Introduction

I've been using Movable Type for a while, and recently after writing a Wordpress Plugin which allows you to include Picasa Photo Albums in WP entries, I realized that nothing like that exists for Movable Type, so this is my attempt to fill that void.

What this plugin allows you to do is specify a MT template tag with the name of a Picasa Gallery (Exported as XML from Picasa), and it will insert Thumbnails with links to the Photos.

Download and Installation

  1. Save the plugin and rename it to "picasa.pl".
  2. Edit "picasa.pl" using a text editor and modify the following lines to point to the correct paths for your server setup:
      my $GALLERY_PATH = "/plugins/picasa/";
      my $GALLERY_URL = "http://softcoded.net/MT/plugins/picasa/";
    GALLERY_PATH is the path of where your Picasa Galleries are uploaded relative to your MT directory.
    GALLERY_URL is the public URL to the same location.
  3. Save and Upload "picasa.pl" to your MT plugin directory.

Publishing your first Album

  1. Use FTP to Upload at least 1 Picasa Gallery to the path specified for your Galleries. Be sure to use Picasa's XML export as Webpage option.
    An example of what it should look like is this:
    http://www.domain.com/MT/plugins/picasa/MyGallery1/index.xml
  2. Now the Tag you need to use to include this album is this:
      <MTPicasaView album="MyGallery1"/>
  3. NOTE: By default you cannot use MT Tags inside Entries, so you will have to use this Tag inside a Template. However, if you wish to use this Tag inside an Entry (which makes the most sense), you need to install the Process Tags Plugin for MT
  4. It is important to note that MT generates pages Statically, so if you change the contents of an Album, you need to rebuild the Template containing the Tag or rebuild the Entry (if you use the Process Tags Plug to include the Tag in an Entry).

MT Picasa Plugin Test Entry

This is an example entry of what the result of this plugin looks like:

The block above is generated by the following single line: 
<MTPicasaView album="AlcoholFind"/>

Version and Comments

Current Version:
0.1 - July 3, 2005 - First Public Release

Planned Features: - Integrate with view.php script used with WP plugin which dynamically generates Photo Page (no direct linking to image as it is done now), to allow for "next" and "prev" Thumbnail display with links.

Comments:
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Feedback, Comments and Questions (1)