Shashin 2.6: Snowpocalypse Edition
Shashin 2.6 is now available for download at wordpress.org. I figure the end of the world is a good time to release a new version. Here’s what’s new:
- Added support for unlisted Picasa albums (finally!). You must have the PHP curl extension installed to use this feature. I believe most PHP installations include curl, but some hosting providers may need you to ask them to enable it for your account.
- Added ability to group albums by Picasa user accounts when using the [salbumthumbs] tag.
- Bug fix: the EXIF support introduced in Shashin 2.4 caused an error when syncing albums in the Windows version of mySQL. Many thanks to MC for letting me debug this on his Windows server.
- Bug fix: Shashin’s automatic album syncing was interfering with scheduled jobs from other plugins in some circumstances. This is fixed. Note that you also need WordPress 2.9.1 or higher, as this was related to a wp-cron bug in WordPress 2.9.
Also, I’ve installed the Subscribe to Comments plugin, so if you have a support question, you can get an email notification when I reply, instead of having to remember to check back.
UPDATE: I’ve made a couple bug fixes: v2.6.1 fixed another bug related to Windows servers, and v2.6.2 fixed a bug related to Google servers outside the US (see this comment for details).
127 Comments
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Hey Mike!
I’m happy about the new Shashin! Listen, could this explain why I couldn’t get it to work last night and today?? I’m new to Shashin, and it seems to continue to display the syntax only.
Z
Mike~
I was an idiot, and did not give you a URL. It’s http://saintnicholasroc.org/media/photos/. I’m actually new to WP but I have been working hard over the last month to really make this website readable, classic, and overall symetry. As I said in my previous post on version 2.5, I’ve used about five different photo galleries, but Shashin is the best. Let me know what you think about the syntax.
Z
M~
Also, when the albums finally decide to appear, on the right side of the thumbnails, the black outline looks broken. http://saintnicholasroc.org/media/photos/. What do you think? After I master Shashin, I’m thinking about making a youtube video for others to use.
Z
Hi Zacchaeus – in regard to how fast the photos load, all Shashin does is generate image tags for the thumbnails – how quickly they load depends on a variety of factors, such as the internet route between your browser and the Picasa servers.
In regard to the thumbnail borders, there’s a conflict between the shashin stylesheet and your theme’s stylesheet. One solution is to open shashin/display/shashin.css in your plugin folder, and look for this:
.shashin_image img { padding: 5px; border: none; }and change it to this:
.shashin_image img { padding: 5px !important; border: none !important; }I recommend then saving your edited version to your active theme’s folder, and Shashin will automatically find it there. That way you won’t lose your changes when there are Shashin upgrades in the future.
Mike, wow! Thanks for a great update! Now the unlisted videos keep synchronized. I’m sure to make a donation once I get a Paypal account arranged.
I guess now you can only use one Picasa account (or only one with unlisted albums)? It’s not an issue for me, but I was using two accounts before.
Would you happen to know of a video player plugin, that can be configured to work with Shashin, that would play the video in-place instead of popping up a lightbox/thickbox/fancybox/etc.?
Great job, Mike! Thanks again!
Hi Janne – sorry, I didn’t even think about unlisted albums from more than one account. I’ll have to think about the best way to do that.
Picasa is making it more difficult to embed videos (since they made the URLs for them automatically expire). If you use the embed code they make available, it only embeds a thumbnails, which then links to Picasa to play the video.
If you find an inline video player you like, let me know, and I’ll see how hard it would be to add support for it.
Hi Mike, i have syncronized a web album (tools>shashin) and i can see my photos.
I’m tring to make widgets works with this results: “Shashin Error: unable to retrieve random photos”. I saw that
Can you help me? Maybe your plugin doesn’t work with wpmu?
I’m working with wpmu 2.9.1
Tanks
Hi pollo – I have not tested with wpmu, but I’ve heard there are problems using Shashin with it. This is on my to-do list for the next version.
Hi Mike,
i think it’s just a query problem caused by few differences between wp and wpmu.
The Db scheme is a litle bit more complicated, each blog has a suffix n_ and i think You need to rewrite the photos query with relative path.
I’ll try to figure out what is wrong in particular, but i’m not so good with queries.
I hope that this can help you for next version.
Thanks for the reply and sorry for my horrible english.
I am sure other users have asked this same question, but I couldn’t find their posts in the comments so I’ll ask again. When I try to add my first album to Sashin, I get the error
ShashinAlbum::setAlbum – Failed to parse album feed.
This happened with a previous version of Sashin and again when I tried the newest release.
My Picasa feed is http://picasaweb.google.com/naht1sam
Thanks!
Hey Michael,
When trying to add an album I’m also getting this error:
ShashinAlbum::setUserAlbums – Failed to parse album feed.
Any leads?
Jason
Hi Jason and Michelle – can you let me know if you’re on a Windows server or Unix? It turns out there is still a problem with Windows, which I’m working on.
Hey Mike,
I’m running it in a lamp environment with php5. Latest WP. I tried uninstalling all other plugins just to make sure and still have the problem. The host is site5.com.
Is there anything else I could look at to try to get you some more info to work with?
Hi Jason – the setUserAlbums method is called when you try to add all the albums for a Picasa user. Could you try adding a single album instead? (put in the url for an album in the Add Albums form). This will help me get a sense of the scope of the problem you’re having.
You may see that I just uploaded a revised version of Shashin to wordpress.org. That’s a bug fix for Shashin in Windows servers – I don’t think it will help your situation.
Hey Mike,
No dice. I tried adding this album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jason.lemieux/Llamas
Mike,
I’m new to using WordPress and recently started a family website. I found and am currently using Shashin (it’s working really well for me). For now, I’m using Lightbox2 instead of Highslide, but I would like to change for the video support. The problem that I have is with Highslide all of my picture captions are in white on the white border background (underneath the image). I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to figure out where to correct this, but I do not see anything on the settings page. Can you help me?
Thanks, Justin
Heya…getting the same Problems adding new Albums….neither adding all albums nor adding only 1 Album works.
