Forum Replies Created
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Attention template developers! Your Feedback is required!
We have finished the template set for the next release of the plugin, and we’d like your feedback so we can modify the plugin to make your life easier.
Download the code here:
http://foxly.ca/bp-album_0-1-6-FOR_TEMPLATE_DEVELOPERS.zip
You have 24 hours to evaluate it and post your feedback.
Thanks!
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We hear ya!
Template developers will LOVE the next release.
You’ll see…
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Deciding how to dimension thumbnails, based on images with widely varying aspect ratios, and then present them in a grid, has been a problem that has dogged graphic designers since the earliest days of the Internet.
The two most popular way to do this are “Facebook Style”
http://foxly.ca/facebook-style.jpg
and “Flickr Style”
http://foxly.ca/flickr-style.jpg
I’m actually writing code for *both* options *right now*, and after some back and forth with @francescolaffi we’ll probably get it set up as an option in the administrator backend.
We could probably add the ability for users to manually crop the thumbnail for each picture in their gallery using the avatar cropping tool, and I will look at the feasibility of doing this. Experience has shown that most users do *not* want to do this for every picture they upload …and that’s why neither Facebook nor Flickr include this functionality.
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There is now a DEDICATED THREAD for BP Album+ Feature Requests and Discussion,
Join the discussion here!
https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/bp-album-new-features-requests-and-discussion
@_dorsvenabili – I’m glad you like our plugin.
There are actually two developers working on this plugin now, @francescolaffi, and myself @foxly; @francescolaffi is busy writing his exams right now, so I’m handling all the user support for the next few days.
BP Album is community-developed software! If you find it useful, please consider contributing code, translations, and ideas to the project. Helping answer new user’s questions on the forums is also helpful, because it means we have more time to work on writing code.
@hnla – Deciding how to dimension thumbnails, based on images with widely varying aspect ratios, and then present them in a grid, has been a problem that has dogged graphic designers since the earliest days of the Internet.
The two most popular way to do this are “Facebook Style”
http://foxly.ca/facebook-style.jpg
and “Flickr Style”
http://foxly.ca/flickr-style.jpg
I’m actually writing code for *both* options *right now*, and after some back and forth with @francescolaffi we’ll probably get it set up as an option in the administrator backend.
We could probably add the ability for users to manually crop the thumbnail for each picture in their gallery using the avatar cropping tool, and I will look at the feasibility of doing this. Experience has shown that most users do *not* want to do this for every picture they upload …and that’s why neither Facebook nor Flickr include this functionality.
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For some users with specific PHP and mySQL options set, the plugin did not install properly, making it impossible to upload images.
This release fixes that problem by using different SQL syntax to create the main database table.
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And you deleted the entire BP Album plugin directory and copied the new files in their place?
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FIXED! FIXED! FIXED!
We have a working fix for the “There were problems saving picture details.” error.
I will post a link to a .ZIP file with the updated plugin here within an hour. If you are experiencing this problem, please download it and confirm that it works on your server.
After that, we will release 0.1.6 with the fix included in it.
Thanks so much to all of you for helping with nailing this bug!
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@Tosh, @Baur, @Modemlooper, @Jedbarish
Thanks for your very fast replies. The problem you are experiencing was caused by a problem with a failed SVN commit, and WordPress.org’s plugin repository rolling-back to version 1.3 on about half of our files without telling us.
Obviously, that broke the plugin.
Upgrade to the 1.5 and the problem will vanish. If you’re still having trouble, just delete the entire bp-album folder and copy the bp-album 1.5 folder in its place. It will start working again instantly.
@Xevo – I think the version number incrementing thing is very funny. What’s with all this version 0.0.16 software out on the Internet. I want to be at version 87.5 by 2012 …lol!
@hnla – two questions:
First, did version 1.3 work?
Second, are you running MySQL in “Strict” mode?
@Travel-Junkie
We’ve temporarily switched to single options to make debugging faster for the admin panel upgrade.
We wanted to get the admin panel version out absolutely as fast as possible AND have a table we can easily ask users to view using PHPmyAdmin if something goes wrong.
You are clever for noticing this! Don’t worry, we will remove it once we are sure everything works properly.
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@mercime – I’m not insulting anybody. I’m asking some tough questions about what this community is doing to get a high quality, free BuddyPress photo album plugin out, and that seems to be making some people in here a bit uncomfortable.
Hopefully, uncomfortable enough that people start building things.
Namely, a plugin.
What all of the people posting “BP Gallery is Free, etc, etc, it will be released free when we have a stable version” are missing, is that if Brajesh would just upload his code to the SVN *right now*, we could all jump on it and help him finish building and testing the plugin.
