Update: PhotoQ v1.1b is a newer version of the same plugin but offering more features. Please check out and download the new version instead of this one, you won’t regret it.

PhotoQ is a WordPress photoblog plugin that makes your photoblogging life easier. It is most suited for “one photo a day”-style web pages i.e., classical photoblogs.

In essence, PhotoQ allows you to manage your future posts in a queue. The plugin then gives you the possibility to have the top of the queue automatically posted at a given interval. PhotoQ also takes away the hassle of browsing uploaded image files and embedding them into posts: You simply upload your photo to the queue and enter desired information about the photo. PhotoQ then automatically generates the post based on this information.

An example of a photoblog running on WordPress and PhotoQ can be found at http://www.whoismanu.com.

Feature List

• Queue-based photo management
• Hassle-free, fully automated posting of photo posts
• Possibility to add custom metadata to photo posts
• Thumbnail generation
• Automatic posting through cronjobs

Screenshots

Disclaimer

PhotoQ is somewhat experimental and I consider it nowhere near of being perfect. I rather consider PhotoQ to be a quick and dirty solution to give me the functionality I was missing in WordPress. Still, I think that PhotoQ can be useful to someone who tries to set up a photoblog with WordPress and that’s why I decided to make it public. However, I take no responsibility of what might happen if you choose to use it: You use PhotoQ at your own risk. On the other hand, do not hesitate to ask questions concerning PhotoQ if you get stuck – I would be glad to help.

Requirements

PhotoQ has been tested successfully under WordPress 2.2.1, 2.1, 2.0.6 and 2.0.2. However, it should run without problems under all WordPress 2 versions. If you are able to successfully run it under other versions, it would be nice to let me know.

Update: From version 2.3 onwards, WordPress handles categories differently. Users of WordPress 2.3 and higher should use PhotoQ version 1.0.2b or higher. Users of WordPress versions prior to 2.3 should use PhotoQ version 1.0.1b.

At the moment PhotoQ only runs with PHP safe_mode turned off. If there is any interest in a version that runs under PHP with safe_mode, I might consider making one available.

Version History

• 07.10.2007 – 1.0.2b: patch to make it compatible with WordPress 2.3. Users of WordPress 2.3 should use this version, users of older WordPress versions should stick to 1.0.1b.
• 22.01.2007 – 1.0.1b: fixed a bug that caused PhotoQ to handle some paths and urls improperly. Anyone wanting to use PhotoQ should update to this new version.
• 11.01.2007 – 1.0b: first public release.

Installation

1. Get this version of the PhotoQ Plugin (WP 2.3) (1.0.1b for WP < 2.3).
2. Save the “whoismanu-photoq.php” file into the “plugin” directory (wp-content/plugins)
3. If you plan to use the automatic posting capability, save the file “wimpq-cronpost.php” anywhere in your “public-html” directory
4. You now have to create a directory on your webserver where temporary image files, corresponding to the photos in your queue, will be stored. By default this is the directory “/wp-content/qdir” (called “qdir” directory from here on).
5. Make sure that the file permissions of the “qdir” directory are such that the plugin is allowed to write to it (otherwise, uploaded photos cannot be stored).
6. Once posted, photos are moved from “qdir” to another directory. PhotoQ organizes posted photos by year and month. Photos posted in January 2007 are consequently moved to an automatically generated directory with name “2007_01″. We call the directory that contains these “YYYY_MM” subdirectories “imgdir”. By default “imgdir” equals “/wp-content”. If you want to use some other directory as “imgdir”, you have to create it now.
7. Make sure that the file permissions of the “imgdir” directory are such that the plugin is allowed to write to it (otherwise, the “YYYY_MM” directories cannot be created and posted photos cannot be moved there from “qdir”).
8. You are almost done. Just go to the “Plugins” WordPress admin panel and activate the Photoq plugin.

Using PhotoQ – The Basics

Now that you successfully installed PhotoQ, you are ready to go. First you need to setup some of PhotoQ’s options:

