NextGEN Gallery V1.5.0

I’ve uploaded the new version. I would like to highlight three new features :

1. Backup feature : You can now create a backup when you resize the original images, and recover them later if needed
2. Post thumbnail support : I’ve added the full Post Thumbnail support, which is a excellent feature in the new WordPress V3.0 Theme TwentyTen
3. Auto translation file loader : Now you can download via one click the latest language file. look for it in the overview menu

Please let me note, that the current version is not compatible with BuddyPress or WPMU, I will look for this in the next month.

Please report any bug in the forums. Thanks !

Download NextGEN Gallery Version 1.5.0
Release version @ wordpress.org

Say thank you !

A german blog call for a campaign on the 15.Oct. :

Donate one Euro (or more) for your favorite developer…

That’s a great thing, I think I should donate my favorite plugin…

XMLRPC attack

Tse, tse, tse… 100 attempts in the last two hours. Disabled xmlrpc.php for the moment, should be better until the first rush is over. One friends blog are already attacked, luckily their didn’t damaged too much. Was my fault, didn’t updated the version 😦

Goodbye PHP4

I’m currently working on some new extension for NextGEN-Gallery. One target is better support to fetch images via a API similar to FlickR. This idea is born since I have my new QNAP NAS : All my images are now located on my NAS and now I would like to show them in a nice slideshow, search for them, organize them to galleries/albums, access from my NAS WordPress blog and so on…
The first tests are great, but for an easier implementation (in this case JSON) I need a PHP5.2 installation. I know that WordPress itself wait as long as possible to switch to PHP5 exclusive, but I can’t wait anymore.

For Version 1.4.X you need PHP5 for the full power of functions, from today I will not longer support PHP4.

Better media handling into core ?

WordPress 2.9 seems to be focus on a better media handling, which is a long awaiting feature for all NGG users. Please vote on the development blog now! You can be sure that I will work on a import filter into the core gallery, when WordPress 2.9 is ready, so that you didn’t loose all your work and effort which you put on NGG….

Hopefully they take a lot of your input, to get the best media gallery system.

Dear hoster : We need more memory !

A lot of people update to WordPress 2.8 and get the message :

Allowed memory size of 33554433 bytes exhausted

So, with WP2.8 we reached now the limit of many hosters (32MB), who is the bad boy ? Can we increase the limit ? I faced a similar problem here with my homepage and wrote a simple plugin for the WordPress dashboard which shows up the limit and current usage. Just for the notes, a WordPress 2.3 + NextGEN Gallery and 10 other plugins require 16.32 Mbyte memory.

Ok, what is the limit for a fresh WordPress 2.8 installation under PHP 4 and PHP 5 ?

Subalbum – NextGEN Gallery V1.3.0 released

As you can read from the WordPress blog, the version 2.8 should be released on June, 10th. So I speed up the release of NGG , I hope there are no more major bugs inside. What is new in this version ? 

There are two,three things I would highlight :

1. Subalbum support

As often requested, I extend the album system in the way that you can add a album inside another album. Therefore you can add now on the album page for each album a description text and a preview image.  As limitation you are not longer able to add more that one album to a post/page.

2. Search for images

In the gallery tab you are now able to search for images. I know that many people requested as well a search in the front-end, but here I need a bit more time. It’s still on my task list…

3. AJAX navigation for gallery and imagebrowser
Thanks to the contribution from Anty we have now a Ajax navigation. See a demo here : Imagebrowser or gallery. It’s limited to the inbuilt Shutter reloaded effect, so if you use any other javascript image effect it’s requires a modification of the AJAX script code. You can request help at the forums.

Here is the full changelog :

– NEW : Subalbum support
– NEW : Search for images in the admin tab
– NEW : Add new gallery also in manage tab
– NEW : AJAX support for Imagebrowser and gallery navigation (THX to Anty)
– NEW : Added zip upload via URL (THX to Juan Jose Galvez)
– Added : jQuery Multiple File Upload Plugin v1.44
– Added : SWFUpload V2.2.0
– Changed : Remove extension for Alttext during first import
– Changed : Meta tag added via wp_head hook (THX to Viper)
– Bugfix : Correct various PHP notice messages
– Bugfix : Typo fix in custom fields for ngg_gal_ImageBrowser
– Bugfix : Avoid upload of images in gallery without correct capability

As always please request help via the wordpress.org forums, no help in the comment section.

wordTube with plugin support

After a very long break I start to work on wordTube again. I recognize that the plugin features for the JW Media Player are now much easier to implement and so I added this feature to wordTube.

So what is the benefit for you ?

