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BP Album+ || New Features Requests and Discussion


  • foxly
    Participant

    @foxly

    If you need a free image gallery or photo album for BuddyPress, BP Album+ is probably the plugin you’re looking for. BP Album+ adds instant, FaceBook style photo albums to all of your user’s profiles.

    You can always get the most up-to-date version from the WordPress plugin repository at this link:

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bp-album/

    Or, if you like living on the bleeding-edge of BuddyPress development, you can get the latest beta here:

    http://foxly.ca/bp-album-1_6_BETA.zip

    ======

    This forum thread is for discussing new features the community would like to see in future releases of the BP Album+ plugin.

    All ideas are welcome, no matter how crazy, bandwidth-intensive, or strange …but the final call on what goes into the plugin and when will be made by the development team.

    Photos and user interfaces are a uniquely “visual” thing, so when posting an idea to this thread, please try to include a LINK to a website that’s doing the thing you want included in the plugin. For original functions that don’t exist *anywhere* yet, draw a sketch of your idea in a paint program and post a link to the image.

    This will make it much easier for users that don’t speak English to understand your idea.

    So, Let’s get started!

    ^F^

Viewing 25 replies - 51 through 75 (of 346 total)

  • Erlend
    Participant

    @sadr

    Hi there foxly & co. Just came by this project and I’m loving what I’ve seen thus far!

    This upcoming release has me a little puzzled though. On your WP plugin listing, I the following features are supposed to be coming up next:

    > multiple albums per user

    > albums for groups

    > shortcode embeddable photos

    > cache integration

    > clean uninstall command

    The one I care the most about, by far, is albums for groups. I noticed many others have requested it in this thread as well. However I did not see it among your features listed for the next release. So, uhm, will I get to play with group-albums by Monday or not? :)

    Amazing work is being done here mate, I hope to take a small part in the process.


    Boris
    Participant

    @travel-junkie

    @foxly

    I’d do the rewrite no problem. I’d need access to the code though. I’m under the impression that your database model has changed quite a bit and I can’t test, for example, if a whole gallery shows up in a blog post if I don’t know how to get the info from the db.

    It’s fine if you don’t want me playing around with your code before it’s properly released, but that’d mean I’d have to wait until after 0.1.7.

    Cheers,

    Boris


    modemlooper
    Moderator

    @modemlooper

    one other thing I think you should include is a global album directory viewed at url.com/albums

    Users can have option if they want images viewable in the global directory or not.


    Tosh
    Participant

    @xberserker

    ^ ahh, good idea. I like that.


    bpisimone
    Participant

    @bpisimone

    Liking modemloopers idea. Just to have said something today as well.


    r-a-y
    Keymaster

    @r-a-y

    @foxly

    New screenshots look great!

    Impressed with the development pace of the plugin.


    foxly
    Participant

    @foxly

    @Modemlooper – Yes, but not this week … :)

    @Sadr – The features you listed off were the features from three days ago, when we uploaded that release to WP. lol.

    Here’s the latest list:

    FEATURES IN THE UPCOMING 0.1.7 RELEASE

    1) Multiple album capability based on image tags. We will be mimicking Flickr’s image tagging, sorting, and gallery functions. Users will be able to tag their images, and create albums based on the tags they apply.

    There will be two classes of image tags: user tags, and admin tags. User tags can be used for sorting and grouping images, admin tags can be used by administrators to approve images for various purposes, as well as for use by other plugins on the site. For example, on a dating site that charges users to view or upload images, or a realty site that charges realtors to post property photos.

    2) The ability to tag site members in photos, with the ability for the photo owner to remove unwanted tags from their photo, and the ability for a user that has been tagged in the photo by the owner to remove themselves as well. The tagging system will tie into the @mention system within BuddyPress. Support will be included for “bounding box” tags on images as is done on Flickr (face tags on FaceBook), but the function will not be activated in this release.

    3) Configurable thumbnail aspect ratios. There will be a setting in the admin menu that allows the plugin to be switched between “Facebook Style” AND “Flickr Style” thumbnail display.

    4) “Perfect” templates – all of the HTML will be generated IN the template and be fully editable by the template developer. Image rendering functions will accept size parameters. This will allow template developers to dramatically alter the look of the plugin.

    #1, #3, and #4 are finished. We have also added:

    5) Advanced image caching. The plugin has a 5-level cache with configurable JPG resolution and size.

    6) Three different template sets, to mimic the functionality of Flickr, Facebook, and “Generic BuddyPress”.

    7) EXIF data read. If the uploaded file has EXIF data, the plugin automatically imports it to the database.

    We *had* to add image caching, because in testing we found that with even just a few people browsing the site, performance on a shared server would be unacceptably slow. If for example you were on a HostGator $12.95 a month shared hosting plan, it would be about TEN SECONDS per page refresh with 4 people browsing photo albums. Caching brings that down to 1 second per page refresh.

