WordPress 2.5 Gallery Test
WordPress 2.5 came out earlier today. I just updated and am going to give the gallery features a whirl with this test post. I have actually been tinkering a lot with customizing a gallery for this site a while ago using Gallery2 but overall it was too bulky and slow for my liking. While WordPress 2.5’s gallery features are much more basic, hopefully it will “just work” and be what I need to organize all the photos I take with each review and so on.
How are you liking WordPress 2.5? I think it’s the most remarkable WordPress update since I’ve been using WordPress. Version 2 was a big jump but 2.5 has a totally revamped admin panel that just gets out of your way as Matt Mullenweg said in one of the WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate screencasts. I think it does that quite well.
Below are some pictures from the Georgia Tech Auto Show that went down today. To use the gallery feature in WordPress 2.5 just upload photos to a post and type in “gallery” and enclose it in brackets, although there is a button to do this for you in the image manager.
Update: Seems like I’ll have to edit my theme a bit to support image navigation and larger images.
I can’t wait to try out the new version, but I have no idea why I would use the new gallery feature over flickr. Maybe when I see it I’ll change my mind.
I was just going to update today to the latest version of Wordpress (I was a little bit behind in the latest updates) and saw the new branding. I was extremely psyched that I would be upgrading to 2.5 today. I just made the transition and am loving it. The new admin theme is just gorgeous and extremely easy to use. I doubt I’m going to use the gallery feature, but easy plugin updates and all the other features are really great.
I’ve also updated my blog with 2.5. It is a huge leap forward and I think this is going to allow more productive working. Not sure if the gallery feature suits me. The navigation I cant figure out. What do I have to change in my CSS?
Thank you.
really dislike the “muddy” gray and red color scheme. working through the gallery capabilities. best…skip
I just upgraded, though I haven’t posted anything. A quick look at the site seems to indicate the plugins are all still working, but I may not know until someone sees something whacky.
The freshed UI is a good start, but I feel like there is some wasted space up top and in the sidebar. I have multiple authors on my site, but some of their posts are manually added by me - the author drop-down all the way at the bottom will slow me down like 1/3 of a second now and then. ;)
Paul, on your Gallery photos - are the thumbnails 150px wide by default and the page photos 300px wide by default? Or did you set that? Also, what were the original sizes of the pictures you uploaded? Thanks!
I think the gallery will make Wordpress that much better. Can’t wait to test it out. I’m upgrading right now. I hope nothing goes wrong, unlike my last update.
The admin panel is much better and looks very pleasing. After upgrading, I had to re-edit some of the files to get everything working fine. I am still having a few problems with this upgrade. For example, 2.5 for some reason won’t render » — it outputs a question mark (?) instead of the html.
@Dave - The image stuff was all default. I was quite unhappy that it defaults to a “medium” of 300px wide. I would like to make it so that on image pages there is no sidebar and images can be much wider, with some nav buttons as well. The original images were full-res straight from my DSLR.
@mark
This definitely won’t be replacing flickr for me by any means. I just have different stuff on flickr (personal) and here (tech, products, gadgets, so on).
Just updated mine as well, though it was a shaky process. At one point, I thought I lost everything and that my database flipped me off, appalled yet calm I performed some quick troubleshooting and reverting to a back up saved the day. I eventually got the upgrade to take and push through.
There are a few other things that are acting a little weird, but all appears to be working.
As for the Gallery, I haven’t gotten a chance to play around with it much. But from what I have seen, it looks rather clunky. But I’m sure there will be some tweaking that can be done… We’ll see after I am comfortable with the stability of my 2.5 install.
Hm, interesting. I’ll have to figure out where to modify that. I’d like 100px wide thumbnails (so I can fit three) and on the photo page instead of dropping my sidebar, I’m fine specifying the full width of my content area (420px). I note on Photo Matt’s gallery pages, the hypertext linked title of the photo page jumps back to the original post but the default install without tweaks seems to link to the page you’re already on. I may not actually test the gallery until Monday night at ShowStoppers CTIA. Though, perhaps I’ll set up a test blog to screw around with it (and try to tweak).
test comment. my database had some issues after migrating servers.. something about auto-increment not being set.
Yeah, I think my first comment got eaten by the database.
Dave, default images sizes are in settings->miscellaneous.
I spent a bunch of time today digging around in the new media gallery, multi-file uploader, etc code, and it is all very cool, but there are virtually NO plugin hooks. Which is unfortunate.