I downloaded WordPress + shashin today, just starting al this blogging-stuff….would be nice if there was a solution before this nice girl wants to see the pics…(just kidding ^^)
Hi Jason, Rusty – I’m going to email both of you to work on this further, if you’re up for some minor code edits. Not everyone is having this problem, so it’s likely something about your environment we need to track down.
Anyone else with the same problem: watch this space – I’ll post a follow-up comment once I determine what the problem is.
Hi Justin – if you can temporarily switch to using Highslide, then I can try to find the problem. It is probably a CSS conflict between Shashin and your theme. Let me know when you’ve switched, and I’ll take a look.
Mike,
I switched it to Highslide, and I actually got it to work by adding “color: black;” below (highslide.css)…
}
.highslide-caption {
display: none;
font-size: 1em;
color: black;
padding: 0px;
/*background: white;*/
}
The thing that I don’t care for (and it’s nit-picky, I know) is that the white border around the pictures is uneven. The bottom is too thick. When I switch back to Lightbox, it corrects itself. Overall, I like the look and feel of Lightbox more but I would like to have video support as well.
Thanks, Justin
Hi Justin – I was going to suggest keeping Lightbox for the pictures and using Videobox for the videos, but apparently the two conflict with each other if you put them on the same page.
Have you tried some of the different “outline types” for Highslide (they’re on the Shashin settings page) ? Maybe there’s another style you might like better.
Hello Mike – Thanks for all you do. I am in the same boat as Jason, Michelle, and Rusty with two different sites. Anything I can do to help troubleshoot just let me know.
Heya all
Mike managed to solve my Problem. As I am from germany, my google Server is not google.com. Therefore the new username/password feature for unlisted Albums didn’t work for me.
So removing username and password for google solved the problem for me and allows to add at least my public viewable albums…(which is enough for me atm 🙂 )
Thanks Mike
That helped Mike/Rusty. In my case I believe (have not really tested) Firefox is pre-populating my WordPress userid and password into the Shasin Settings Picasa emial/passowrd fields. Whenever I save settings I need to remember to delete those out. In IE I am not saving passwords so I don’t see it. In any event, problem solved for me.
Hi, when I go to the tools page to add an album, the page is blank…any ideas?
Mike S, Rusty, Jason, Michelle, and anyone else who was having trouble adding or syncing albums: I just uploaded a bug fix – v2.6.2 to wordpress.org that should fix the problem.
If you put in your Picasa username and password on the Shashin settings page, it was trying to authenticate against the google.com server, which means it failed for anyone using a foreign Picasa server (google.de, etc). This is fixed now.
Note you only need to put in your username and password if you have unlisted albums. Otherwise you can leave those fields blank.
I upgraded to v2.6.2 but still got the same error, this time with the additional message…
Warning: fsockopen(): php_hostconnect: connect failed in /home/t/h/thebaylors.org/html/michelle/wp-includes/class-snoopy.php on line 1142
Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to picasaweb.google.com:80 in /home/t/h/thebaylors.org/html/michelle/wp-includes/class-snoopy.php on line 1142
I am in the US, and I removed my Picasa username and password from the Settings page.
Hey Mike,
I’ve installed the latest and it seems to work. Inititally I did have a problem, though:
I first tried syncing without entering any google creds. Interestingly it synced a few and then got hung up on an empty private album. I deleted that album and the sync still didn’t work. On the 3rd try it did, though… and seems fine. Strange. Thanks, though!
Mike,
I installed shashin last night on one picasa account and got it to work fine. I wanted to change the account and did so under settings, and when I go to upload albums it says that albums have been added, but the albums from the picasa account are not showing up. When I try to type in the album address I get the message “ShashinAlbum::setAlbum – Failed to insert/update database record for album. SQL Error:”
I’m new to picasa. I changed the album to public and it does show up, but I cannot get it when it is unlisted and I have the correct username/password under the settings page.
What am I missing? And thank you for having this available!
Hi Mike – thanks for the bug update. I can now see the tools page. However when I go to add an album, I keep getting errors like “ShashinAlbum::setAlbum – Failed to parse album feed.” I have checked over and over about the album/user urls and tried variations. Anyway, I look forward to getting to use Shashin!
Nikki
Hi Michelle – please see the Known Issues section of the Shashin page (fsockopen is at the end of the list).
Hi,
Great plugin.
I have a couple of questions.
If the following code is inserted into a page, no albums are shown, just the raw code is displayed: [salbumthumbs=5|3|4,max,n,n,left,]
However, if I specify the # of columns, 4 in this case, the album list shows correctly:
[salbumthumbs=5|3|4,4,n,n,left,]
Is this the intended behaviour?
Also, when you click on an album, is it possible to have more than 3 photos shown across the width as I can’t seem to be able to do this. If I have 4 albums displayed, they fit across the page in 1 row, but when the individual album is opened, the photos are only 3 per row.
Thanks for your help.
John
Forgot to mention, am using WP 2.9.2 & Shashin 2.6.2 with the Atahualpa theme 3.4.5.
I am getting the same bug as John.
The ‘max’ is the problem. [salbumthumbs=35,1,n,n,center,] works fine but [salbumthumbs=35,max,n,n,center,] does not. And to make it worse ‘max’ is the default in the ‘add from picasa’ button within the ‘edit post’ page.
Sashin: 2.6.1 and 2.6.2
WP: 2.9.2
Theme: Arclite 1.4.2
Also, let me add the one suggestion I have, the one thing that bugs me the most about Sashin. Why do I have to re-type my picasa username into the “Add Albums” part of the control panel? Why can’t that be remembered? Even better, there should be a ‘refresh’ button in the ‘add from picasa’ popup (the one that is accessible from the edit post page). And the refresh should know picasa usernames that have already been typed.
This is a great plug-in, exactly what I was looking for. I have a question. Is there a way to click on an album link and have it immediately go into a slideshow of the photos? Currently, it seems to first list all photos from the album, and when I click on one of the photos it will then begin the slideshow. Again, great plug-in.
