Postcasa
Postcasa is a simple WordPress [Shortcode] to add flash based Picasa slideshows directly inline to your posts.
Example:
Download
Get the plugin here:Postcasa Shortcode, v1.0 (181.13 kB)
You can also visit the official WordPress Plugin Database page for Postcasa.
Description
There are a lot of great plugins for using Picasa based photos on your blog. So, why write another one?
Most don’t allow you to actually add a simple, inline slideshow – rather, they add all the images to the post and have whizbang slimbox integration, etc.
This humble plugin does nothing of the sort. All it does is add the standard Picasa EMBED slideshow, without needing any of the fancy code. It is designed for simple, but flexible use.
All you need to do is use the [postcasa] shortcode around the RSS feed URL for your Picasa album, and the plugin does the rest.
Example:
[postcasa]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/miloandrew/albumid/5273127970894080577?alt=rss&kind=photo&authkey=VWY2bThuIvM&hl=en_US[/postcasa]
It supports all of the standard Picasa embed options.
Installation
- Download the code.
- Unzip and copy the
postcasafolder to your wordpress/wp-content/plugins/directory. - Using the WordPress Administration Plugin panel, activate the Postcasa Shortcode plugin.
- You can now use the shortcode in your posts, e.g. [postcasa]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/miloandrew/albumid/5273127970894080577?alt=rss&kind=photo&authkey=VWY2bThuIvM&hl=en_US[/postcasa]
Usage
In a nutshell: Defaults are in BOLD and do not need to be specified
[postcasa width= height= size=(small,medium,large,xl,xll) bgcolor=(hexvalue,000000) align=(left,center,right) showcaptions=(yes,no)] RSS Link [/postcasa]
Example:
[postcasa]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/miloandrew/albumid/5273127970894080577?alt=rss&kind=photo&authkey=VWY2bThuIvM&hl=en_US[/postcasa]
Tutorial:
- Copy the RSS link for your Picasa album directly from the Picasa website (Screenshot 1)
- Edit your post.
- Open the shortcode by typing: [postcasa] (Screenshot 2)
- Paste your Picasa RSS URL (Screenshot 3)
- Finish out the tag by typing: [/postcasa] (Screenshot 4)
- Publish your post.
- View the post to see the results. (Screenshot 5)
Shortcode Options
The plugin supports a number of optional settings, which are listed below:
size
The Plugin has a number of preset sizes that correspond to the Picasa presets.
Settings:
- small (144x96 pixels)
- medium (288x192 pixels) (This is the default if no size/height/width is used)
- large (400x267 pixels)
- xl (600x400 pixels)
- xxl (800x533 pixels)
Usage Example:
- [postcasa size=large]http://MyRSSurl[/postcasa]
Any value in the size parameter overrides explicit height and width settings.
width and height
You can directly specify both width and height parameters if you prefer. Values in these parameters are ignored if you have specified a size preset with the size parameter listed above.
Usage Example:
- [postcasa width=200 height=100]http://MyRSSurl[/postcasa]
- [postcasa width=200]http://MyRSSurl[/postcasa]
- [postcasa height=100]http://MyRSSurl[/postcasa]
align
You can explicitly specify an alignment of where you want the slideshow to be placed. If you do not specify an alignment, it will default to align=left.
Settings:
- left (This is the default.)
- right
- center
Usage Example:
- [postcasa align=center]http://MyRSSurl[/postcasa]
bgcolor
You can explicitly specify a hex background color for the slideshow player. Usually this is seen when you have portrait oriented pictures. If you do not specify a bacground color, it will default to black.
Settings:
- any hex value, e.g. 000000, ffffff, f0b1c2, etc.
Usage Example:
- [postcasa bgcolor=ffffff]http://MyRSSurl[/postcasa]
showcaptions
This option overlays each picture's caption on top of the slideshow. By default, captions are off. You only need to specify this parameter to turn it on.
Settings:
- yes
Usage Example:
- [postcasa showcaptions=yes]http://MyRSSurl[/postcasa]
CSS Styling
This is pretty straightforward. The plugin wraps the embed code in a <p> tag with the class set to "postcasa".
If you want to style the paragraph, simply add some css to your stylesheet. Example:
p.postcasa {
margin: 10px;
padding: 10px;
border: 1px #000000 solid;
}
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the plugin support any options?
Yup. You can find them listed in the Installation section above.
