature from wordpress to flickr.

Beth Madison 3.6.10 / 11:45am

I’ve been having some troubles with this great-sounding plug-in. I followed the instructions in getting the API key, but when I cut and pasted it into the required field in the settings for the Live Flickr Comments plug-in, I get a message saying “This is not a valid Flickr API key.” I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Help, please!

Tarique Sani 3.6.10 / 8:53pm

@Beth try the development version of the plugin which is mentioned in the comments and let me know how it goes

Beth Madison 3.7.10 / 1:47am

@Tarique,

I actually did that: I downloaded the development version, but… and I feel really dumb here… I downloaded the zip to a temp file and it got extracted, but I thought it would automatically install itself. When it didn’t, I tried re-starting because I thought the program might fine the new version. Do I have to manually install/copy the file to a certain directory or to wordpress itself? Can you advise me? Thanks… I’m sorry if this is really obvious.

Beth Madison 3.10.10 / 8:23pm

@Tarique

I got the development version installed, and entered the API code. When I hit the “update API” button, the API disappears. I tried not hitting the update button and leaving the API text, but nothing seems to happen. *sob!*

Tarique Sani 3.11.10 / 8:16am

Hi Beth, Flickr recently changed a method which verified API key may be that is causing the problem – try this version http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/live-flickr-comment-importer.1.4.zip

SANIsoft

[Wordpress Plugin] Live Flickr comment importer

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