Mike,
I still get the “This video is currently not available” screen occasionally (unlisted albums of videos, 10 hour sync setting on). I’ve checked the videos daily, it seems that maybe once in five days it goes out of sync and I’ll manually re-sync it. My site doesn’t have a lot of visitors, it’s even possible that no-one visits the site during one sync interval.
As a side note, I had issues previously with the scheduled publication of articles. It seems that a lot of users had the same issue and this was fixed somewhere around WP 2.9. I got the impression that the failing scheduling was based on cron.
Hello,
Forgive my novice question, I’m still new to blogging.
I love your plug in, it looks like everything I’ve been looking for.
I’m having trouble understanding how to post an album with only one thumbnail on the page. I want to display one photo on the post, and when they click on it, for the slideshow to be displayed with Highside.
I’m sure it’s a basic, I just can’t seem to find the information I need.
Thanks again for the great plug-in
Shauna
Hi there – great plugin! I’ve been looking for something like this for AGES – it does the job perfectly. Just thought I’d let you know I had the same problem as John and Jeff re: the [salbumthumbs] tag.
@Jeff – thanks for the tip re removing “max” – it works!
Sorry for the late replies everyone…
John, Jeff, Raj: the “max” keyword does not yet work with salbumthumbs. My documentation was wrong – sorry about that. I’ve corrected the documentation
Jeff: Shashin is designed to support albums from multiple Picasa accounts. You just give it the URL for an album and it adds it to Shashin. Also, the editor browser does have an “update” button, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
Tom, Shauna: Shashin can’t do this yet, as previous versions of Highslide didn’t support it. But the latest version of Highslide can do this, so I need to update Shashin to also support it. I’m not sure when I will be done with it, but you can see the Highslide example here: http://www.highslide.com/examples/gallery-thumbstrip-above.html
Janne: yes, WordPress 2.9 had a bug with wp-cron that was fixed in 2.9.1. If you don’t have many visitors, that would explain why the sync’ing doesn’t happen sometimes. WordPress’ cron is not a true cron tool, as it depends on someone visiting the site to trigger it. If more than 11 hours go by without a visitor, and then you visit it, the page with the video links will be generated before the sync’ing is completed, and the links will be for the expired URLs.
Hi there, Mike.
I suddenly realised that I have a problem with the highslide controls not showing in my album. If you go to my albums, none of them has highslide controls.
It’s the same if I add several images in a blogpost using sthumbs, shouldn’t I get a control to go through the images then?
You can check my albums here: http://snuppa.krissi.net/?page_id=1594
Hi Krissi – I just took a look and the Highslide controls appear and are working fine for me. At the moment I’m using Firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu. What browser are you using? If it’s one I have, I’ll test it (I can test on Windows and Mac also).
OK, that’s weird… I’m using Chrome. And when I go to your albums, the controls (previous and next controls) are working fine for me. So do the prev-next controls if I go to the random pictures widget in my site.
But not in my own albums, or if I add several thumbs in a blogpost…
I have also tried with IE, and it’s just the same.
I’m running Windows 7 (64-bit).
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the quick reply. In regards to the thumbnail update thats pending, I can see what I could do with the photos in the meantime. On your Photo Album page, your albums are all listed separately, but they come up as a Highside slideshow when clicked. I would like to do this also on mine. Could you please advise how you created the albums so that they only display the top photo.
Thanks again
Shauna
Hi Shauna – ah ok, I misunderstood your question. What you’re looking for is the salbumthumbs tag:
http://www.toppa.com/shashin-wordpress-plugin/#shashin7
You have to type this tag by hand – the photo browser in the editor won’t do this one for you.
Hi Krissi – I’ve confirmed your error using IE 8. The Highslide navigation controls appear for me in your random photos in your sidebar, but not when viewing your album photos (everything is fine when I use Firefox though). I’m not seeing this problem on other sites. Could you try temporarily disabling your other plugins and see if that makes a difference? If that fixes it, then try turning your plugins back on one by one, so we can see which one is interfering.
If turning off your plugins doesn’t help, also try temporarily switching to the standard wordpress theme and see if that helps.
Hi again. Mike (or any power users) – would you know / be able to suggest the correct cron job or code to add etc. to automatically run the “add_album” command?
I’m someone who regularly adds new albums and uploads to them remotely, so I’m trying to make the process of “adding new albums” an automated and scheduled one.
Don’t know a lot about scripting, but I figure being able to do the equivalent of submitting the form data “shashin_action=add_album&link_url=”http://picasaweb.google.com/myusername&include_in_random=Y” information to Shashin.php via a cron job (or creating a php file which will do this and running this via cron every day) would be the same as manually using the form to do it? Or maybe there’s another way?
Problem is I haven’t been able to figure out how (the code or correct cron parameters) to do it. Any advice would be great :).
Ideally, if there’s a way of doing this without modifying the Shashin.php code it would be good, otherwise every time I update it will break. But if that’s the only way, that’s fine too.
I’m trying to get it to run the command once a day.
Thanks in advance!
Hi Raj – I haven’t tested this, but you should be able to achieve this with a simple code change. If you go to line 307 in Shashin.php, you’ll see this:
Change it to this:
Then if you turn on automatic syncing on the Settings page, it should sync existing albums and add any new albums. Let me know how it goes. I can add an option for this in the next version.
Thanks Mike, it works!! This is brilliant, as now the “newest pics” widget I’ve added to my sidebar will be automatically updated with new uploads even if they are in new albums, making Shashin truly set and forget.
Having this as an option in the next version would be a great addition.
P.S. Don’t know if there’s a way to add a button to do a manual “Sync all + add new albums” for the selected username – that could be a nice complimentary feature to the automatic option (if wanting to sync before the 10 hour cycle)?
Mike,
Thanks for your suggestion to deactivate my plugins. I found the culprit: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/miniposts/
It’s a bit strange, because I didn’t think it would have such effect.
The Highslide controls all works fine now.
Krissi
Hi Michael,
I’m going to fix the compatibility problem with wpmu in current version (2.6.2).
