Picasa Web Album widget

Just finished the wordpress plugin : picasa web album widget.

This plugin is based on 2 other plugins,
one being: Rawlinsons picasa plugin
which worked, but required some modification of your theme, had no nice config screen, and was way to big for what we needed (6.8 Mb is too large)
the second one being: Vague dreams plugin. Which didn’t work (for me) but had the nice user interface (side bar widget control panel).

So I combined them both, taken what was good from both, and leaving behind the non working stuff ;)

Result is a plugin of 6 kb, which you just need to upload to your plugin directory and activate. Thats it
Then go to your sidebar widgets, drag / drop the plugin, set your params and you’re done !

See image below for the config section.

Plugin config

Some requirements :

- have the sidebar widgets installed (only before WP 2.2)
- php 5.1 or greater

How to determine an album id
What you could do, is go to your gallery / album as in
http://picasaweb.google.com/stefan.venken/Pets

(but on your own picasa site ofcourse)
then when you click the rss link down right below, you’ll see the album id

http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/stefan.venken/albumid/5066643161481670977?kind=photo&alt=rss&hl=en_US

the album id is then 5066643161481670977

!! Update (22/5/2007):
If you have Wordpress 2.2 do not activate the sidebar widgets plugin !!! it will make the other plugins crash.

Make sure you don’t activate them!
plugin screen

Update 23/5/2007:
Just rewrote the rss parser bit. Google mentions on their site the Zend framework as the way to go for writing plugins against their API’s. Since 4 people already mentioned fatal errors, I decided to give it a swing and try out the ‘old fashioned’ way.

Update 4/6/20007 (version 0.6.2)
Just uploaded a new version with some bugfixing and stabilizing bits of Adam Brown. Thanks a lot Adam!

Update 27/6/2007 (version 0.6.2)
Picasa just changed their rss feed, so a small update was needed for the image sizes …

Update 4/4/2008 (version 0.6.3)
Due to some changes in wordpress (version 2.5) I had to tweak the plugin a bit.
Should be fine now. For people running previous version (if they experience probs with the new one that is) can find the old version here.

Hope this works out for y’all.

New version can be downloaded below.

You can download the plugin here

84 Responses to “Picasa Web Album widget”

  1. Kivela, on May 22nd, 2007 at 10:07 pm Said:

    Just updated to 2.2

    Plugin works, but, and here it comes … widgets are default implemented in the core of 2.2, do not try to activate the sidebar widgets plugin first !

  2. Stas Sushkov, on May 23rd, 2007 at 1:54 pm Said:

    Wonderful, thank you a lot.
    Folcks lets vote for it to be added to wordpress.com!!!

  3. Kivela, on May 24th, 2007 at 2:52 am Said:

    Hi.

    Just finished the complete rewrite of the rss feed reader bit.
    Do let me know if this covers your problems.

    Kind regards,
    Stefan

  4. Tennessee Mom, on May 24th, 2007 at 3:21 am Said:

    It works beautifully now, thank you so much! It’s a much needed plugin, thanks for all your work!

  5. kivela, on May 24th, 2007 at 3:23 am Said:

    You’re welcome!

    Just glad to see it works for you now!

    Thanks for testing!

  6. Tennessee Mom, on May 24th, 2007 at 5:39 am Said:

    im willing to test anything you’d like to do… if you ever get the urge to lets say…. have your picasa albums/pictures on pages in your wordpress site… you know, if you ever get that urge… :)

  7. Brian, on May 24th, 2007 at 5:31 pm Said:

    Great job. the revised widget is perfect.

    Brian

  8. Julien, on June 1st, 2007 at 12:42 am Said:

    Very thanks you for debuging your fabulous pluging on my unluncky weblog ! great guy very useful ! very thanks a lot ! don’t miss that plugin ! download it !

  9. Jason, on June 2nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm Said:

    I have installed this but when it loads on my page it stops the whole page from loading. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, I have it all setup correctly, I think.

  10. Adam, on June 5th, 2007 at 12:28 am Said:

    Awesome work. Thanks.

    @Tennessee Mom: There’s already a widget that does that (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/picasaweb-inline-gallery/).

  11. Adam, on June 5th, 2007 at 1:48 am Said:

    Kivela:

    I know this is a bit presumptuous, but…

    I found and fixed several bugs, including the bug identified by Daniel GC above. In particular:

    * You need to include WP’s RSS processing functions into the plugin if it hasn’t already been included (e.g. by the RSS widgets). That’s what is causing Daniel GC’s bug.
    * You should wrap all foreach loops in is_array checks
    * MagpieRSS is a bit more finicky than your plugin allows for, so I wrote some double-check code into the plugin (on my system) to make it more robust.
    * There is some invalid XHTML in there.

    I would be happy to send you my version with the fixed bugs. I don’t see your email address anywhere. Send me an email, using any email address you like at my domain, and I’ll send it to you.

  12. Lon, on June 5th, 2007 at 5:19 am Said:

    looks excellent, just wish my current host offered php 5.1!

  13. Lucas, on June 13th, 2007 at 2:11 pm Said:

    Great job! Looks wonderfull. Many thanks for this great plugin!

    ps: Is it possible to link directly to the images and adding a rel=”lightbox” parameter to the urls?

  14. Lucas, on June 13th, 2007 at 4:15 pm Said:

    Never mind! got it :-) easy hack

  15. Abhishek, on June 22nd, 2007 at 5:02 pm Said:

    It dosen’t work on my site. Shows ‘plugin could not be activated due to a fatal error’ when trying to activate it.

