Welcome Back, Toppa (Again), and Resuming Plugin Support

On January 19, 2011 by Mike With 82 Comments - Personal, WordPress

UPDATE 3/13: Shashin is not working properly with private albums, since Picasa introduced https support. Also, for public albums, enter their urls with “http” for now (not “https”). I have a major rewrite of Shashin underway, so I will address these problems in the upcoming version. I’m still putting in overtime at my job, so a new version is likely at least one month away. Thanks for your patience.

2010 was the year I worked too much. I have one job, but I was doing the work of two. That’s why my blog was mostly quiet last year, and I didn’t have time to update my WordPress plugins. But I remind myself this is a “nice to have” problem, as there are many people in need of any job these days. I’m happy to report that we are hiring for a new position, which means I can go back to doing one job in a few months (if you’re interested in being an Agile Product Owner for the U Penn SOMIS Web Team, you can apply here – look for reference number 110129833).

I still have too much to do for the next few months, but I’m freed up enough at this point that I can start responding to support questions again for my plugins. I’ve started work on a rewrite of Shashin, but at this point I can’t say when it’ll be done. Please use the comments section of this post for questions (I’ve closed comments on the previous support post).

I’ve added threaded comments to my site’s theme (keep an eye out for the “reply” links under each comment). This will help make different support discussions easier to follow.

82 Comments

  1. Jody January 27, 2011

    hi!
    im having a slight issue with my lay out of my photos and im not very versed with CSS to know how to change… 🙁
    what im wanting to do is change the page i have made into a photo gallery into a 2 column or 3 column photo gallery instead of one column and change their order of the albums.
    anyway you could point me in the right direction of how to do this?

    • Mike January 27, 2011

      Hi Jody – you don’t need CSS to adjust the number of columns. Please see the Shashin page for instructions. I’m not sure which Shashin tag you are using. Look for the tag you’re using on the instructions page, and it’ll explain how to adjust the number of columns.

  2. Mariolv January 29, 2011

    Hi 🙂

    i use ur plugin .. it’s fantastic but i’ve a problem.
    i had change my server and i had install every plugins … and aslo shashin

    in old site Highslide works … but in the new it dont work. if i click on image the browsers (firefox, IE or Opera) open a new page with the image … sigh.

    can u help me pls? 🙂

    thanks! 🙂

    • Mike January 29, 2011

      Hi Mariolv – you have scripts from 16 different sites running! (facebook, twitter, youtube, etc). One of them must be causing a conflict. The most practical way to debug the problem would be to temporarily turn off all your plugins except shashin, and then see if Highslide works. Then turn your plugins back on one at a time, and check if Highslide is working after each one you turn on. Then let me know which plugin breaks Highslide.

      • Mariolv February 1, 2011

        Hi Mike …

        i’d like to say u thanks for helping me to solve the problem and I wish tell u, for a next featuring, the problem that I found.

        It was Google Anaytics plugin (http://tinyurl.com/2etckpr)that give me same problems.

        i unchecked an option in the admin page and i resolved.
        the option was “Track outbound clicks & downloads”.

        you can find a snapshot here

        thanks and i’m sorry for my english! 🙁

  3. timmy February 2, 2011

    Hello,
    First of all, i’m impressed by shashin! Its great. One thing I dont know how to do is sorting albums via [salbumlist=] in a specific way.
    I want the list of albums to be sorted by title, descending with few exceptions. I have two albums that I want to put at the and of the list no matter what. Is it possible to do it?

    [salbumlist=title desc 7|8,n] <– 've been trying this but no success. Numer 7,8 are IDs of albums I want to put at the end of the list…

    • Mike February 13, 2011

      Hi Timmy – You can use “pub_date”, “title”, “location”, or “last_updated” for the order. If you add ” desc” then they will be put in reverse order. But it’s not possible to make exceptions for certain albums.

  4. cliff February 4, 2011

    Hi,

    I set up Shashi just fine, but wanted to link it to a new Picasa account. After setting everything up, I can only sync my public albums from my new acct. Switching back and forth, I can only see my public albums from my preferred acct, but all of my albums from my old acct.
    I have set the correct email and password in the Shashin settings.
    Please help!

    • Mike February 13, 2011

      Hi Cliff – on the Shashin tools page, under the “Sync Multiple Albums’ heading, you should see a drop down menu listing each of the Picasa usernames you are using with Shashin. You’ll need to pick a username, then click “Sync all”, then pick the next username, click “sync all”, etc. It’s doing a “sync all” for albums on a user by user basis. Sorry the language is ambiguous.