Can't you just use an embed code directly? It's almost as easy!
Sure can, but lots of folks forget to swith to HTML mode first or the WYSIWYG editor messes up the code after the fact, etc. Postcasa allows for adding the shortcode directly to the WYSIWYG editor with no problems. Its a simple plugin designed for easy access, nothing more.
Screenshots
Copy the RSS link for your Picasa album directly from the Picasa website
" width="500" height="183" />Open the shortcode by typing: [postcasa
Paste your Picasa RSS URL
![Finish out the tag by typing: [/postcasa]](http://blog.miloco.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/screenshot-4.png "screenshot-4")
Finish out the tag by typing: [/postcasa
View the post to see the results.
Other Notes…
If you need help with this plugin, leave a comment at the bottom of the page. I’ll do my best to answer any questions that you have.
If you like the plugin, consider dropping a buck or two to say thanks and help with future versions.
Props to…
Thanks very much to planetOzh for the excellent shortcode tutorial, without whom, my plugin would have taken a lot longer to make.
Awesome! Simply AWESOME! I soooooo need this plug in!
[...] POSTCASA，调用Picasa上的图片形成Slideshow效果。 本插件可以快速的调用Picasa上的图片来生成SlideShow效果。 [...]
Hi friend! This is very good plugin, but i couldnt use it. When i tried with my album, just using the shortcode without any options, It dont appear, but the indication of a flash is there, but it all blank. Im using wordpress 2.7. Any ideas?
Hi Pedro! Thanks for dropping a note – sorry that you are having problems! Postcasa does indeed work with 2.7, as this page is hosted by 2.7… What is the RSS feed URL for your album?
Awesome plugin. Works like a charm! This is exactly what I have been searching for! Feel free to take a look at it in action. http://www.theheinrichteam.com/blog/?p=236
Thanks Grant! Appreciate the feedback – glad that it worked for you!
Hey Andrew. Great plugin. Is there anyway to customize this plugin so it takes longer for the pictures to change to one another? And is there also a way to keep the slideshow on constant rotation rather than having the user have to press the “play” button to get it going again? Thanks Andrew.
-Brian
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the kind words – I’ll look into it. The default Picasa player doesn’t seem to support these settings (as you can’t change them in the embed HTML generator), but there could be another way. I’ll look and update the plugin. Thanks for the suggestion – they would be nice additions to the plugin.
Cheers,
Andy
Thanks for this! I love it. Thanks for the clear instructions, too!
http://www.henryhutchens.com/daddy-keeps-a-blog/2009-02-14-valentines-day/
http://www.walterhutchens.net/blog/archives/2009/02/07/new-trick/
I found out that the RSS-feed has to be “picasaweb.google.com” rather than e.g. picasaweb.google.de – which produces the same RSS feed, but the latter doesn’t work with Your plugin. Maybe this is the solution for Pedro Cavaléro’s problem!
Hi Konrad,
You are very correct! I’ll bet that is his problem… I’ll have to add logic for multiple google country domains. Thanks for catching that!
Cheers,
Andy
Gidday – changed the source to set picasaweb.google.co.uk rather than .com
if i’ve got time today, i might see about changing the source to just extract the fqdn from the rss link, but it’s easier just to edit the source
I didn’t get it to work either, until I saw your entry here, Scott. Thanks
Hi Konrad
thanks a lot after changing the url to picasa……com it work great
[...] found Postcasa, this plugin lets you integrate Picasaweb Slideshow in you blog post just by entering short code [...]
Love the plugin. Been looking for this for a while. A couple of nice additons would be:
1) Control of the timing as mentioned above
2) Ability to format the captions w/CSS (probably not possible but I thought I’d ask.
Again, very nice work. Mucho appreciated!!
Hi Jack, thanks for the kind words! I agree on these – the first one I’ll try to get to sometime this week. The second one I don’t believe is possible, as the commenting is done by the Picasa flash control, which only allows for showing or hiding the captions, not styling them. But, I’ll double check!
Glad you like the plugin!
Cheers,
A
I had a client who had 100′s of albums on Picasa and was worried about trying to transfer and recreate. No longer is this necessary -
Slicker than snot!
Regards
George
Thanks George! Glad it worked for you!