    ****

    …Still, just a heads-up that running large social networking sites requires *serious* computing resources.

    For example:

    -If your site has 1,000 users, and each user has 100 images of average size from a modern digital camera, it will require 200 to 300 GIGS of storage space to hold them.

    -Regenerating the image cache on a site like that would take *two days* at 100% CPU usage on a 3.2 GHz dual core machine.

    -If each of those images gets viewed 10 times, you’ll go through 2.5TB of data transfer, which equals a dedicated 10 Mbit connection running at full speed, 24 hours a day for an entire month.

    -So just understand what you’re getting into if you’re thinking of being the next FaceBook …lol!

    ****

    @Travel-Junkie – I will try and get you a code snapshot later tonight so you can see what we’re doing. Thanks again for the help writing this feature!

    @Modemlooper – We’ll try! After we get 0.1.7 our we’ll get everyone to shout-out the features they want and we’ll pick our targets based on popularity.

    ^F^


    swingJazz (Jimmy Saputra)
    Participant

    @swingjazz

    @foxly

    An amazing plugin. Arigatou gozaimasu.


    Erlend
    Participant

    @sadr

    Thanks for the notice foxly. Still, I seem to not be getting it then. I have v0.1.6 installed on a WPMU BuddyPress install and all I can find is user albums. I expected group albums to pop up the same way the group wiki or group documents do, but no luck :(


    xspringe
    Participant

    @xspringe

    @Gpo1 That’s a great idea. Maybe they can work together with the MrMaz who already is working on a similar plugin that allows for not just photos but also other media attachments: https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/attachments-for-activity-items


    foxly
    Participant

    @foxly

    @Sadr – What is confusing you is the difference between a “release” build and a “development” build.

    We are using what are called “agile software development” methods [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development ] to decide on features, build, test, and revise our plugin software all at the same time.

    By using a concurrent versions system [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversion_(software) ] every developer on the team has their own version of the plugin with the features that they are adding.

    So when I say that something is “done”, I mean that it has been written and tested but has not necessarily been released yet.

    Every few days, the developers merge [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_(revision_control) ] our code branches together, and create a “beta” release. We then post it on this forum to allow all of our stakeholders (you guys!) to test it.

    After we are very, very sure that there are no bugs in the software, finally we post it as an “official” release on the WordPress plugin repository.

    We must be VERY careful about the quality of official releases, because they are automatically broadcast to every current user of our plugin, and even the tiniest defect could crash *thousands and thousands* of people’s websites.

    So, the version being offered on the WP plugin website is always many steps out of date.

    We’re planning to do our next code merge on Saturday or Sunday and get the 0.1.7 beta out for testing on Monday night.

    Considering that we’ve gone from *nothing* to this:

    http://foxly.ca/admin-screen-01.jpg

    http://foxly.ca/flickr-mode-01.jpg

    in ten days, I think we’re doing very well! :) :)

    ^F^


    modemlooper
    Moderator

    @modemlooper

    love it. I’m supporting this plugin in my iphone web app. http://buddiphone.com


    foxly
    Participant

    @foxly

    @Modemlooper – oh now THAT is cool! …I am *so* going to use that on a couple of my sites when you get it finished!

    ^F^


    Tosh
    Participant

    @xberserker

    @Modemlooper wow that is cool. That work on a Palm Pre as well?


    modemlooper
    Moderator

    @modemlooper

    @tosh

    it’s just a theme to mimic an iphone app. It uses some CSS3 jargon so if your mobile browser wont handle that it may look weird.


    jivany
    Participant

    @jivany

    First, fantastic plugin. I was planning to push my new site online this weekend but after seeing this plugin, I’m going to wait a little longer!

    I have one burning question though – Is there any way to grab the last X photos posted to the public activity stream? I want to put this on a “non Buddypress” landing page on my site as a quick photo stream to “entice” viewers to click into the activity stream, etc. I’m sure there’s a way, I’m just not seeing it.

    Thanks! I’m patiently waiting for Monday now!


    foxly
    Participant

    @foxly

    @jivany – The functionality you’re describing is basically the BP Album+ photo widget. We’ll probably get that out in the 0.1.8 release.

    ^F^


    pcwriter
    Participant

    @pcwriter

    @foxly

    Looking again at the screenshots you posted earlier, I just thought of something. Will it be possible for users to select which display style they prefer – Default, Facebook, Flickr? Or will that be a strictly admin-only option?


    courtenayc
    Member

    @courtenayc

    Looking forward to a widget. Thanks for all of your hard work!


    foxly
    Participant

    @foxly

    @pcwriter – As we envisioned it, it would be an admin-only option.