For example : You can add now a great rating tool to your videos, see here for a demo. Have a look at LongTail for all available plugins. Additional you can override all global flash settings via the custom fields. Detailed explanation here. wordTube version 2.20 is now available at WordPress.org

Why GPL ?

Why GPL ?

In the last weeks I read a lot about the GPL discussion for WordPress themes and you maybe noticed the recent reaction of the Cforms plugin author. NextGEN Gallery is as well a popular plugin at wordpress.org and here is my opinion why GPL is not a bad thing :

The most authors argue that someone grap their work and make money with it, so the minimum return of invest is a backlink to the author page. I think the most of them doesn’t understand the idea behind GPL. Yes, you can release a code under a other licence, Creative Commons contains some version where you can disallow to remove attribution or the use in a commercial project, so why should be all code at wordpress.org restricted to GPL ?

Please keep in you mind :

Does the Apache team require a backlink to their page, due to fact that you use it ?

Does the PHP team require a backlink to their page, due to fact that you use it ?

Does the MySQL team require a backlink to their page, due to fact that you use it ?

Does the WordPress team require a backlink to their page, due to fact that you use it ?

None of this projects require a link in any footer, for none of them you need to spend any cent to use it in a project. And if you are a talent web developer you can sell a setup of a simple web page to your clients, within a minute.

But why should they still develop these great product, if nobody need to pay for it ? What’s the motivation ?

Here is my personal view as plugin author :

I started to program my plugins just for my own projects and feel that when I release the code I can return a little bit to the community instead of donate anybody some money. Of course not everybody is able to program plugins, themes or whatever, so a donation is a great motivation any way. But I cannot claim that you maybe use it for a project where your client paid a lot of money. Some of my plugins are not so popular (like wp-table) and I closed the develeopment, because I never need it again, it did the work a long time for me and so I see no reason to continue the work..

But what happened if a plugin, a theme, a CMS or a blog system gets popular ?

First of all you receive more feedback, maybe other programmers contribute to your project, then – and this is the most important part – you are able to sell your knowledge ! As author of a plugin, a program or a theme you have the best knowledge about it and sometimes a company require your help. For you it’s maybe a simple thing and here you can get your best motivation to continue your development.

My plugin NextGEN Gallery is approx. 500.000 times downloaded and during the success a couple of people donate money for more features or even they would say thanks for the work. THIS is my motivation and for the rare case (I don’t belive it) it has still more success, I maybe able to create some buisness around it.

If you see how PHP, WordPress or other large projects evolved, you can see how GPL could help you. Please keep in your mind, YOU are the author of the code and you have the best knowledge about, so don’t restricted it with some silly links.

For all the people which could not follow my opinion I suggest to read also the arguments from Owen Winkler and Justin Tadlock.

NextGEN Gallery V1.00 – A revolutionary gallery system

Today is a great day ! It’s the release of NextGEN Gallery v1.00, a breakthrough gallery system for WordPress 2.7, with a revolutionary UI …(Ups, take the keynote from Steve Jobs). Ok, let’s get serious :

I’m working on this release the last half year, from the very first version ( Published at 09.march 2007 ) till today I learned a lot about PHP, WordPress and plugin coding. The code of this plugin evolved not in all direction straight forward, so it was time to rework parts without including more and more features. It’s a hard way to program a gallery system, which should not end up as Gallery2/Coppermine clone, but contain all needed features for the requirements of 10.000 users.

This new version is for myself a milestone, the code is now much more flexible and a good start for future enhancements. Here is a small summary about the changes :

• It import all tags into the WordPress core taxonomy system, so it drop two database tables
• Added a flexible template engine, so that you can restyle the output for your needs
• Support of ImageMagick , thanks to the work of Frederic de Ranter
• Core support of MediaRSS and Cooliris/PicLens, thanks to the work of Vincent Prat
• Move / Copy images between galleries
• Show Exif / Meta information inside the imagebrowser or single picture

A look into the future :
WordPress increases with every major release the amount of functions, also the core gallery systems is now much more flexible and I’m sure that it will be still be extended in the future. I think I should start a nice transition into the core gallery so that you can switch of the plugin if you didn’t need it longer for your purpose. For example : Some users requested a comment feature on every image, this is already a feature of the core gallery system, so I didn’t need to reprogram this part. NextGEN Gallery offers a folder and gallery based structure, the WordPress Gallery is a post/page based gallery structure, but it’s possible to sync both structures with a index key.

I’m open for all your ideas and recommendation, thanks to all the testers, translators and users which support me during the last two years.

Get the new version here :

Download NextGEN Gallery Version 1.0.0
Release version @ WordPress.org