1. In the “Options” panel of the WordPress Administration you should now have a subpanel labelled “PhotoQ”. Go there.
2. The first two fields tell PhotoQ where to look for the “qdir” and “imgdir” directories. If you did not stick to the default options during installation, you need to specify these directories here.
3. For now skip the “Meta fields” options
4. For every uploaded photo, PhotoQ automatically generates a thumbnail. With the “Thumbnail size” option you specify its size. PhotoQ always keeps the proportions of the generated thumbnail the same as in the original photo. You thus have three possibilities: either you fix the thumbnails height and let PhotoQ calculate the corresponding width, or you fix the width and have the height adapted, or you fix the largest side of the thumbnail to some value and have PhotoQ adapt the other side.
5. “Image size” specifies the size in which uploaded photos are shown on the website once they are posted and works essentially the same as “Thumbnail size”. Note however that the actual image file stays untouched i.e., it is not resized. The new image widths and heights are only used as “width” and “height” attributes of the HTML <IMG> tag and resizing is thus left to the web browser. Further, you have the option to keep the original image size by checking the corresponding checkbox.
6. If you are all confused now, I suggest that you set “Thumbnail size” to “Fixed height: 80px” and “Image size” to “Keep original image size” for the time being and play with the other options later.
7. You might want to check “Deleting Posts: Delete image files from server when deleting post”, otherwise the image files associated with a post are left on the server if you delete the post.
8. Skip the cronjob options for now and you are done. Click on “Update options” to save the changes.

Now comes the fun part, you are ready to manage your photo queue:

1. In the “Manage” panel of the WordPress Administration you should now have a subpanel labelled “PhotoQ”. Go there.
2. As you have not yet uploaded any photos the queue is empty. To upload a photo click the button “Add photo to queue”.
3. I think that the upload form is pretty self-explanatory. Choose a file to upload via the “Browse” button, choose the categories for this photo, add a title and a short description, and finally add it to the queue by hitting “Upload photo to queue”. If the title is too long you might want to enter a shorter slug.
4. If everything went smoothly, you should now see the photo you just uploaded in the queue. You can add another photo to the queue if you wish.
5. Each entry in the queue can be edited by clicking on “Edit”. This gives you the possibility to alter all the fields and also to reorder your queue by changing the “Position” value.
6. You can remove photos from the queue by clicking on “Delete”.
7. To publish the photo at the top of your queue hit “Post top of queue”. PhotoQ then automatically generates a post where the photo is placed in the content part and the thumbnail is placed in the excerpt. The description is stored in a custom field called “descr”. You have thus access to the photo and the thumbnail in any of your templates via the template tags the_content and the_excerpt, respectively, and you can access the description via the custom field “descr”.
8. The entry at the top of your queue should now be removed from the queue and appear as a new post on your web page.
9. Check the result directly on your web page or in the “Manage->Posts” section of the WordPress Administration panel.

Meta Fields

If you want to add more information to your photo posts than the title and description provided by default, you have the possibility to do so via “Meta Fields”. Assume you want to associate each photo with the place where the photo was taken:

1. Go to “Options->PhotoQ” in the WordPress Administration Panel.
2. Click “Add Meta Field”.
3. Give it a name, e.g. “place” and hit “Add Field”.
4. For every photo you upload you will now have an additional field called “place” where you can enter the desired information. Once posted the field is saved as a custom field with the same name.
5. The list of Meta Fields can be edited by clicking on “Rename” or “Delete”.
6. The three options “Upon Add/Delete/Rename” define whether changes you make to a Meta Field are also applied to the corresponding Custom Field of already posted photos. Example: Assume you already posted 20 photos and only then decide to add a new Meta Field called “place”. If you check “Upon Add, Add to already posted as well”, a Custom Field named “place” (with an empty value) will be added to all of the 20 already posted photos as well.

Automatic Posting Via Cronjobs

PhotoQ allows you to have the top of your queue posted at regular intervals. This is especially useful if you go on a vacation and still want your blog to go on. Just fill up the queue before you leave and have PhotoQ do the rest. To set up automatic posting, you need to do the following:

1. Set the frequency at which the posts should occur. This can be set in “Options->PhotoQ->Further Options”.
2. Remember where on your web server you saved the file “wimpq-cronpost.php”.
3. Setup a cronjob to execute “wimpq-cronpost.php” at your desired interval.
4. Upon each execution of “wimpq-cronpost.php”, PhotoQ checks whether the last occurred more than X hours ago (where X is the value you set in the PhotoQ Options panel). If so, the top of your queue is posted.
5. It might thus be a good idea to set the “PhotoQ Cronjob Frequency” slightly lower than the interval of the actual cronjob. E.g., assume you want a post once a day. Setup your cronjob to execute the “wimpq-cronpost.php” file once a day at the desired time and set the “Cronjob Frequency” in the “PhotoQ Options” to “23h”.
6. Note: If your webhost does not allow you to setup your own cronjob you might be able to do something similar with a WordPress plugin such as WP-Cron (I have not tested this, so should you be able to make PhotoQ work together with such a plugin, please drop me a line).

Making PhotoQ Better

Any comments, suggestions, bug reports, feature requests, contributions to future versions, etc., etc. are highly appreciated. Any help to improve PhotoQ is more than welcome.

Also, should you decide to make a photoblog using PhotoQ, please let me know. I would be more than happy to let the world know by linking to your site.