This plugin must work in wpmu too.
If I have success I will send you updated version.
Thanks for good plugin.
And one more q. what do you think about add functionality that make possible to upload photos to picasa from the site directly.
Hi Mike,
Really diggin your plug in the more I use it.
I’m having troubles with one thing. When I create a new album, the thumbnails are centered on the border. When I click on the picture and it takes me to the album thumbnails, and the borders are all off-center. How do I fix this?
Thanks again,
Shauna
Hi hodzzz – that would be fantastic. wpmu compatibility is on my to-do list but I haven’t gotten to it yet. There’s been a real surge of wpmu interest with shashin in just the past few weeks for some reason.
Hi Shauna- this is due to your theme’s stylesheet, which is adding a margin to the images. Open shashin.css (in the shashin “display” folder) and look for this:
.shashin_thumb img { border:medium none; padding:3px; }add this as a new line under the “padding” line:
That should probably take care of it.
Hi Mike,
Ive changed all three. Thumbs, Images and album thumbnails and none of it seems to work. Is there a way to restore to the original settings? My changes don’t seem to have changed anything at all, but I dont want it to affect things later.
I also tried the advise you gave to Zaccheus on the above post. Not sure where to go next. Every other thumbnail is centered, just not the expanded album.
Thanks,
Shauna
Hi Mike,
I’m having trouble getting the tags to work on one blog (WP2.9.2, Shashin 2.6.2): http://www.besoblog.com/top-searches/
So, I tested it on another blog (same config as far as WP and Shashin versions go, but DIFFERENT host), where it seems to be working: http://www.powercooking.net/interesting-links/
I read through the comments here and tried disabling all plugins and reverting to the default WP theme. Still didn’t work.
Is there something that’s required for the tags to work? I haven’t been able to get other plugins using tags to work either. I’m using GoDaddy’s WP hosting package. Anything else I can check? Thanks in advance!
Hi Mike,
When I create a new album in a post, it displays all my previous albums as well. So if I post Album A and B, when I post album C, it displays A,Band C. It also keeps them on the previous post, so my whole page is full of duplicate albums. Is there a way to create an album that stands alone on the post?
Thanks
Hi Shauna – please take a look at the salbumthumbs documentation – it sounds like you have it set to show all albums:
http://www.toppa.com/shashin-wordpress-plugin/#shashin7
You can just remove the line I had you add, to get shashin.css back to the way it was. I also forgot to mention that if you customize it, you can save a copy to your active theme folder and Shashin will find it there. That way you won’t lose customizations when you upgrade. Your theme also has a CSS border-collapse setting for images that may be affecting things. I’m on vacation right now and I’m only online for a few minutes. If you’re still stuck next week I can take another look.
Hi Tony – sorry I don’t know. That sounds weird. GoDaddy isn’t running some ancient version of PHP, so that wouldn’t be it. But the fact that it’s affecting other plugins indicates it’s something going on with the WordPress and/or PHP environment.
Mike,
I have some updates about wpmu compatibility.
I corrected only one line and it start working. 🙂
Patch for file Shashin.php (v. 2.6.2)
line 53:
(-)
define(‘SHASHIN_ADMIN_URL’, $_SERVER[‘PHP_SELF’] . “?page=” . basename(SHASHIN_DIR) . ‘/’ . SHASHIN_FILE);
(+)
define(‘SHASHIN_ADMIN_URL’, “?page=” . basename(SHASHIN_DIR) . ‘/’ . SHASHIN_FILE);
Please note, it works only if you activate this plugin for each blog manualy. I mean that the function “↑ Activate Shashin Site Wide” doesnt work.
Mike, thanks. I’ll dig in to the WP and PHP environments to see what’s different.
Hi Mike,
Is there a way to make the album URL more SEO friendly? For example instead of appending say “?shashin_album_key=6” to the URL maybe the name of the name of the album is used instead?
Thank you for your plugin its outstanding.
Thanks
Gooch
hi Mike,
I’m kind of at a standstill on the above mentioned issues. If you could give me a few minutes of you time, I’d sure appreciate it. I’m sure you can get me on track in no time. Can you let me know when you have some time and I’ll have all my questions lined up?
thanks a lot,
Shauna
Hi Shauna – another way to try it is to edit the stylesheet for your theme. It has this in it:
.art-article img, img.art-article {
border:1px solid #DBD3A3;
margin:1em;
}
If you remove the “margin:1em;” line, that will fix it. I tested this with Firebug, and it fixed the display of your images.
Hi gooch – unfortunately, no. Picasa let’s you use the same album name more than once, so the name is not a reliable identifier.
hodzz – thanks very much for taking the time to track that down! I will include your change in the next version.
I’m having issues with the syncing. I get this error when I try to sync with my Picasa album
Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_init() in D:Inetpubwwwrootnoorganizationscamptigerwp-contentpluginsshashinToppaWPFunctions.php on line 554
What should I do?
Hi there Mike,
Just wondering if you could help me out re: automatic sync – for some reason my albums aren’t updating even though I’ve got “sync every 10 hours” enabled.
I’ve checked and ‘shashin_scheduled_update_hook’ is in WP’s cron list (set to run every 10 hours), so that’s not the problem.
None of my albums are private (but I’ve entered my username and password in the settings screen, just in case) and my username is showing correctly in the drop-down list.
Thanks again,
Raj
Konnichiwa,
I’m using Shashin 2.6.2 and I’m still having problems with unlisted albums. I’m using the German Google interface, so I have set http://picasaweb.google.de as my Picasa server. I was not sure which format for the username was wanted, so I used the format username@googlemail.com as the top bar on the Picasa website shows it. I also tried username@gmail.com and just username without a domain suffix. According to the phpinfo output, curl is installed on my webserver. However I can’t add unlisted albums, I always get the error “ShashinAlbum::setUserAlbums – Failed to parse album feed.” from Shashin. And as long as I have entered my Google username and password in the Shashin settings, I can’t even add public albums.
Can you help me? 🙂
Hi Mike-
I’m a little frustrated.