Look, I have nothing to gain financially by building a BuddyPress photo plugin. I just want this problem solved so I have a stable, reliable plugin to use on my websites, that doesn’t depend on just one person to keep it going.
@thekmen – good point.
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@Brajesh Singh – Thank you for joining the discussion. The first thing I want you to know is that I’m not criticizing *you* I’m criticizing *the situation*. From what I’ve heard of you, you’re a very skilled developer, and getting as much software written as quickly as you have is an impressive achievement.
Look guys, here are the issues:
Up until 3 days ago, there was only one working photo plugin for BuddyPress: BP Gallery. It was a paid plugin, and I think we can all agree it was having some development challenges.
Running down the list and calling them out point-by-point was definitely mean; but I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.
I want to make it clear that I am NOT saying Brajesh is a bad developer – he’s probably an excellent developer; in fact, the problems that have happened with BP Gallery eventually happen to virtually *every* major plugin developed by a one-man operation.
That’s why BuddyPress needs a community-developed photo album plugin that doesn’t depend on just one contributor.
We build it as a team, each put our best effort into it, and make something that’s really, really good.
If Brajesh, or any other developer, would like to contribute code and ideas to the project, they are welcome and encouraged. This is not about proving that X is a better developer than Y or any of that nonsense. This is about getting the best possible BP photo application built as quickly as possible, and ensuring it runs securely and reliably for a long time to come.
@Bowe – Point taken, and I’ll try to be nicer in the future. I am not attacking Brajesh’s efforts or contributions to the community. He has earned his place. I’m saying that if the community needs a BP Photo plugin, then working together as a team to build it is a lot better than relying on the efforts of a single developer; especially one with a lot of other projects on the go.
@gregfielding – Also, another thing to consider is that if lots of users want to switch back and forth between plugins, we could probably write a function that imports data from BP Gallery … or *exports* data *to* it.
It’s all about what the users want.
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BP Album+ admin panel is finished and working!
I will post a link to the BETA as soon as my DNS update to foxly.net finishes propagating, and @francescolaffi will probably have the official release posted to the plugin repository within a few hours.
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@gregfielding I never said I was “against” BP Gallery, I said it was inappropriate to use a *commercial* plugin with only *one* contributor as a BP core plugin, which is our ultimate goal for the BP Album+ plugin.
No matter what claims are made about this and that being “free”, until Brajesh releases his plugin, properly documented, into the WordPress repository under a GPL license so others can reuse its code, it is a *commercial* plugin.
In terms of features, BP Gallery *currently* has much more functionality than BP Album+.
But over the next couple of months, we’re planning on adding a huge amount of functionality to the BP Album+ plugin, and as we get more people onboard, BP Album+ will probably quickly eclipse BP Gallery.
I’m not going to try and tell you what gallery you should use for your site, but I want to point out some key reasons why I’ve chosen to team up with another developer and write a free open source BuddyPress Photo album plugin (and give it away to the community!) versus just handing over $30 and using BP Gallery for all of my social networking sites:
1) The release date of BP Gallery has slipped six times over three months, and its status hasn’t been updated since Feb 06 2010. Brajesh announced he was releasing RC2 on March 11/12. Didn’t happen. And BP Gallery Stable on March 14/15. Didn’t happen.
2) Simultaneously with all of this, the guy’s released two themes, two other plugins, and has posted that he will be releasing a chat plugin and another BP theme by the end of March. He’s also handing out free subscription extensions to all of his members for not getting his plugins working on time.
That’s impressive. Much respect to Brajesh for sheer volume of work!
But it raises some scary questions:
a) If he’s sprinting to get fifteen different projects done simultaneously under penalty of losing all his members, how efficient, extendable, and secure is the code inside BP Gallery? Has it been checked by other programmers?
b) Brajesh makes his money by releasing several new plugins every month. What incentive does he have to keep *improving* his existing plugins versus writing new ones?
c) If a BuddyPress core update breaks his plugins (as *just happened* with Manoj Kumar’s original BP Album, prompting the development of our plugin) …how long is it going to take Brajesh to repair his dozens of plugins, and where will BP Gallery fit in that lineup?
d) What happens if Brajesh gets hired by Google and quits developing plugins? Who will keep them working with future BuddyPress updates and how will they learn such a huge codebase in time to avoid disaster?
