Recently on Flickr Widget

Description

The Recently on Flickr Widget is a light-weight plugin that allows you to display your most recent Flickr photos in your sidebar, either as small or large square thumbnails.

It has just enough CSS to show the photos as a basic grid in your sidebar, so you can easily enhance their display by adding your own styles on top of that.

The plugin uses a Flickr API key instead of RSS to fetch your photos, so you won't be limited to displaying only 20 photos at once.

Props: This widget was inspired by a tutorial that originally appeared on Wptuts+ a few years ago. It has been extensively forked to be theme-independent using Tomm McFarlin's WordPress Widget Boilerplate.

Installation

1. Extract the recently-on-flickr-widget-master.zip and remove -master from the extracted directory name.
2. Upload the recently-on-flickr-widget folder and its contents to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
3. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
4. Go to the Appearance > Widget page, place the widget in your sidebar, and adjust the settings as needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I need to register for the Flickr API to use this plugin?

Take this under good authority: it's better to be in control of your own API key. If you rely on a plugin developer to supply an API key for you, and that developer then closes their Flickr account or otherwise vanishes into thin air, then the Flickr feed(s) on your website will stop working.

Don't worry, registering for the Flickr API isn't as onerous as it sounds (and you don't need to to know anything about web development to do it).

How do I register for the Flickr API and get an API key?

Follow these simple steps to register for the Flickr API and create a API key to use with this plugin on your WordPress site:

1. Go to www.flickr.com/services/apps/create/apply/ and login to your Flickr account.
2. Apply for an API key. You'll probably need a non-commercial one, unless you plan on making money off of whatever you're doing with this widget.
3. Once you've created your "app" you can use its API key in your Recently on Flickr Widget settings.

Why doesn't my photo feed refresh as soon as I've uploaded new photos to my Flickr account?

Making calls to an API can cost you a lot in terms of page load speed, so this widget caches your feed for a duration of time that you specify in the widget options. Flickr also imposes limits on how many queries you can make using your API key every hour. If you have a busy site, then caching is a must.

You can refresh the cache as often as every five minutes, or as infrequently as once per day. The choice is yours, but do keep user experience in mind.

Is it localized?

Yes, but no translations are available quite yet.

Screenshots

1. Widget options in the WordPress admin area

Changelog

1.0.1

• Update phpFlickr library to v3.1.1

1.0

• Initial release.

Updates

This plugin supports the GitHub Updater plugin, so if you install that, this plugin becomes automatically updateable direct from GitHub.

Credit Roll

The Recently on Flickr Widget could not have been made possible without:

• A helpful post that appeared on Wptuts+ a few years ago.
• Tom McFarlin's time-saving WordPress Widget Boilerplate. Why start from scratch when you don't have to?
• Dan Coulter's super-easy-to-work-with phpflickr library. Check it out.

Author Information

This plugin was originally created by Mandi Wise.

License

Copyright (c) 2014, Mandi Wise

The Recently on Flickr Widget is licensed under the GPL v2 or later.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA