[WordPress plugin] Flickr foto info

By on March 8, 2010 in PHP, Wordpress

If you embed Flickr photos on your site you can always link them to the original page where visitors to your site can get all the details but that is not really a good user experience as it sends the visitor away from your blog. I don’t really like how Flickr almost hides away the link to EXIF and the location map. Also at least for Central India Google Maps has a better resolution than Yahoo Maps which Flickr uses. This plugin was written to itch these irritating factors.

So what does this plugin really do? Well with a bit of javascript magic it places a small toolbar over images in your post which are from Flickr when you hover your mouse over them. Guess a bullet point list of features is called for here.

  • Uses the inbuilt jQuery and Thickbox scripts.
  • Most calls to the Flickr API are done on the client side – so there is minimal additional load or delay on the server.
  • If your photo has geo-location data embedded, shows it as a marker on Google map with reverse geo-location to fetch the place name
  • Shows most interesting EXIF data first with option to show the complete raw data
  • Shows information like title, description, number of views and comments, tags on the photo, sets and pools the photo belongs to and links to various sizes if there is permission

All this information is shown in a Thickbox thus your visitor need not navigate away from your site.

Installation

  1. Upload the folder ‘flickr-foto-info’ into your to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ folder
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  3. To configure plugin options go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Flickr foto info’ navigation link.
  4. You will have to enter and your flickr API key for this plugin to work. Flickr API key. You will also have to enter your Google Maps API key
  5. Visit a post which has a Photo from Flickr embedded – hover the mouse of the photo to see the toolbar.

Demo: Click here

Download: Click here

Feedback, suggestions, patches, bug reports most welcome.

About Tarique Sani

Dr. Tarique Sani is a pediatrician and forensic expert by education. He is a PHP programmer of 'wrote the book' caliber and has to his credit several very popular open source as well as commercial PHP projects. He leads a team of dynamic programmers at SANIsoft who have in-depth understanding of Web development tools and usability practices with strong developmental skills in PHP, MySQL/PostgreSQL, HTML, DHTML, Javascript, and Linux/Apache
View all posts by Tarique Sani →

36 Responses to [WordPress plugin] Flickr foto info

  1. John Rappold March 13, 2010 at 6:03 pm #

    This is a great plugin and I really like how it works within a post. One suggestion I would like to give is to maybe write a conditional that does not display the map marker icon if the photo has no geo information.

    Also, on the photos I checked, the basic EXIF data was not displayed, although all of the additonal info was there when I click the link to see more.

    Last, if I have the original web page is zoomed using CTRL+, the thickbox window does not wrap the EXIF data correctly, however, the map does resize correctly.

    Thanks again for this plugin.

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani March 13, 2010 at 6:26 pm #

      Thanks for the feedback. Checking the Geo Data before hand will mean another API call just to see if it is there – this is something I do not wish to do. If you can show me an example of a picture which is not displaying basic EXIF correctly I will take a look into it and hopefully fix it in the next release

      Reply
  2. John Rappold March 14, 2010 at 3:15 am #

    Thanks for the quick replu.

    Here’s a post with a pic from an Olympus cam:

    http://johnrappold.org/photoblog/?p=761

    And another one from a Nikon

    http://johnrappold.org/photoblog/?p=758

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani March 15, 2010 at 12:53 pm #

      John, Please try with http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/flickr-foto-info.zip – if it works I will make a release. Thanks

      Reply
      • John Rappold March 20, 2010 at 7:30 pm #

        Sorry for taking so long to get back to you n this. I installed the new versiom, and now no EXIF datqa is displayed. The other screens work fine. You can check by going to the same posts I mentioned above.

        Thanks,
        john

        Reply
        • Tarique Sani March 20, 2010 at 7:48 pm #

          Hi John, Please try downloading again… and let me go how it goes. Thanks

  3. John Rappold March 21, 2010 at 7:04 pm #

    It is working now. Great! Thank you.

    Reply
    • George December 1, 2010 at 10:33 pm #

      hi, can anyone assist me please with this plugin?

      i am trying to make it work, i inserted both apis, for flickr and google, it shows me the map but not the exif?

      any ideas?
      http://www.abphotoworks.com/wp/?p=404

      thank you

      Reply
  4. Rutger Blom May 16, 2010 at 1:43 pm #

    Nice plugin. I was just wondering if the photo needs to be embedded from Flickr. The photos on my photoblog are hosted somewhere else, but a Flickr photo ID is included with every post. Is there some way I could make your plugin work in this scenario?

    Thank you.

    Reply
  5. Jens May 22, 2010 at 9:09 pm #

    Hi!

    I like the plugin! Very nice!
    The only problem on my website is, that the information isnt showing up in a thickbox, but just on a seperate website..

    Any idea what could be the problem?

    Thanks,

    Jens

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani May 24, 2010 at 9:37 am #

      Is there a URL which I can look at? Most likely Thickbox script is not loading

      Reply
  6. Dave C June 21, 2010 at 2:31 am #

    Cool plugin, however it looks as if it doesn’t work for the Small photos, only medium and larger for me. Check http://www.tiredofit.ca for information and examples, try a recent post.