This is what I said earlier:
“Also, let me add the one suggestion I have, the one thing that bugs me the most about Sashin. Why do I have to re-type my picasa username into the “Add Albums” part of the control panel? Why can’t that be remembered? Even better, there should be a ‘refresh’ button in the ‘add from picasa’ popup (the one that is accessible from the edit post page). And the refresh should know picasa usernames that have already been typed.”
I’ve been dabbling with this plugin for a few months on my personal site. I’m at 2.6.2 now. I’ve always had the sync every 10 hours enabled, it has never worked.
Since auto-update & sync never works, I need to refresh manually. Let me try to rephrase what I wrote above.
When I’m editing a post, there’s a little round picasa-type icon, that when I hover over it, the tooltip reads ‘Add from Picasa’. It is linked to /wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=XXX&type=shashin&tab=shashin_photos&TB_iframe=true
It launches a little popup, which is really awesome and has everything. I just noticed there’s an ‘update’ button on the top, between the ‘Desc’ checkbox and the prev/next. When I click it, it makes a little timer appear and looks like it will be refreshing, but it never pulls in anything new.
So, since every 10 hours doesn’t work, and this update button doesn’t work, I always have to go to the tools->Sashin page, (/wp-admin/tools.php?page=shashin/Shashin.php), and scroll down to ‘Add Albums’. To add insult to injury, there’s not an option here to remember where I’ve added from before (like there is from sync), so I have to type it in again. If I’ve added to an existing album, I have to click the ‘sync’ button while I’m here, and wait even more. This always works, but the ‘add from picasa’ update button in the
Does this make sense?
—
I’d love to just forgo the update button altogether and sync every 10 hours. I’d also like to make the line 307 change suggested above to auto-add, but I don’t think it will work. I’ll try it now though.
Hello, a few days ago I made a comment here, which still seems to be in the moderation queue limbo. Your spam filter most likely caught it because I wrote a URL and email adress in the comment. Anyway, the problem I described is still not resolved and I am at my wits end as to what I could do to resolve it. Any help is greatly appreciated. 🙂
Hi Mike – just an update. Seems it was the change to line 307 that was the problem: http://www.toppa.com/2010/shashin-2-6-snowpocalypse-edition/#comment-27434 That’s what broke the scheduled sync, as when I removed the change sync started working again.
Any thoughts on a different change to get sync working with “add new albums” for the automatic 10-hour sync?
Cheers
A follow-up on my original post, I just tried what I never tried before, I set the Picasa Server to the English server instead of the German server (back to the default setting), and I was able to import my albums. So there seems to be an issue with international Picasa servers (or at least the German server) in version 2.6.2.
At the moment my albums don’t get displayed though in blog pages, just the shashin tags, but I’ll look into that later…
Hello,
I just updated my WP to version 2.9.2 to install Sashin 2.6.2.
Unfortunately, I have the following error when I try to synchronize my albums : ShashinAlbum::setAlbum – Failed to parse album feed, with the following warning : Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in …wp-content/plugins/shashin/ToppaWPFunctions.php on line 468.
I wanted to install sashin’s new version to beeing able to sync unlisted albums’s videos, that’s why I added my Picasa email and Password, but I don’t know if I should mention an .fr or .com extension for the picasa server. That’s the only change I have done in the configuration.
Thanks a lot for your help and for your great plugin !
PS : here’s my phpinfo http://free.box.free.fr/info.php3
Hi everyone- sorry for the delay. I’ve been bringing work home at night and haven’t been able to keep up. I’ll respond to all the latest comments here – look for your name below…
Chiyo – that error means you don’t have curl installed on your server. If you remove your Google username and password from the Shashin options page, then Shashin will use the simpler fopen function instead, which may work for you (but note this means you won’t be able to add unlisted albums, which is what the username and password are for)
Raj – sorry the code edit I sent you created a problem (but like I said, it was untested). This is something I’ll have to investigate more closely, but to be honest, I can’t give you an estimate right now.
Haf and proutz – that’s odd – the 2.6.2 release was specifically for fixing this issue and it has worked for others, but it sounds like there’s still some kind of problem. This is a harder one for me to test. If I have time this weekend I’ll try creating an account for myself on a picasaweb server outside the US, so I can test it with unlisted albums.
Jeff – the “update” button for the photo browser only updates what’s shown in the browser. For example, if you use the drop-down menu to pick an album, and then click “update”, it’ll then show only photos from that album. It’s updating the photo browser’s display, not syncing the album. On the Tools page, have you tried the sync icon that’s next to each album? That’s the way to do a manual sync. As for the automatic syncing not working, what version of WP are you using? There was a wp-cron bug in 2.9 that was fixed in 2.9.1. You may need to de-activate and re-activate Shashin to clear the effects of the bug.
Hi Mike, no problems.
Just another thought – any thoughts on a cron job I could run on my webserver to do this? Eg. something that calls Shashin.php with the right variables (so it’s the equivalent entering http://picasaweb.google.com/username and clicking “Add Albums” – i.e. using cron to submit the form automatically).
If not, I’ll just wait for the feature.
Cheers,
R
Hello Mike,
thanks for getting back to us, even though you’re busy. 🙂
I couldn’t really pinpoint the issue with the non-US Picasa servers myself, but let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with solving this issue, things like providing server configuration and version details, step-by-step descriptions, etc.
For the time being, does using the US server even though I’m not US based any disadvantages?
Also I noticed that there doesn’t seem to be a German translation file yet. If you’re interested, I could try to write up a German translation over the weekend. 🙂
Hello, thanx a lot for your help.
Just one thing, I also have the error when I change my albums to public. Or maybe does Picasa need some time to update the album after that change ??
Well, like Haf said, let me know if I can do anything.
Thanx a lot
Hi Mike-
I’m running 2.9.2. I try to stay up to date. I deactivated and reactivated your plugin.
I understand the ‘update’ button now. Thanks!