      For the private albums, Shashin currently can store only one username and password at a time. That is, to sync private albums for more than one Picasa account, you’d need to keep changing the username and password on the Settings page (which I know is a pain). I haven’t had the time to make this more sophisticated, but I’m aware of the limitation.

      • cliff February 13, 2011

        Hi Mike!

        I have completely removed everything from my old Picasa acct. In the drop down you mention, my new acct is the only one listed and my new acct’s user name and password are stored properly. But the only albums that sync are my public albums.
        Just to clarify, I’m not at all interested in using 2 Picasa accts. I simply used my personal acct at first to test functionality. Now I just want Shashin to work as it did with my new acct!
        I think this has to do with the https issue below. I don’t think Shashin can function properly with any newly created Picasa acct’s private albums at the moment.

        Thanks for getting back. I look forward to your https fix!

  5. Erik February 5, 2011

    Hi there,

    I have a question about the Highslide functionality to show pictures. Is it possible to translate things like ‘Click to close image, click and drag to move’ and these kind of things. I searched several files but I can’t find it. Hope you can help me!

  6. PW Klompas February 6, 2011

    I have a Picasa account associated with a Google Apps address. Google seems to use a numeric token rather than a username in the URL for these albums — https://picasaweb.google.com/114445083641403209281 is mine.

    Sashin tells me “That is not a valid URL for your Picasa server.” when I try to add it as an album, but does take the user name and then offer “Sync Multiple Albums” for that username.

    Sashin is a great plugin; this may be something you want to look at in the rewrite.

    Thanks!

  7. Janne February 7, 2011

    Nice to hear, Mike! I really appreciate your work on Shashin.

  8. Jeff February 8, 2011

    Hi Mike,

    I’m trying to set up the Shashin plugin for a (not-yet-published) WordPress site. My Picasa URL uses https, but when I try to enter that as the URL in Tools>Shashin it gives an invalid URL error. If I try to use it with http, I get an error – “ShashinAlbum::setUserAlbums – Failed to parse album feed.” Will Shashin work with https?

    • cliff February 9, 2011

      I’m having the exact same problem with HTTPS. it’s odd though, since one of my Picasa accts works, but one doesn’t.

    • Mike February 13, 2011

      Hi Jeff – I haven’t been keeping up with the latest Picasa developments – it sounds like you’re referring to this new Picasa feature: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/01/picasa-web-adds-https-support.html

      There is no support in Shashin for this right now. I’ll have to add it in the next version.

      (We have 4 project manager positions at my office – two of them are vacant right now, so I’m putting in a lot of overtime. As soon as we have new people in place and up to speed, I hope to have time for Shashin again)

  9. Marcel February 10, 2011

    I’m having an issue with single quotes in the widget title.
    When I type “Foto’s” (without the double quotes), this is changed intn “Foto’s” (again, without the double quotes).
    Can this be fixed?

    • Mike February 13, 2011

      Thanks for letting me know Marcel – I’ll add it to the list.

      • Marcel February 20, 2011

        Mike, i’ve changed this code:

        echo $before_title . $widget_title . $after_title;

        to this:

        echo $before_title . stripslashes($widget_title) . $after_title;

        in file: ShashinWidget.php, line 214. This solves the problem.

  10. Mike February 11, 2011

    Hi all – sorry for the silence. I was sick all last week, and I’m needing to put in some extra time at my job this week. I will try to answer all questions in a day or two, this weekend. Thanks for your patience.

  11. Matt February 21, 2011

    Thanks for pointing that out Jeff. I couldn’t add any new albums all of a sudden. It said Album not added, invalid Picasa server. But if you just take the s off of https, you can add albums with no problem.

  12. Tony February 27, 2011

    I’m having an issue with spam getting through Deko Boko and reCAPTCHA. Have you seen issues with this? I get multiple emails a day that come through now..

    • Mike March 6, 2011

      Hi Tony – I’ve been seeing this with the recaptcha comment plugin (I turned on Akismet as well). I think the spammers are getting better at breaking through it. So it’s not an issue with my plugin, it’s recapctha itself.

  13. Peleke February 27, 2011

    Video listing doesn’t work.
    Shashin always shows the corresponding JPEG of a video but doesn’t link the videoplayback URL.
    How can I fix that?
    Thanks

  14. Marc February 28, 2011

    Hi,

    i upgraded wp to 3.1 and with Shashin 2.6.3 i have following problem when I’m trying to add picasa album.