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani June 21, 2010 at 10:11 am #

      Yes it works only of medium size and large size – it is a design decision!

      Reply
  7. Dave C June 30, 2010 at 9:12 pm #

    Would there be any way that I could make this work with ‘s’ ? I post most my images with that size.

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani June 30, 2010 at 10:22 pm #

      Yes, you can. Open the file flickr_toolbar.js and remove ‘_s|’ from the regular expression in line 3

      Reply
  8. Dave C June 30, 2010 at 10:53 pm #

    re = new RegExp(”, ‘i’);

    Is my new string, however it still doesn’t appear. Weird!

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani July 1, 2010 at 9:50 am #

      Not weird at all :-) you removed the entire regex which detects flickr photos just remove the ‘_s|’ part

      Reply
  9. M C August 12, 2010 at 2:29 am #

    Hi, this is exactly what I’m looking for, but it doesn’t work for me…
    I included the Flickr API key, as well as the Google Maps key… and nothing changes.

    Does it go through old posts and add the comments in? Or does it only apply to new posts?

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • M C August 12, 2010 at 2:40 am #

      Actually it works, but it doesn’t work for small pictures (I just read one of the previous posts… and this was a design decision?) Is it possible to make it work for small images too??

      Reply
  10. Deepesh Divakaran August 18, 2010 at 11:19 pm #

    Hi,
    I can not get the plugin to show the Exif Data – gives me this message – Additionally Flickr said: Permission denied
    What am I doing wrong? Do I need to set something up on Flickr other than getting the API?

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani August 19, 2010 at 10:11 am #

      Deepesh – most likely you have set up flickr such that it does not show EXIF data to viewers. Try changing that on Flickr

      Reply
  11. smyll September 3, 2011 at 3:55 pm #

    Hi !

    A cool plugin that works !!! Unfortunately it seems to be ok for only individual photos from flickr. Is it possible to show exif from photos from a flickr album (inserting an album rather than an individual photo) ?

    Exemple: the first photos are not associated to the exif but the last one yes. http://blog.smyll.net/?p=612

    Note I use “Flickr Manager” to access to my flickr photos.

    Do you have any idea? Should I modify the flickr manager plugin?

    Thx !

    Smyll

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani September 4, 2011 at 9:04 am #

      As long as the correct sized flickr photos are in the post this plugin should work….

      Reply
  12. Matia September 14, 2011 at 5:26 pm #

    Hi, when I click for exif data, maps or information, the window appears with a number “x” to close and work only first.
    example: http://www.matiasalsi.com/blog/?p=22
    How I can fix it?

    Reply
  13. John September 30, 2011 at 11:54 pm #

    Hi there–this plugin is exactly what I’m looking for, but on my site (http://www.focalfiend.com), when I click on one of the plugin icons, Thickbox comes up but none of the data is shown; it’s just a blank dark page overlay. Any suggestions on how to fix it? Thanks!

    Reply
  14. John October 1, 2011 at 1:47 am #

    As a follow-up to my last reply; I have another plugin called “Image Formatr” which, when deactivated, allows your plugin to show the data correctly, however, it does not appear in a Thickbox pop-up, it appears on a separate page altogether.

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani October 2, 2011 at 7:55 am #

      I think you have turned off this plug-in so I cannot test it on your site.

      Reply
  15. Sami November 16, 2011 at 4:24 am #

    Hi,

    First of all, thanks for a great plugin!
    I’ve used this FFI on my blog for a while now and until today was it working perfectly.

    Today I noticed that the map, exif info and other information had started to open in a new tab instead of Thickbox. Do you have any idea what might be causing this?

    WP’s dashboard also showed the error message “Fatal error: Call to undefined function get_admin_url() in /home/explodin/public_html/scumbucket/wp-content/plugins/flickr-foto-info/flickr-foto-info.php on line 124″

    I tried installing the zip package you’ve included in one of your replies above. It got rid of the error message, but the thickbox still isn’t working. I also tried installing the 1.3 version from WordPress website on my other blog which wasn’t using Flickr Foto Info before. I also got the same error message in that blog. Both blogs are using WP 2.9.1.

    Thanks!

    Sami

    Reply
    • Tarique Sani November 16, 2011 at 9:02 am #

      Hi Sami,
      I investigated a bit on your blog and noticed that the thickbox.js loads at the bottom of the page rather than in the section. This means that the links of the toolbar are not able to bind to the thickbox functions. This could happen because of some recently installed plugins

      Also the minimum required version of WordPress for this plugin is now 3.0

      Thanks of using this plugin

      Tarique

      Reply
      • Sami November 16, 2011 at 4:44 pm #

        Hi!

        I uploaded WP to the latest version and that did the trick! Thanks so much for your help. It’s an awesome plugin and I’m glad it’s working again. :)

        Sami

        Reply

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