Thank you for this plugin. More than just its simple code, it solves a big problem for non-admin users of WP, i discover. Non admin users (editor, author, etc) cannot embed flash slideshow from picasa. This is WP’s setting for security reason. (my wp version is 2.8) After embeding, updating the post just makes them disappear. I have found your plugin to be able to help us get around the problem. Now my headache is gone. I the admin, do not have to embed the slideshows for the users. Thanks a lot!
I forgot I have a question to ask: is it possible to set the option for the slideshow to start manually rather than automatically? As it is now, it starts automatically.
Hi,
the plugin gives error related with exif. My photos are scanned and doesn’t have exif. By the way I dont need exif. can you suggest?
Hmm… Can you give the exact error? It shouldn’t have this problem as all it does is recreate the slideshow already made by Picasa. It could be that you are using Picasa in a different locale? There is an error related to that (you can read about it in the prior comments…) I STILL haven’t had a chance to fix the darn thing!
Life just gets in the way sometimes! If you post the exact error, I’ll try to take a look… Cheers, A
In your plugin, you use which certainly works, but it will never validate as XHTML. To do this, you need . I have rewritten your code so that it functions exactly the same as how you design it, but as an added benefit, pages will validate as XHTML. I also corrected some url encoding mistakes with ampersands in two places. Please feel free to use this in your next version if you like.
proper picasa embed code for inline slideshow
function postcasa_shortcode($attr, $content) {
$postcasa_width = $attr['width'];
$postcasa_height = $attr['height'];
$postcasa_size = $attr['size'];
if ($postcasa_size == ”) {} else {
switch ($postcasa_size) {
case “small”:
$postcasa_width = “144″;
$postcasa_height = “96″;
break;
case “medium”:
$postcasa_width = “288″;
$postcasa_height = “192″;
break;
case “large”:
$postcasa_width = “400″;
$postcasa_height = “267″;
break;
case “xl”:
$postcasa_width = “600″;
$postcasa_height = “400″;
break;
case “xxl”:
$postcasa_width = “800″;
$postcasa_height = “533″;
break;
} // switch ($postcasa_size)
} // if $postcasa_size == ”
if ($postcasa_width == ” && $postcasa_height == ”) { // we received no explicit size, so set default of medium
$postcasa_width = “288″;
$postcasa_height = “192″;
} // if ($postcasa_width == ” && postcasa_height == ”)
if ($attr['align'] == ”) {$postcasa_align = “left”;} else {$postcasa_align = $attr['align'];}
if ($attr['bgcolor'] == ”) {$postcasa_bg = “0×000000″;} else {$postcasa_bg = “0x” . $attr['bgcolor'];}
$postcasa_flashvars = “host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=”.$postcasa_bg;
if ($attr['showcaptions'] == “yes”) {$postcasa_flashvars .= “&captions=1″;}
$postcasa_raw_feed = str_replace(“&”, “&”, $content);
$postcasa_fixed_feed = str_replace(“feed/base/user”,”feed/api/user”, $postcasa_raw_feed);
$postcasa_feed = urlencode($postcasa_fixed_feed);
$postcasa_flashvars .= “&feed=” . $postcasa_feed;
$postcasa_embed = ”
“;
return “$postcasa_embed”;
}
add_shortcode(‘postcasa’, ‘postcasa_shortcode’);
?>
Will be updating it soon! Thanks again for the heads up and the code. :^)
Posting the code here didn’t work – it eliminated part of the code. Feel free to e-mail me and I’ll send you the code – I don’t see a contact form for you here.
I am trying to use postcasa with WordPress 2.8.4 but it does not seem to like it. I have added the RSS feed http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/lafermedusoleil1/albumid/5384647079290210209?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=en_US
but get nothing. Will it not work with 2.8.4?
Hi Anthony,
So sorry for your troubles! I’m actually using 2.8.4 myself and everything is fine with Postcasa… Does it just show up blank? You can see at the top of this page that it is working live, so maybe there is a conflict with another plugin?
-A
I have put in your URL and it works but I insert:= [postcasa width= height= size=(xl) bgcolor=(hexvalue,000000) align=(center) showcaptions=(no)]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/lafermedusoleil1/albumid/5303360009806445553?alt=rss&kind=photo&authkey=Gv1sRgCMqzv_e4xtmvdg&hl=en_US[/postcasa], I get blank. I can test the RSS by puttingit into my browser and I get a result. What is happening? A
Are you doing it with eh parenthesis around the options? Meaning:
align=(center)
rather than
align=center
??
