Thanks for the flickr plugin. It does everything it says and displays the images professionally.

The only thing that erks me with this bot is that if you are displaying more than 100 photos on a page it takes a long time (about 2 minutes) to load. I was wondering if there is there going to be a fix for this? Then you would have the perfect flickr plugin for Joomla 1.5.

Thanks for all the hard work guys...

Owner's reply:
Unfortunately this issue is related to the response time of the Flickr API. However, enabling the cache function of the plugin can reduce loading time dramatically.

This plugin is very easy to configure and works very well on Joomla 1.5

Just be aware that if you are loading a Flickr album with lots of images, your page may take a little longer to upload. However, this little inconvenience is compensated by the fact that you can access and customize any image from your Flick account, including the captions.

Owner's reply:
Getting all photo related information from the Flickr API can indeed slow down loading your page. Enabling the cache function of the plugin will make the plugin store the requested photo information locally, for the amount of time set in the plugin configuration. Upon re-requesting the page within the cache time boundary, it probably speeds up loading your page significantly.

On its own it's amazing. However I've noticed two problems. If you have any plugins that use the rel="lightbox" attribute then this will open two slideshows on top of each other. The workaround is to hack the code to change the rel attribute to something other than "lightbox" if you are using the slimbox style. Next is a fatal problem on systems that use DOCMAN. Front-end document management is impossible with this plugin running because both extensions call PHP PEAR simultaneously and you will not be able to access the document management interface. Please fix, and this will be a perfect plugin!

Owner's reply:
We are currently running DOCman and the latest version of the plugin that can be downloaded on the website and do not experiencing any troubles with the combination of those two. If you like we could have look to see if we can help you out to see what’s the problem in your case. In that case, please contact us via our support forum.



About the Slimbox issue. Hacking into the Slimbox code to change the “rel” tag is on option. Another option, one that we will support in the next version of the plugin (v0.6), is a configuration option to select whether the slideshow javascript is embedded by the plugin. This way, upon using multiple plugins that utilize slimbox, the administrator is able to make sure the script is loaded only once. This feature can save bandwidth and makes the upgrading to a later version of slimbox a whole lot easier. ;-)

This is a great extention, Very easy and straight forward. Well done guys.

I really like this plug-in!

I was surpised how simple it was to install and use, given my experience with other photo gallery components/plug-ins.
It me 10 minutes to get it going once I downloaded it - and that includes logging on to Flickr to get my API key!

At the moment, only the image is accessible from Flickr.
In a future version, I'd like to see more options for handling the image metadata (tags, titles, etc.)

Owner's reply:
25-08-2008: The next version of the plugin (v0.6, to be released in the next few weeks) will support selections based on tags, group and user id's, next to the current photo and set options. ...and more selection options will follow in future releases. ;-)

First.... Its a free plugin.... Next, its a GREAT free pluin. Works right from the start, flexible and does what it says. I have tried others with flickr and they always drag down, are slow or like to promote flickr over the pictures. this shows the pictures and works all the time.

A few tweaks could be made, but I sent those to the developer... But no complaints and I am new to joomla

Ok I read the instructions so it installed and was setup easily. The complication isn't the plugin, it's that you need to figure out how to get the API key from flickr.

So why the support? It seems, through the work of the developers, Marcel and Jasper, that there may be some issue with Triptracker and NOT having a a flickr Pro account. I think it is currently working with with Pro accounts, but you will need to verify with them about that.

The plugin works exactly as expected with the slimbox with my free flickr account. I just wrote to them about the Triptracker issue for FYI.

Well within hours I got a response and found that they were both working on the issue for me. They have been doing it for several days now (even on the weekend!) trying to make it work for me!

They have also sent me some temporary code that got the Triptracker working for me.

With this kind of support for a free plugin, I wouldn't be worried about looking at any of their other products.

Bottom line is the plugin is easy to use, and is completely working for me today. I look forward to the next release.