    Fatal error: Call to undefined function curl_init() in ToppaWPFunctions.php on line 554

    I am sure that i havent changed anything on server-side and with 3.0 it works. Can you check it please?

    with best regards and thanks

    Mark

    • Mike March 6, 2011

      Hi Marc – curl_init is a php function. If you’re getting an undefined error, that means your web hosting provider has disabled curl. There isn’t anything I can do about that. Shashin uses curl to establish an authenticated session with Picasa, for syncing with private albums. If you remove your Picas username and password from the Shashin settings page, then Shashin will stop trying to connect this way. So that will make the error go away, but it means you can’t sync private albums. If you have private albums, ask your hosting provider to turn on curl for you.

  15. Şahin ÇİMİ March 1, 2011

    HELLO Mike…

    How are you. i hope you got your health again..

    Mike Thanks for this plugin. i use it in my all sites..

    But in one of them it gives amn error..: ShashinAlbum::setUserAlbums – Failed to parse album feed

    i looked for it in your sites and in all forums. but i didnt find solve..

    Did you fix it?

    Thanks.

    • Mike March 6, 2011

      Hi – others have reported this and similar error and I was never able to reproduce it, until just the other day. I’m now having a problem sync’ing one of my own albums, and I’m working on debugging it. I hope to find the problem soon and fix it.

  16. Mike March 2, 2011

    Hi all – sorry I’ve disappeared again. I’m working too much again. 3 more weeks until our 2 new project managers start, then I should start getting my life back. But I will try to respond to all questions this weekend.

  17. Mike March 6, 2011

    I’ve confirmed that syncing of private albums is failing in Shashin since Picasa switched to using https. For the moment, if you’ve entered your Picasa username and password on the Shashin settings page, please remove them. Then you will be able to at least sync public albums. I’m working on a fix.

  18. Marisa March 13, 2011

    Hi Mike,

    I just installed your Shashin plugin and I LOVE it!! Although it appears something I did deactivated the Highslide functionality. All my albums were working perfectly, then I added 2 different plugins for copyright protection (didnt like the first so I added a diff one) and I think they did something! The plugins I added were first INK and then wp-Copyright-Protection. I have since deactivated and removed them from my site but I still cannot get the Highslide to work; instead when you click on the photos it brings you to the album on Picasa which I don’t want. When I look at the code in the editor, it appears some of the files with the highslide functionality are listed as “inactive” but I have no idea how to re-activate them as I am not proficient in php (I know enough to get by). Can you point me in the right direction and tell me what to look for to fix this? All of the settings in the built in Shashin interface in my dashboard say to use Highslide. It’s just not working. You can see what is happening on this page:http://whiteglovedetailing.com/wordpress/?page_id=26
    Thank you sooo much!

    • Mike April 5, 2011

      Hi Marisa – sorry for the extremely late reply. It looks like you have it working now. I did notice the display of the thumbnails is a bit off though. Let me know if you’d like help with that.

      • Marisa April 5, 2011

        Hi Mike. I understand from your blog that you’re quite busy so it’s ok for not getting back to me sooner. I did have to re-install Shashin to get it functioning again after my plugin fiasco. You mention that my thumbnails are “off” though… ? How so? I don’t see it but would really appreciate your help! 🙂 Thanks again.

        • Mike April 8, 2011

          Hi Marisa – I just took a closer look. Your thumbnail images are getting pushed out and to the right slightly of the border Shashin makes for them. This is happening because your site’s theme is applying a style to the images that is overriding the style that Shashin is trying to set. If you open display/shashin.css and look for:

          .shashin_thumb img {
          border: medium none;
          padding: 3px;
          }

          and then change it to:

          .shashin_thumb img {
          border: medium none !important;
          padding: 3px !important;
          }

          That should fix it

  19. Kent March 15, 2011

    Mike,

    So far, I think Shashin is the answer to my photo needs, but there is one function that I would love to see… unless I’m just missing it now.

    I want to display the thumbnails of all the photos from one picasa album, but I don’t want them to be in a table, I just want the thumbnails to float left, so that when someone resizes their browser window, the thumbnails wrap.

    I can make it work now by doing single display for each photo () but obviously I would like it to be easier.

    I see that you’re working on a new version. I wonder if this is something that you might consider.

    Thanks and really good work. Very nicely done.

    • Mike April 5, 2011

      Hi Kent – adding this is on my list, but it may not make it into the next version

  20. Dan March 22, 2011

    SEO doctor firefox addon says that my album pages are not indexable because the pages have canonical url’s.

    I notice this on these other sites too.
    http://www.peleke.de/galerie/?shashin_album_key=38
    http://mariolv.it/albums?shashin_album_key=1

    I do not know enough to know hoe this effects seo but just wanted to throw it our there.

    • Mike April 5, 2011

      Hi Dan – thanks for letting me know. I’m looking into a different way of handling the album pages in the next version.

  21. Paul March 30, 2011

    I’m using Sashin and I can’t the album thumbs tag to work. The post just shows the shortcode, not the thumbnails. I’m using WP3.1.

  22. Dan April 4, 2011

    Hi,

    Is there a way to make the single photo widget a link to an album?

  23. Dan April 4, 2011

    Is the navigation suppose to work in with the “random images” widget?
    if so mine is not working.

    This is would be perfect if this worked.

  24. Mike April 5, 2011

    Hi Dan, yes you should be able to navigate within the set of random images. Can you give me a link to where you’re having a problem?

    • Dan April 5, 2011

      Hi,
      I set up a test page here: http://tinyurl.com/3r64q6q

      the navigation does not work. I would like to beable to create random albums and beable to nav through them.

      thanks

      • Mike April 8, 2011

        Hi Dan – in this case, the image in your sidebar should not show the navigation, since it’s just one image (that’s an oversight in my code – it actually works, it’s just cycling over the same image). If you set up the widget to show 2 or more images, the navigation would take you through them. It sounds like you’re looking for something like the thumbstrips I gave you the link for, but for random images

        • Dan April 8, 2011

          Mike,

          Which sidebar were you looking at?
          This one here uses the “random image widget” set to any but it only shows different images when refreshing and the navigation does not work.
          http://tinyurl.com/3r64q6q

          Dan

          • Mike April 12, 2011

            Hi Dan – I only see one sidebar, with one image near the bottom. It’s random only when the page loads, it doesn’t change after that. It also shows only as many images as you set it to. If you are showing only one random image, there is no “next” one to navigate to.

          • Dan April 13, 2011

            Mike,
            If i set it to more than one image then they all show in my sidebar. Is there is no way to only show 1 but beable to scroll/navigate through them rather than refresh the page to show them?

  25. Michele April 7, 2011

    Hi Mike, i’m currently having a problem with sync’ing my album on my wordpress site.
    Actually, untill a few days ago, everything was working perfectly.
    But now, when I try to add new albums or to sync the old ones, it comes out an error message like this:

    ShashinAlbum::setUserAlbums – Failed to insert database record for album ID 2147483647. Possible SQL Error:

    I don’t know if this is a probleme due to my picasa account or the settings of my site … but I’m sure I’ve not change anything since last few days, when shashin was working …

    Do you know if there’s a solutions for this issue??

    • Michele April 7, 2011

      Besides this, when I try to sync each album “individually”, by clicming on the two green arrows near the name of the album (in shashin page of the tools menu of my wordpress site) I’ve another error message:

      ShashinAlbum::setAlbum – Failed to insert/update database record for album. SQL Error:

      It seems to make problems not just for the specific album (as the ID in the previous message let’s think) but for everyone of theme …

  26. Mike April 8, 2011

    Hi Michele – this seems to be happening to at least a few people since Picasa switched to https (if you go to Picasa, you’ll notice the links now start with https instead of http). I’m not sure what the problem is, as I have not been able to reproduce it. Could you give me a link to your Picasa main page, and I’ll see if I can add your albums to my installation of Shashin?

    • Michele April 8, 2011

      Hi Mike, that’s true: I’ve seen the change in the picasaweb’s link but the option page of shashin doesn’t accept the new address as a valid link …
      I think you need this kind of link to try: https://picasaweb.google.com/106557011776304692315
      Let me know if you can solve the problem! 😉

      • Mike April 12, 2011

        Hi Michele,

        Your albums loaded fine for me. Others have dealt with this by deleting the albums in Shashin and adding them again, but that will break any Shashin tags you have for photos in the albums. Like I said, I haven’t been able to troubleshoot this because I can’t reproduce it.

        I hope to have a prototype of the next version of Shashin ready within the next 1-2 weeks. It does album sync’ing in a completely different way, which should work better and be easier for me to help people troubleshoot. If you can hold on, I will try to have it ready soon.

  27. Ty April 9, 2011

    Hi,

    Fantastic plugin! Just sent a donation your way to show my appreciation.