I suppose my nitpick about having to retype the entire picasa URL instead of picking from a dropdown would be moot if auto-add every 10 hours would work. I rarely add to albums, so sync isn’t as important as add. However, a lot of times right after I’ve added a new album to Picasa, I want to write a blog post about it, not wait 10 hours. So I sort of take that back, I would like to see an easier way to force an ‘add album’ command; preferably from the post editing dialog.
When I reactivated the plugin, it immediately grabbed & added the ‘new’ albums. So I created another new album. I’ll wait 10 hours to see what happens.
Thanks.
Either the line 307 modification or the disable/reenable seems to have worked, I think. I don’t remember which ones were there for sure. Trying again.
Hi Mike,
I’ve made a terrible mess of things somehow. I changed some things in the editor and didnt save my original. Now its not displaying the slideshow at all. I’ve deleted all my albums, un-intstalled and reinstalled Shashin 3 times and its still doing the same thing. Is there a way I can clear it so I can just start over?
Thanks,
Shauna
Hello I have a problem with displaying captions. Text is in white color same like background so it’s not readable.
How to edit it?
Great plugin. BIG THANKS
Regards
Yacenty
Hi Mike,
I’ve been plugging away and think I’ve almost got things sorted. I’ve only got a few issues and then I’ll leave you alone 🙂
I can’t get my slideshows to run. If I click on a thumnail, it redirects me off the page.
Also, Highslide will display a single image in a post, but not slideshows.
As soon as I can be sure I can run this plug in, I will be signing up for your commercial use.
Thanks again,
Shauna
Hi all – sorry again for the long delay in replying. I’m continuing to work nights and weekends – hopefully not for too much longer. For responses, look for your name below…
Raj – there are a number of WP function calls within Shashin. You could in principal invoke Shashin through a command line script in a cron job, but you’d have to load a bunch of WP stuff first. I’ve never tried this – if you want to pursue it, maybe do a search to see if someone has already done something similar for another plugin. If you find something, then I can review with you how to try it with Shashin.
Haf, proutz – [Note: I’ve revised my initial response]. a German translation would be great. The disadvantage of using US Picasa servers would be performance from your side of the planet. I still haven’t had a chance to setup and test an account for myself on the German Picasa service, so I can try to troubleshoot. But I haven’t forgotten. I have your email addresses, so I will email you when I have some more information.
Shauna – Usually this kind of thing is a conflict with another plugin. Please try temporarily disabling your other plugins and see if that helps. If not, please give me your URL so I can take a look.
yacenty – Shashin includes it’s own CSS file, at shashin/display/shashin.css. You’ll need to edit a couple classes to specify the color text you want. For example, there’s:
.shashin_album { text-align: center; }you could add black like this:
.shashin_album { text-align: center; color: Black; }Do the same for shashin_caption
Hi Mike,
I double checked and I don’t have any other plugins that would conflict.
http://gypsychicktravels.com/2010/03/shashin/?shashin_album_key=15
thanks again
Hi Shauna – I just took a closer look – your theme has substantial javascript code in it, and you’re loading more javascript code from 8 different other sites. One of these is causing a conflict, and it would take hours for me to try to debug remotely. The most efficient way for you to debug this will be to 1. try temporarily switching themes and see if that fixes it, and if not, then 2. temporarily remove any non-plugin code that’s calling external sites (doubleclick, amazon, etc, etc). Once you find the source of the conflict, then you’ll have to decide between having it or having Shashin. Sorry I don’t have a better answer.
Hi again Shauna – you may have forgotten to turn off your Google page tracker plugin when you said you disabled them earlier, as it is definitely causing a conflict:
http://www.toppa.com/shashin-wordpress-plugin/#shashin13
Hi Mike,
Yeah, you were right. It was the google analytics plugin. Sorry about that, I was looking for another photo plug it.
I really appreciate all your help with this, I understand how busy you are.
So thanks very much, this is everything I’ve been looking for.
Shauna
Hi Mike!
Can u help get this great plug work on my site?
i have the latest version installed but when i, like some other commenters, try to add albums, it says:
ShashinAlbum::setAlbum – Failed to insert/update database record for album. SQL Error
Kind regards
Peter
Hi Mike,
I thought I was set, but I have one more issue I cant figure out.
How do you wrap text around a single photo in a post? I’ve tried a CSS clear value but just got the text of the command in my post.
You’ve done it in your following post
http://www.toppa.com/category/family-and-friends/kai-and-eidan-2006/
Is there an easy way to do this?
Thanks again, I made a donation in appreciation for all your help.
Shauna
Is there anyway to allow the thumbnails to scale (width, height) proportional to their full image? All TNs are forced to the same size regardless of the originals. This distorts the images.
It would be good if either the height or width is fixed and the other varied. Better yet, either side is adjusted as required to make the best viewable image.
Hi all – ok, I’m trying to get caught up again:
Peter – do you have unlisted albums? If not, please make sure you do *not* have a Picasa username and password entered on the Shashin settings page. The connection process to Picasa is more complex when Shashin has to log in, and if you leave this blank, then it won’t try to log in, and the connect process is simpler. If you do have unlisted albums, let me know, and we can step through the code to find the problem.
Hi Shauna – see the documentation here:
http://www.toppa.com/shashin-wordpress-plugin/#shashin6
for the “position” you can enter “left” or “right” to get what you’re looking for.
Hi Robert – the thumbnails should always be proportional. Can you give me a URL so I can see an example of what you’re describing?
Hi Mike!
When i installed Shashin i did enter username and password, but after reading this blog i quickly changed it, and changed my unlisted albums. I dont think that is the problem, if it doesnt require a reinstallation?
i do have Featured content gallery (FCG) installed, could that be the problem?
i have reactivated FCG but it didnt help. looking through this blogpost, it seems like i have the same problem as a couple of people.
//Peter
Hi Mike,
Shashin is just a fantastic plugin! I’m using it on a web site I’m developing for a non-profit organization, and their albums are all unlisted.
I used the workaround when I first set up the site and it seemed to work fine, but now I don’t seem to be able to retrieve any photos from the unlisted albums. I made one of the albums public so the random image widget on the front page would work, but none of the unlisted ones (see Photos page) work any more.
