Introduction
I’ve been using Windows Live Spaces for personal blogging, but since I moved my work blog to WordPress, I wanted to build my personal blog with WordPress too. WordPress is a great blog software, but features for photo blogging, which my personal blog is mostly about, are lacking out of box. So I spent the past weekend experimenting with various desktop software and WordPress plugins, and here is the result:
Basically my photoblog solution consists of:
- Build my WordPress blog site with WP-SimpleViewer and NextGEN Gallery plugins
- WP-SimpleViewer for slow connection (< 1mbps)
- NextGEN Gallery for fast connection (>10mbps), gallery, and widgets
- Manage photos locally using Windows Live Photo Gallery
- Backup photos remotely on both Live Spaces and my WordPress site
- Write blogs and cross post them to both Live Spaces and WordPress site using Windows Live Writer
WP-SimpleViewer
WP-SimpleViewer plugin “enables you to easily add fancy SimpleViewer Flash galleries to your posts and pages. The admin interface helps you to create the thumbs for a new gallery and change its settings.” The slideshow in the middle of the screenshot above is generated with WP-SimpleViewer. Besides the fancy UI and easy keyboard navigation for in-page photo viewing, the biggest benefit, to me at least, is that WP-SimpleViewer generates 20-30KB sized scaled down photos under reg folder, and 1-2KB sized thumbnails under tn subfolder, and display those photos instead of the originals in the slide show. This allows very slick photo viewing experience even on slow connections (<1mbps).
It is pretty easy to install WP-SimpleViewer, but making it work isn’t so trivial. By default, it always hangs during gallery creation. The fix is to uncomment line 101 of wp-simpleviewer-admin.php:
/*If the plugin should hang up while it is creating the thumbs (last line on the admin is: "Now I am working on file xzy.jpg:") you can try to uncomment the following line (remove // ) to define a new memory limit (40MB in this case). More info on the plugins FAQ.*/ //ini_set("memory_limit","40M");
I changed it to ini_set(“memory_limit”, “120MB”). I also increased the limits in php.in:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Resource Limits ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; max_execution_time = 30 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds max_input_time = 60 ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data memory_limit = 128M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (32MB)
But even with those changes, WP-SimpleViewer still hangs when there are a lot of photos in one gallery.
Another trick I did is to set the images directory to wp-content/gallery instead of the default wp-content/photos in WP-SimpleViewer’s admin page, so the same original photos can be used by both WP-SimpleViewer and NextGEN Gallery.
NextGEN Gallery
NextGen Gallery is probably the most popular image gallery plugin for WordPress. It has a basic set of image gallery functions, like albums, tags, roles etc, and a set of shortcode for different rendering. NextGEN’s slideshow and PicLens view both display the original photos. My photos are usually 2-3MB in size, so they look great with fast connection (>10mpbs), and can be displayed with cooliris browser addin (need separate install) as shown below:
But that doesn’t really work with slow connections (<1mbps): those MB sized photos take forever to download on slow connection, so I usually put both WP-SimpleViewer and NextGEN shortcode on a page. Besides the nice rendering UI, NextGEN Gallery also comes with two nice widgets: the NextGEN Slideshow and NextGEN Gallery widget, as shown at the top left corner of my personal blog screenshot above.
Just like WP-SimpleViewer, it is pretty easy to install to NextGEN Gallery, but it takes some effort to make it work. Besides modifying php.ini as mentioned above, I also need to uncomment line 168 of lib/gd.thumbnail.inc.php:
lib\gd.thumbnail.inc.php:168: // @ini_set('memory_limit', '128M');
Once working, it seems more reliable than WP-SimpleViewer.
Windows Live Photo Gallery
I used to use Picasa, but after trying out the new Windows Live Photo Gallery 2009, I am really impressed. The features I really like about Windows Live Photo Gallery:
- easy navigation with folder, date, people and tag hierarchical views
- tagging, rating, and people tagging features
- metadata in the info panel
- fix functions, especially straighten photo: I am getting into the habit of applying it on all photos :-)
- easy publishing to live spaces, and other photo sharing sites (require plugin)
- and the publishing plugin platform
Windows Live Writer
Windows Live Writer is probably the best blog authoring tool. The nice new feature related to photo blogging is the Insert –> Photo album… function:
It is nicely integrated with Live Spaces, allowing users to browse their existing photo albums or create new one, and insert it into blog post with four different layout. In my personal blog screenshot above, the top photo album in scatter view is inserted via Insert –> Photo album. You can find more from Windows Live Writer blog, like post Windows Live Writer 2009: Now Available for Download.
Photo in Live Spaces are also doubled scaled for easy browsing on both slow and fast connections, just like WP-SimpleViewer: thumbnail and regular photos are displayed, but user can also click on a photo to get the original version. Live Spaces allows 25GB for photo storage, so it can be used as an online storage for photos.
Conclusion
I am by no means a blog or photoblog expert, and don’t really know WordPress, PHP, or the various Live services as a developer. This post is just to share what I’ve learned about photo blogging with WordPress. I am actually quite happy with what I’ve managed to do over the weekend. It is good enough for me for now, photo blogging wise.
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