    Couple questions:

    1) I notice that if you subscribe to the RSS feed of a WordPress blog that includes Shashin tags, the Highslide caption isn’t appropriately hidden (i.e., the div “highslide-caption” no longer has “display: none”), and, of course, Highslide doesn’t work in general. I’m not sure if it’s even possible to get Highslide to work with an RSS feed, but I’m wondering if at least all the extraneous caption text could be hidden. (Clearly I’ve tried mucking around with the source code myself without success.)

    2) Do you have any thoughts on using a non-Flash video player (for certain mobile devices that lack support)? I’m not sure if, for example, Google has an HTML5 alternative.

    Thanks,
    Ty

    • Mike April 12, 2011

      Hi Ty – thanks very much for the donation. I’m working on the next version and hope to have a prototype ready soon. I just did a search for the RSS issue but didn’t find anything useful (not just for Highslide, but for “display:none” issues in general with RSS). I will try to look into it, but to be honest, I don’t think it’ll be at the top of the list.

      I also did a search for showing Picasa videos on mobile devices and found this:
      http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Mobile/thread?tid=4cf9d6035bd4763e&hl=en

      The short answer is that Picasa won’t be using anything other than Flash anytime soon. But I am planning to add Youtube support to Shashin, although I have not tested Highslide with Youtube videos on a mobile device yet.

  28. Anna April 13, 2011

    Hi Mike,

    thanks for all your hard work and help. Much appreciated! I’m using Picasa and I didn’t try to sync albums, just tried to add a couple of new albums on my WordPress site. I had the albums set public in Picasa and deleted my Picasa email & passwd from the Shashin settings. I got the following error msg “That is not a valid URL for your Picasa server” (https://picasaweb.google.com/annariina)and using the previous http version of the URL gives the above mentioned “ShashinAlbum::setUserAlbums – Failed to parse album feed.”

    Thanks, Anna

    • Mike April 17, 2011

      Hi Anna – sorry for the trouble. I’m working on a new version of Shashin that should resolve these problem. I hope to have a preliminary version available for people to test next weekend. Stay tuned.

  29. Leela April 14, 2011

    Hi Mike,

    First of all thanks for creating shashin. I was wondering if it is already possible to use private albums (with https server) in Shashin.

    Thanks,
    Leela

    • Mike April 17, 2011

      Hi Leela – the current version of Shashin has private album support, but many people have had trouble since Picasa switched to https (instead of http) a few months ago. I am working on a new version of Shashin and I will try to find and fix the problem.

  30. Randy April 15, 2011

    Hey Mike! Stunning plugin! Best one out there I dare-say. Im just having a problem getting that white title bar to go away above the image thumbnails. It doesn’t seem to be in any of the css files. Can you help me?

    Example: lampandboat.com/photography

  31. Randy April 15, 2011

    Nevermind figured it out. It was in my themes CSS. Thanks again for the great plugin!

  32. Joe Banks April 21, 2011

    Mike,

    I’ve already redone my family website after a developer stopped developing a WordPress plugin (WPG2) that integrated Gallery with WordPress, similarly to how Shashin integrates with Picasa.

    Then I upgraded to Picasa and found your plugin. And I fear having to redo the site photos again, if your plugin stopped working!

    So, I’d certainly be glad to support your efforts in an regular, annual way to keep your head afloat! I already sent one donation, and will support you again.

  33. Natka April 22, 2011

    Hi Mike! Thanks for the plugin – I use it all the time on all my website! Lifesaver:) Till now I’ve been mainly using single photos, but want to try albums too and I encountered a problem. When trying to place several albums on a single page it works fine, but then when I want to go to the “next images”, a page loads where the very same album is repeated several times on this page(as many as many different albums were posted initially). I am using Shashin version 2.6.3 and tag [salbumphotos].
    Link to the site where the problem occurs:
    http://www.fad.pl/gobeliny-tradycyjne/
    I tried looking on wp forums, google but no luck and no idea how to go about this. Please help!

    • Mike May 1, 2011

      Hi Natka – sorry for the late reply. It never occurred to me to use salbumphotos multiple times on the same page like that. So it was designed with that use in mind, I’ll keep this in mind as I work on the next version.

  34. Willem Coetsee April 22, 2011

    Hi Mike,

    I’ve used your pluging before and it’s great.

    I am trying to use it on a new website. The wideget works fine and uses lightbox to display the “album. However, whenever I use the shortcode in a post, it wont use anything to display the image, it just shows the image in the browser. The problem can be seen when going to “Pictures” in the sloder on the homepage.

    Your help will be highly appreciated.

    Cheers

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