Introduction

I've been using Picasa for a while, and frequently include Picasa Galleries in my WordPress posts. However due to a limitation of WP-Picasa-Gallery, there was no easy way to jump forward or back when looking at large images. You can export html with Picasa, but it generates an html page for each photo, which is annoying.

Picasa Photo Viewer takes WP-Picasa-Gallery and updates it with a PHP script which replaces the direct link to large images with a dynamically generated Photo Page where you can view Captions, see next and prev Thumbnails and jump to those photos directly without having to go back to the index page.

Examples of script in action

I am actively using this script on my personal blog site. I have it configured to display either 1024 or 640 resolution large images, jump to the appropriate size for your resolution:

1024 Large Images. Linked to WP-Picasa-Gallery-Mod index.

640 Resolution Images. Directly linked to first photo in Album.

Requirements

  • This script has been tested on WordPress 1.5, and should work with newer versions as long as they dont change the plugin system.
  • Picasa 2 on your PC, so you can export XML albums
  • FTP access to your /wp-content/ directory to upload XML albums
  • The Viewer Script uses PHP 5, so your site must support it

Installation Instructions

  1. Copy wp-picasa-viewer.php and view.php to /wp-content/plugins
  2. Activate the plugin using the admin interface
  3. Create /wp-content/galleries/ and make sure it is readable by your web server (chmod 755, public read and execute permission)
  4. Export a picasa gallery using the XML template — Select the images you want and use the Folder->Export as Web Page menu item, but you can also right-click on a folder name in the folder view and choose “Make a Web Page”.
  5. Upload the entire exported gallery directory to /wp-content/galleries/GalleryName/
  6. Create a new post, or modify an existing one and add 
      { gallery [GalleryName] }
    somewhere in it.
      GalleryName
      - is the name of the directory that you uploaded in the previous step.

Download

  1. Download WP-Picasa-Viewer.php.txt and rename it to WP-Picasa-Viewer.php.
  2. Download view.php.txt and rename it to view.php

Notes and Special Thanks

I'd like to thank http://www.benlyall.com/ for writing the original WP-Picasa-Gallery plugin, which I used extensively before modifying it. Without some code from that plugin my script will not work at all.

Version and Comments

Current Version:
0.95 - July 2, 2005 - Changed function names not to conflict with WP_Picasa_Gallery plugin (you can now run both, side by side).
0.91 - July 2, 2005 - Fixed issues with multiple galleries on a single page.
0.9 - July 1, 2005 - First Public Release

Comments:
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