I deleted one of the albums just to try adding it again but when I paste in the rss link I get this error: ShashinAlbum::setAlbum – Failed to parse album feed.
Is there any chance you could help me figure this out?
Thanks so much for you good work!
pq
sorry, 2 more bits of info: I did enter the username/password on the settings page, and uploaded a php.ini file with curl enabled to the theme root, which I think has worked for other sites…
thanks, pq
Hello,
I just encountered one new Picasa issue.
My installation : Sashin 2.6.2, WP 2.9.2, PHP Version 4.4.3, curl enabled (PHPInfo : http://free.box.free.fr/info.php3)
I have the “ShashinAlbum::setAlbum – Failed to parse album feed.” error as soon as I mention my Picasa email and password in the Sashin parameters (tried with both .fr or .com Picasa server).
As I want my Pisacaweb albums to be unlisted, I change them to Public to synchronize or add albums with Sashin and then unlsit them again. This works great !
Unfortunaltely, the 10 hours video sync does not work as I don’t mention my Picasa email and password (and also doesn’t work if I do). This is my first problem.
Second issue I just discovered is that once I unlist again my albums on Picasa, some pictures don’t appear anymore as these pictures URL to Picasaweb send a 404 error… but some work. All of them work if my album is set to Public again.
Thanx a lot ! Your plugin is really great !
Yes, proutz, that is exactly what’s been happening on my site, too. I hope there’san answer to this problem!
For now I’ve just made all of the albums public, but this is not a good solution. When I unlist them, the images no longer get pulled in.
I thought it might work to delete and re-add the albums one at a time using the auth-keyed link – but as long as the albums are unlisted, I can’t re-add them to the list with the auth-keyed RSS link (error: can’t parse album feed) or with the regular auth-keyed album link (eror: setAlbum – Failed to insert/update database record for album. SQL Error:).
If I try using just the picasaweb/username link, the error is: setAlbumPhotos – Failed to read Picasa RSS feed for album.
Setting/removing the Picasa user name and password in the Shahsin settings fields makes no change. The only way to add an album is to set it to public.
Like proutz, my installation is WP 2.9.2, Shashin 2.6.2; on PHP 5.2.13.
…help?!
May advice to have an option to render an unordered list instead of a table when using [salbumphotos]?
In a liquid theme would be very handy.
Thanks for this awesome plugin by the way!
…aaaand, is it possible to disable shashin.css?
I want to override the styles, but as this css is added on the header after my theme, there are some styles I can’t override.
Well, actually I could using !important, but a) not all browsers supports that, b) is quite an “unclean” way to bypass the problem.
Meanwhile I’m going to edit the file on shashin’s plugin folder… until the next update.
Thanks!
Hi Pat, proutz, Peter – the most likely problem is that you don’t have curl enabled on your site. I should add a specific error handling for this to Shashin. But in the meantime, here’s a handy script someone wrote that you can use to check:
http://www.wallpaperama.com/forums/how-to-find-out-if-php-is-compiled-with-curl-extension-installed-enabled-t1576.html
I wouldn’t recommend editing php.ini yourself though (his instructions are for a Windows server). It’s easy to make a mistake, and most hosting providers don’t let you edit it yourself anyway.
If you get an error message running that script, depending on your hosting provider, they may enable curl for you if you ask.
If you don’t get an error message, then let me know, and we can try to find where the problem is for you.
Hi Andrea – others have asked about using lists instead of tables, but AFAIK it’s not possible to get the same level of simple display control with lists. With a table it’s easy to specify an arbitrary number of columns for displaying your photos in any Shashin tag, and get the desired display. That’s much harder to do with lists and CSS when the number of columns is variable.
In regard to the stylesheet, see here:
http://www.toppa.com/shashin-wordpress-plugin/#shashin12
Mike, I understand the convenience of using tables instead of lists.
As a matter of facts, I’m not asking you to change your plugin in order to switch to lists.
I’m just asking, if possible, to provide this option, an additional option, that, instead of build table, will build a list.
Right I’ve made this change by myself on your code (creating a _getListMarkup() function and using this in place of _getTableMarkup()), but I would really like to have that from you, to not recode each time you release an update 🙂
About the stylesheet, thank you: I should have noticed that while wondering around your code 🙂
Mike, I’ve one more request/advice.
When using child themes, the stylesheet is not found, or better, shashin.php looks for TEMPLATEPATH, it obviously get the parent’s theme folder.
May I advice to use STYLESHEETPATH, instead of TEMPLATEPATH and “stylesheet_directory” instead of “template_directory” (line 708 and 709 of shashin.php)?
This must work for both normal and child themes.
…it works on my server at least 🙂
Hi Andrea – I haven’t worked with child themes before, so thanks for letting me know. I’ll make these updates in the next version. [and to anyone else who’s reading, I emailed Andrea to ask for a copy of the _getListMarkup() function]
Allright! I dont have any unlisted albums, but i can try it out.
im far from a programmer… how do i enable curl??
kind regards
Peter
Hi Peter – sorry, I misunderstood the problem you are having. If you don’t have unlisted albums, and you didn’t put your Picasa username and password on the Shashin settings page, then Shashin is not using curl (it only uses it if you enter your username and password).
Is the error message you posted before the one you got before or after you removed your username and password from the settings page?
ok!
when i first installed shashin, i did enter username and password.. (i dont have them entered anoymore) but could this be the problem?
any other ideas?
Peder
Any idea why my “highslided” pictures don’t work with FF?
Check it out: http://www.disform.org/foto/?theme=disform
In Chrome, it works like a charm. In FF it opens a new page with the picture.
Mike: there you can see how the listed photos work in a liquid theme (try resizing the window)… quite well I would say, though I still have to work with the styles.
Hi Mike,
curl is definitely enabled on my server – phpinfo(); spits out this:
cURL support: enabled
cURL Information: libcurl/7.20.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8b zlib/1.2.3 libidn/0.6.5
Am I misunderstanding something basic about the whole unlisted album process…?