My compliments to this excellent plugin. Installed without hiccups, great presentation: professional product. Thanks

This is a good tool, I installed and followed the instruction in the demo page at http://joomla.universalplayground.eu
It worked very well even compare to other commercial products.
Next time if lkasdorf wants to use any of Joomla ext, he should learn more.
This is a good tool and for good purpose.

Ok, maybe I'm really dense, but why can't extension developers take 5 minutes and write a "getting started" page?

I installed the plugin.

I set up a flickr account, uploaded pics into a couple of sets. I created a Flickr API.

Now, the "directions" on the demo page simply say to get the Flickr API key and enter it and "go for your life". WHERE DO YOU ENTER THE API KEY??

Then, once this part of the puzzle is divined, how do you refer to a set, and how do you refer to an individual image? The examples refer to numbers - is there an ID number buried somewhere in flickr that you refer to or do you use the humar readable name?

I find this over and over again with many extensions- there are essentially no directions.

So, this may be a lovely plugin, but I can't make it work, so I have to move on!

Owner's reply:
Hi there,



I’m sorry to hear you had so much troubles with the plug-in and I’m quite surprised to see that you didn’t contact me before writing your dense review. Joomla is all about a community of people helping each other to further develop and extend this great CMS. I take part in that by developing this plugin in my spare time (!) and appreciate the constructive help I get from people using the plugin.



If you would have written me a small e-mail saying that there are certain things about the configuration and use of the plugin are not that clear to you, I would have responded your email, answered your questions and probably would have changed the tutorial on the website of the plugin aswell. But ok, enough said about that, because that probably didn’t answer your questions. ;-)



The API key is entered in the part of Joomla where all plugins are configured (hence requires basic Joomla knowledge). (Go to the extensions menu, choose “plugin manager”, select “Universal Playground - Flickr slideshows”. In the page that appears is a field called “Flickr API key” where you can enter your key.



Now, about referring to a set or a photo. Every set or photo Flickr has an unique URL. For instance:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/exposej/sets/72157600375172301/



for a set and



http://www.flickr.com/photos/exposej/1296812671/



for a photo. In these URLs you can find the ID numbers (in this case 72157600375172301 and 1296812671) required by the plugin.



Hope this help.



Cheers,



Jasper

Wow! Talk about a super fast way to get photos up on a site! As a Flikr user - I love the ability to add a whole photo set to an article with a simple statement [Flickr set=###]! Amazingly simple, amazingly functional, and amazing way to keep your server host space clean of all that photo storage! WOW - D/L This one and check it out!!!!!!!

Downloaded and installed no problems, setup a new article pasted my set number in and viewed the page. There were my photos as if by magic. The only problem is that TripTracker will not display some photos from my flickr library. If anyone else has solved this issue would love to know how.

Overall excellent and will continue to use as works excellently with slimbox option.

This is an excellent 0.5 plug-in. For 0.9 it would be neat to have more documentation and troubleshooting tips (would have saved me time) ... but read ... I do recommend this plugin!

So, I've been looking far and wide for a quality Flickr pull for my website.

I've tried several before with mixed results, but none with Joomla 1.5.

I installed this but then it crashed my install. (Deactivating it fixed this immediately). Turns out, I needed to have PHP 5 running on my server.

I contacted my host, and got that running in no time. (My Joomla install survived just fine... but now it seemed a bit faster)

Then, then UniversalPlayground got working just fine.

It's easy to use, and I like it very much. No nonsense, but also, nice and clean looking. It's great!

I can't get the slideshow part to work, but I prefer the lightbox look anyway.

This is an under-rated plug-in, for certain.

My server had php5 and php4 both installed, and defaulted to php4, unbeknownst to me. At any rate, it had some slight difficulty running with php4, but the author spent tons of time helping figure out what exactly was wrong. He managed to fix it, and then I discovered the fact that php4 was default. That's fixed now and version 0.5 works flawlessly.

It's a nice alternative to flickurpic, especially since it's free. It's also pretty simple to use. I'm looking forward to future releases of this program and any others that might be coming down the pipe!