And to the people that keep saying “Well he’s going to release BP Gallery as Open Source in a week or two”, consider this:
e) If you were a website owner that’s paid $30 a month for a site membership to get the BP Gallery plugin, and then patiently waited for 3 or 4 months for the developer to finish it (and don’t kid yourself, that’s what 90% of the site members are there for) …would YOU be happy if the developer finished the plugin, then released it for FREE to EVERYONE as open source?
I’ve been wrong before, but I’d say the odds of BP Gallery being released as free open source any time soon are slim to nil.
It’s a sad situation, because if Brajesh released BP Gallery to the plugin repository, we could continue development on it for him, integrate it with our app, and release a fantastic plugin that gives the community what they want; and he would have more time to work on his other plugins. But again, very unlikely to happen.
….
There is a solution to all of the above problems: build ONE application that is FREE OPEN SOURCE, maintained by MULTIPLE developers, and can be EASILY EXTENDED. It’s how Linux is developed. It’s how WordPress is developed. It’s How BuddyPress is developed.
And it’s how the BP Album+ plugin needs to be developed.
….
As for “Community Support” …. we’ve had 600 downloads in 48 hours and will probably hit 1,000 downloads before most people even see this.
Unless Brajesh is pulling $30,000 a month from his site (=1000 members) I’d say we’ve already beat BP Gallery in terms of installed user base.
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@Modemlooper I’m going to turn this around on you and say “What if WordPress had no text editor, no file upload capability, no admin menu, and no comment functionality”. All of these are required elements to make a blog platform run, and that’s why they ship with WordPress. Twitter functionality, on the hand, is not a required element, and that’s why it’s implemented as a plugin. Likewise with BuddyPress, Forums, Profiles, User Activity, and… photo albums … are required elements of almost every social networking community. That’s why I want to stop screwing around with third-party plugins and help build something that’s good enough to ship with the core.
So there’s my thoughts!
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Paid or “membership based” plugins are fine, but NOT for a core component of BuddyPress.
Core components are: Activity Streams, Blogs, Forums, Friends, Groups, Private Messaging, Profiles, and… Photos.
These components are the key elements of *any* social networking site and have to be *tightly* integrated with the core to deliver a quality user experience. That means that the component doesn’t just “plug in” to Buddypress… it’s part of BuddyPress and changes are made to the BuddyPress core if necessary to make it work better with the plugin.
You *cannot* have a core component based on a commercial plugin. In has to be free as in freedom *and* free as in beer, *and* open source. And you definitely can’t have development run by a “one man band” …because time and time again the developer goes away, an update breaks the plugin, and we’re all screwed.
This is not from me. This is from Automattic.
What I’m trying to get going between myself, @francescolaffi, and hopefully a few other contributors (once we’ve got a solid framework implemented) is a canonical photo plugin that will eventually be merged into BuddyPress. It will have to be dependable, extendable, and secure, and give BuddyPress users the functionality they want. In a nutshell: Facebook Photos.
If others want to *extend* the canonical plugin, it will have a wide range of hooks and be exceptionally well documented -making their job much easier. So if somebody wants to make a commercial add-on that gives it image editing capabilities, automatic face recognition, streaming video, or something beyond what the average user needs, then they can do that, find customers, and be paid for their efforts.
I’m not trying to build a plugin that does everything. I want to build a high quality gallery plugin that satisfies 95% of the users out there and becomes the standard.
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@Symm2112 You are correct. My bad …I was at the end of a 14 hour coding run when I replied.
@gregfielding I am now e-mailing back and forth with @francescolaffi and we’re deciding how to move forward on the BP Album+ plugin’s development. To avoid splitting the community between multiple photo plugins, I have stopped development on *my own* photo plugin, and will not be releasing it.
I am currently working on an admin menu for BP Album+. Should have a beta together in about 8 hours. When @francescolaffi wakes up he should be able to grab it and merge it into the code.
He’s in Italy and I’m in Canada, so between us we’ve got 24 hour development..lol
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I just finished stripping-down and rewriting Brajesh’s plugin to get it working for BP1.2.
Brajesh’s plugin was a good first step, but francescolaffi’s plugin has much better code quality, more features, and an active developer. I’m throwing my support behind francescolaffi’s plugin, and I’m ready to contribute a substantial amount of development time to it if he wants to work with me.
OMG!!! francescolaffi I was working on the *exact same* plugin and you beat me to release by a day lol!!
Would you like to team up on this project and try and build something that will hopefully become the canonical photo plugin for BP?
I just wanted to say thanks for the awesome plugin!
Again to the two guys being relentlessly spammed: post the domain names that you are having problems with and I will try to find out what’s going on.
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zageek and Bbrian017 – what are the URLs of the websites that are getting spammed? I will take a look at them for you.
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