Wow! I just love the auto update function for the plugins! It is a bit scary in terms of security, but it works perfectly!
I’ve been itching to upgrade since 2.3 but have been procrastinating because of all the effort I’ve invested in my old theme and code…guess just I’ll just have to bit the bullet and do it to enjoy the new features.
Does anyone think the gallery function is useful or is it as hollow as this post seems to suggest?
Andrew, it’s both hollow and useful. I’ve been playing a bit with it… It’s useful in that it’s builtin, simple, and works, but hollow in that the customization options are minimal. It also appears individual pic pages use my Page template rather than Post - so for me that means comments are turned off, my ShareThis button is absent, etc (which is what I want for pages). Wish it would use Post or let me create a special Pcture Page template. (Maybe it does?) I’d also like to reduce the vertical white space and make the final pic not link to anything (which looks like an option, but my changes are overridden everytime.)
paul just a question about the dashboard of the new upgrade do you have any problems with it? I have been getting this error
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: wp_register_sidebar_widget() in /mnt/gs01/herd03/32615/domains/alexbiju.com/html/wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php on line 31
Dave, you can create a custom template for the image pages, just make a file in your theme folder called image.php. There’s an example in the default theme included in WP.
Thanks for the tip, Matt - if anyone knows the ins and outs, it’s you! Once I get back from CTIA, I’ll reproduce my post page as an image template and see about getting some picture nav in there like you do. And Paul will be able to his full browser width pics as well.
anyone figure out a way to get emailed attachments to go to the gallery?
id like to send blog posts from my cellphone with images, and i was using POSTIE before 2.5 came out…
now i dont know what to do :( id like to have everything centralized
Apparently, if you check the WP support forums, the image upload function and media gallery is not working properly for many people.
There are various errors and confusing problems all around (I’m also experiencing one that’s baffling).
In some instances I think it might be plugins conflicting, but often it sounds like that with trillions of server configs out there, some are burping loudly for some users.
Some people don’t get upload screens at all, for others options aren’t visible, yet others are suddenly confronted with permission errors. Script errors, failure and error messages; you want it and the new media library is going to spew one or more out at you … perhaps.
There seems to be a problem with the Gallery when you use the “Excerpts” function somewhere in your blog. You get code in the excerpts instead of the name of the pictures or something coherent.
Other than that it’s fast and easy to use the Gallery thing and you can easily avoid using a plugin for pictures (too many plugins is really not a good idea) or even Flickr.
Also adding a lightbox script could be better to show full size pictures rather than opening a new page just for 1 picture.
I think there should be more support for showing your code on posts…
there are lot of plugins but this facility is supposed to be integrated into the core code.besides plenty of people use code or simmilar stuff on their posts.
what you think paul?
Do I have to turn this on somewhere? I don’t have this ability.
I like Wordpress 2.5 so far. I especially like Happy Cog’s design.
FYI : Georgia Tech Auto Show images above don’t show in Safari 1.3.2 with PithHelmet on. Reloading page with PithHelmet off helps, but his has never been an issue with images that are located in /WP-content/uploads/ ( e.g. the pics in the Macbook Air post show up just fine with PithHelmet on ), on any WP blog btw …
PS : Any chance of lightbox-plugins working with WP 2.5’s new thumbnails ?
ist very easy to set lighbox with the 2.5 galleries:
just install lightbox and lightbox-auto.
then activate them and edit media.php in the wp-includes dir:
The line number 394 is as follows in 2.5:
$link = wp_get_attachment_link($id, $size, true);
change it to:
$link = wp_get_attachment_link($id, $size, false);
and it should work!
Maybe the wp developers should allow for an option in the admin to let the user control if galleries use permalinks or not for the images (thats what ist turned off by setting the last paramter of wp_get_attachment_link to false)
The multi-file upload feature did not work for me - in Safari or Firefox. Annoying!
Matt mentions the image.php file in the default theme.
Can someone explain that further? I looked at the file, but I’m clueless as to how to implement it.
I’d like to try and get something going like Matt has here:
http://ma.tt/category/gallery/
BTW, I had to “fix” .htaccess to get the Media uploader to play nice.
This plugin adds rel=”lightbox” to the new gallery feature in WP 2.5. It also adds it to all image links within posts and pages, and adds the lightbox js too (using jQuery Lightbox).
WP 2.5 Gallery Lightbox Plugin