    In terms of design, we lean more to the “FaceBook” style of profile layout, where members have uniform profiles, as compared to the “MySpace” style where they’re allowed to go crazy with their profiles.

    Still, it would take perhaps an hour or two of work to implement switching between three (or thirty) different gallery templates on the user side. So if you guys would like this implemented, we can do it.

    Of course, the question is where we should fit this in the queue of other features to release.

    How important is this feature to everyone?

    ^F^


    foxly
    Participant

    @foxly

    @courtenayc – Thanks for the support!

    It makes a long, long day of coding worth it when we know people like our work. :) :)

    ^F^


    gpo1
    Participant

    @gpo1

    Foxly,Keep up the great work…. if you can look into this ,your plugin could be large for mobile & twitter users!

    Release an api for the album plugin so that devel can use it.

    If you can create a plugin for twidroid is the industry-standard twitter client for android and among the most used twitter applications .

    FYI http://twidroid.com/plugins

    twidroid supports plugins to allow android developers extend the core functionality with features such as sharing with other services or integrating your own url shortener.

    Sample:

    BUILD YOUR OWN – BASIC API & PLUGIN INSTRUCTIONS

    sending tweets from your own applications

    ### via web apps for android:

    //<html>

    //<h2>send a Message with twitter:// url handler</h2>

    //<p>Send a message via Twidroid</p>

    //</html>

    ###########

    ) creating plugins for twidroid

    plugins for twidroid need to respond to the mime-type: application/twidroid-plugin.get

    sample AndroidManifest.xml snippet from Google Maps 4 twidroid plugin:

    <activity android:icon=”@drawable/tweet_geo” android:name=”LocationDialog”

    android:label=”@string/chooser_label” android:theme=”@style/SpecialDialog”>

    <intent-filter>

    <category android:name=”android.intent.category.DEFAULT” />

    <action android:name=”com.twidroidplugins.maps.LocationDialog”/>

    <!– respond to mime-type application/twidroid-plugin.get –>

    <data android:mimeType=”application/twidroid-plugin.get” />

    <action android:name=”android.intent.action.GET_CONTENT” />

    </intent-filter>

    </activity>

    the plugin can return the following data types back to twidroid:

    Intent.EXTRA_TEXT use to return text to Twidroid

    setData to return a URL

    Extra Strings: “latitude”, “longitude” to return location information

    sample code snipped from Google Maps 4 twidroid plugin:

    this snipped shows how the plugin returns an URL as well as location information back to twidroid.

    Intent returnData = new Intent();

    returnData.setData(Uri.parse(“http://maps.google.com?q=&#8221;

    + myLocationOverlay.getLastFix().getLatitude()+ “,”

    + myLocationOverlay.getLastFix().getLongitude() ));

    returnData.putExtra(“latitude”, myLocationOverlay.getLastFix().getLatitude());

    returnData.putExtra(“longitude”, myLocationOverlay.getLastFix().getLongitude());

    setResult(RESULT_OK, returnData);

    finish();

    full source code for the Google Maps 4 twidroid plugin available at

    http://code.google.com/p/android-twitter-googlemaps/


    pcwriter
    Participant

    @pcwriter

    @foxly

    Thanks for your reply. And I apologize for my ambiguity. My question was more to satisfy my own curiosity than to anticipate any user demands.

    Giving my users the ability to switch between templates is not terribly important to me at this time. And I would tend to agree with keeping layouts more on the uniform side… I can just see my inbox flooding with “how do I fix this” type of questions.

    On the other hand, being a creative fellow myself – who really likes to fiddle with things, sometimes to the point of breaking them – I imagine many users would appreciate having the option to switch their album layout between 2 or 3 styles. (Of course, the lack of uniformity here could conceivably be cause for confusion among users.)

    We are building communities. I believe our focus thus needs to be on what our community desires as a whole, rather than on the caprices of individuals. But who am I to impose my own beliefs upon others? Ultimately, if a choice can be made, it should be by the user.

    My conclusion: keep it as admin-only for now – to get the next release out on schedule ;-). But let’s have some discussion about whether or not the option could – or should – be added to a future release.

    What say you gang?


    Bowe
    Participant

    @bowromir

    I have a feature request; Allow the storage of photos on a CDN provider. You already mentioned the potential memory/performance issues and I think a CDN solution for more “serious” communities could solve this problem. You could take a look at the W3 Total Cache plugin who has a robust and full featured CDN option in it’s plugin.


    finni3
    Participant

    @finni3

    I have a low priority request:

    Chosing what license pictures are published under.

    1. Let admin choose the default license. E.g. Creative commons

    2. Let users decide which license their pictures are published under. (For example, see flickr.com)

Viewing 25 replies - 51 through 75 (of 346 total)
  • The topic ‘BP Album+ || New Features Requests and Discussion’ is closed to new replies.
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