Thank you so much for looking into this.
Hi Mike,
The solution was far simpler than I was trying to make it. I set the albums back to unlisted, made sure the picasa login info was set in shashin, and then re-synced each album. Voila.
This is a terrific plugin – going to put my money where my mouth is and make a contribution now. Thank you!
pq
Hi Mike,
Curl is also enabled on my server, here is the script output :
“libcurl/7.18.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8g zlib/1.2.3.3 libidn/1.1”.
Let me know if you need me to give you more information.
Thanx a lot
Hi Mike,
I really love Shashin its a great picasa plugin 🙂 , however I have upgraded to the latest version of WP & Shashin today and I get a “Shashin Error: unable to retrieve random photos.” on the Random image widget
Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Drew
Drew, I’m getting the same error today with my random image widget.
Shashin Error: unable to retrieve random photos.
and on the page when I hit sync all it says:
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in …/wp-content/plugins/shashin/ToppaWPFunctions.php on line 468
What’s weird to me is that it was working fine for about 4-5 days and even late last night.
Help! I have a scheduled go live of http://www.drewdude.com for 4/12/2010.
I have installed the Shashin plugin and it appears to function superbly. However, when I actually click a picture to see the expanded view the picture opens behind the majority of the other content on the page (headers, text, even the other picture thumbnails). It is really quite bizarre.
I have triple-checked all of the settings to make sure I didn’t overlook some magical “open picture on top of ALL” setting. It doesn’t appear that such is the case lol. You can view this weird phenomenon here:
http://www.drewdude.com/index-back.php
Any help you can provide with troubleshooting this issue would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Update: So I figured out the culprit, I just don’t know how to fix it.
The designer of the site made heavy usage of the z-index property to layer some of the graphics. It would appear that the expanded view of the pictures are opening with a z-index of a lesser value than those graphics and the properties set for the main page. So here’s the million dollar question:
Is there any way to set a z-index value for those pictures that open in the expanded view? If so, that will correct my problem.
Drew (not to be confused with the Drew from 3 posts up haha)
Hi Mike,
Just found this plug in, but for some reason it doesn’t look like getting my images from google and all I get is this error on the 2nd tab
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home7/myblogg2/public_html/mycubstoday/wp-content/plugins/shashin/browser/albums.template.php on line 80
Yes, i encounter the same error like Mark mentioned.
“Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in albums.template.php on line 80”
FYI, i’m using the latest WP 2.9.2
Can you please advice how to make this fantastic plugin work?
I figured out that shashin has an option page under the Tools menu which we need to supply the picasa album address for the plugin to work.
Without the album address, the plugin will give that “invalid argument” error for “albums.template.php on line 80”
Thanks Mike for your great plugin, very much appreciated!
Shashin doesn’t work in wp 3.0 beta. Will you make an update to make it compatible or should I stick to 2.9.2 for a while?
Hi Mike,
I’m testing your plugin with the following error:
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/payne007/public_html/sarasotahomesforsalenow.com/wp-content/plugins/shashin/browser/albums.template.php on line 80
What’s the error?
Thank you,
Mike
Mike (the user), did you add any album to Shashin?
Mike (the developer), may I propose to change line 80 of albums.template.php with that:
0): foreach ($albums as $album): ?>
Would be even better some warning shown when count($albums)==0.
Andrea,
The error prevented me from adding any albums.
Thanks!
Ok, maybe I’m confused with another error.
The first time I’ve installed this plugin, while trying to use it, I’ve got this error or a very similar one.
The I’ve found that Shashin has two menu: one in Tools, the other in Admin.
In Admin (the first one to use) you setup general setting and your Picasa server.
In Tools (after you’ve setup your Picasa server in Admin) you add your albums.
I’ve skipped the second step and therefore got this error on the blog.
Did you follow already these two steps?
If you did it, then let’s wait Mike’s answer.
Thanks again, Andrea.
You’re right about two “settings” locations. How strange! Not user intuitive.
Albums display now.
However…and maybe this is a limitation of the plugin. Inserting one album shows a small thumbnail >> that leads to 512 (thumbs?) >> that (when clicked) lead to one full-sized image at a time.
Yet, I selected HIGHSLIDE as the viewer.
All I want is one 512 viewer (doesn’t need to by Highslide) able to play images from selected album or albums.
I’ve tried a couple other plugins.
Buggy….
Thank you,
Mike
You could add a widget area right after or before the post contents on your theme (if is a theme you can edit and if you know how to edit a theme) and use the “random image” widget.
However, this plugin isn’t supposed to show a slideshow of images INSIDE the post… at least, I don’t think is supposed to do that.
Hi all – sorry again for the long silence. I’m still working nights and weekends, and probably will be for the next few months. In the meantime, unfortunately, I can’t provide “deep” troubleshooting, but I will give suggestions as best I can for now. Until the start of this year I was very good at following up on all bug reports, and I fully intend to return to doing that in the future. But for now, I appreciate your patience.
So….
Andrea, in regard to your 4/6 message, the problem is your Google Analytics plugin – see here: http://www.toppa.com/shashin-wordpress-plugin/#shashin13 And thanks very for much for helping with others’ questions!
Drew – I sent you an email but I never heard back. I couldn’t find any page where you were using Shashin on your site.
proutz, Pete – unfortunately this is the deeper kind of troubleshooting I can’t provide right now. The solution will involve something in your configuration that I haven’t experienced yet with Shashin, and will likely take several hours to figure out. I don’t mean to put you off, but I simply have no time in my schedule currently.
Mark, Tom, Shawn – see Andrea’s comment on this – it has the answer. This will be simplified in a future version.
Roberto – thanks for letting me know. I’ll do my best to investigate and release an update before WP 3.0 goes live.
Mike – I couldn’t find Shashin in use on your site – if you don’t want a clickable expanded view if your pictures, on the Shashin Settings page, you can choose to have no viewer.
This comment thread is too big now, so I’m going to close it and make a new Shashin post for support questions.