There should be NO parenthesis around the options – that could be the problem.
-A
It is driving me crazy – it works if I paste in your RSS but with
[postcasa width= height= size=xl align=center showcaptions=no]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/lafermedusoleil1/albumid/5303360009806445553?alt=rss&kind=photo&authkey=Gv1sRgCMqzv_e4xtmvdg&hl=en_US[/postcasa]
it doesn’t.
Ah, OK. Don’t specify the options that you want to leave blank.
Try:
[postcasa size=xl align=center showcaptions=no]http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/lafermedusoleil1/albumid/5303360009806445553?alt=rss&kind=photo&authkey=Gv1sRgCMqzv_e4xtmvdg&hl=en_US[/postcasa]
I did it in a test post and it works great.
-A
Brilliant. And terrific service with a smile!
Thank you
Anthony
YAY! Glad to be of service!
Thanks for your kind words,
A
One little thought for future development – can you make it continuously cycle through the album rather than stop when it has been through once?
This is an often requested feature – unfortunately it’s a limitation of the Picasa player, not one having to do with my plugin. If the control supported it, I’d certainly have it as an option!
I was so impressed that I have shown your postcasa to a friend. When she installs it and puts in
[postcasa]
http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/jannyb7/albumid/5379872384692197745?alt=rss&kind=photo&authkey=Gv1sRgCNCk6q2AppKbGA&hl=en_US
[/postcasa]
she just gets a blank space. What am i doing wrong this time?
Hi Anthony!
If you are pasting what you pasted here into the WYSIWYG editor, it is actually pasting an Anchor (or link) tag around the URL it and then feeding that to Postcasa which will give you the blank space.
You want to make sure to take just the TEXT of the http link in the Postcasa shortcode.
To check this, just go to the HTML view of the post and you should see what I mean about there being the a href tag…
With Postcasa, when you click the arrow buttons do they count as page hits?
They don’t count as page hits as Postcasa simply uses the Flash widget that Picasa makes available for slideshows. So, the arrows are served by the widget, not the server and therefore no page hits. Hope that helps!
Thanks for dropping a note!
I am wanting to use Postcasa in the sidebar, but I am unsure on how to do this. Is this going to be upgraded to use in the sidebar or would I have to modify the code myself?
Hmm, I suppose I could make it a widget. I’ll put that on the list to do!
As it is, Postcasa uses a ShortCode – basically a posting-only feature of WordPress.
Thanks for the feedback!
Cheers,
Andy
I have done this, all I had to do was add shortcode to the functions.php page.
add_filter(‘widget_text’, ‘do_shortcode’);
As for something else I am having a very hard time figuring out. I want to know if I can stop picasa from linking images. Would you know how to do this?
Oh, and if you DID want to modify the code yourself, you could just strip out the code that generates the HTML.
Honestly, if you are going to do that, you could probably just take the HTML and put it in a HTML widget for your sidebar. It would be about the same thing.
Wow what u’ve wrote definitely got me excited! (ok i know u must reckon im a crazy haha!) online
[...] WordPress Plugins used include Akismet, Breadcrumb NavXT, cformsII, Google Sitemaps Generator, postcasa, and Viper’s Video Quicktags. Web hosting is done using Apache through TotalChoiceHosting, [...]
[...] Скачать Postcasa Shortcode [...]
Any chance of linking music to this as well? Just thought I’d ask…… Awesome plugin, thanks!
Hi! Congrats for the plugin! I´ve seen it running in other blogs and its great! That´s something we´ve been looking for that purpose: simplicity.
I´m trying postcasa with WordPress 3.0.1. I installed the plug in and typed the following shortcode at HTML mode.
[postcasa]
http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/107978900616527761412/albumid/5526595806151828833?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=pt_BR
[/postcasa]
I see that the place is reserved in the post and if i click it with rightbutton it shows adobe flashplayer preferences, but the slideshow shows blank. The following link refers to the post in question.
http://www.denisleite.com/?p=770
Could you give me a hand?
Hi Andy,
great work, fantastic plugin, everything worked fine until i used Internet Explorer 8, i think there is a prolblem with the browser. With IE8 i even can’t see your example at the top of your page, but with Firefox it work’s fine!
Any idea?
Kind regards
Thanks for a great plugin, we have used it on some of our websites. Great work.