  16. Alex, on June 24th, 2007 at 5:44 am Said:

    Anyone know a plugin that will simply put a gallery in a page - that works? I tried WP Picasa and it doesn’t seem to..

  17. sqjtaipei, on June 25th, 2007 at 1:32 pm Said:

    I am getting the fatal error too…

  18. Richard, on June 25th, 2007 at 6:50 pm Said:

    Thanks for updating this plugin. It works great, and it’s the only one that I’ve seem to be able to get to work on Dreamhost.

    Thanks, it’s awesome!

  19. m@, on June 27th, 2007 at 3:14 am Said:

    Looks like Google made a change to Picassa. The thumbnails are quite large on your site and my site suddenly. Any ideas why this is happening?

  20. Kivela, on June 27th, 2007 at 8:47 am Said:

    m@: Indeed, it looks like Picasa changed its output, I’ll digg into this tonight and update the script, will keep you posted !

  21. Kivela, on June 28th, 2007 at 12:44 am Said:

    Just updated the plugin so that it works with the correct sizing again, will email you all the new php version, thanks for the tip you ‘all

  22. Julien, on June 28th, 2007 at 9:50 am Said:

    hi kivela,

    i’ve the same problem on my website, i try with your new plugin fix but nothing change, i will try another thing but i don’t know if it will work, could you delete my post under your “about” page, yesterday i made a mistake, sorry

  23. Kivela, on June 29th, 2007 at 8:33 am Said:

    Hi,

    Are you sure that you’re working with the new one, and that the size in the config is not set to 288?
    Because if I look to the html source of your site, I can’t see the reworked source code.

    What you can do to make sure that the old one isn’t cached is the following.

    - delete the picasaWebAlbumWidget.php file on your site
    - refresh your homepage in the browser (no picasa images should appear)
    - copy the file I send to you to your site
    - refresh your homepage once more (the new plugin is used and the size should be perfect

    Kind regards,

    Stefan

  24. Julien, on June 29th, 2007 at 2:21 pm Said:

    i don’t know why that doesn’t work before, i tried one more time and now picture are at 144 pixels, but another problem is that under IE 6 (i haven’t tested at this time on IE 7) is that the columns with the Picasa wek album plugin go under … you can see that it’s a bug we already have, I need one more time your help my kind kivela ;)

  25. Brock, on July 1st, 2007 at 4:47 pm Said:

    When I tried to activate the plugin I got the following message: “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.” I just upgraded to WP 2.2.1 but I did not activate the sidebar widgets plugin. Is there something I am missing?

  26. Julien, on July 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 am Said:

    plugin now work perfectly on IE 7.0 but not on IE 6.0, got the same trouble that i describe before : the columns with the Picasa wek album plugin go under, when desactivating the plugin, the column came up normally

  27. Julien, on July 3rd, 2007 at 2:23 pm Said:

    Hi stephan, i think i have found the issue but don’t know how to fix

    it’s because the pictures aren’t forced to align left, and because of that, picture are little centered and are taking much space like before that can’t be filled, so the columns go down for don’t collapse the other (hope you will understand my english talking)

    thanks for your help

    Julien

  28. elcarpo, on July 11th, 2007 at 5:33 am Said:

    hey! i love yor plugin, is just what i need, except for a little missfunction

    the sidebar where the picasa web album is posted “goes up”, like trying to fill the space right next to the picture
    This happens with wichever widget comes next, except with the adsense code.

    thanks a lot for your work and patience!

  29. Rkn, on July 19th, 2007 at 2:01 pm Said:

    Great widget! And working fine! A question: would be possible in the future releases to be able to take the thumbnails from the last n albums? You already provide from 1 album, or ALL albums, but I would like to have from last N albums. I have over 100 albums on Picasa, so neither 1 or ALL is good for me. I would like to be able to random choose from last, let’s say, 10 albums.

  30. Laura, on August 9th, 2007 at 3:37 pm Said:

    What a great widget… thanks! Works really good with my WP 2.0

  31. Lon, on August 24th, 2007 at 2:53 pm Said:

    Hey, i finally got a host with php greater than 5.1, and it looks fantastic! thanks for all your work. one thing though, is that it occasionally causes my site to have a internal server error 500, and i’m told by support it’s due to the php taking a bit too long to run…

    i’m wondering if that really could be the case, and if so, if there’s any way of further optimizing it? and they won’t let me use zend optimizer with my package.

    thanks so much for all you’ve done already!

  32. jameswillisisthebest, on September 8th, 2007 at 11:19 pm Said:

    This is my first post
    just saying HI

  33. seb., on October 24th, 2007 at 9:46 pm Said:

    hi there, first thanks for your wonderful and useful plug in!

    Do someone know if it’s possible to display two instances of the plugin, in order to show 2 different album?

    I’ve tried to copy the picasaWebAlbumWidget folder and rename it, but when I try to active the 2nd instance I’ve got a fatal error :
    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class wp_picasawebalbumwidget in …/…2/picasaWebAlbumWidget.php on line 12

    thanks for your help!

  34. Bogdan, on October 31st, 2007 at 3:49 pm Said:

    I created a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily insert pictures from your Picasa albums into your posts or pages. You may check it out here: http://bogde.ro/computers/picasa-lightbox.htm

    Comments are highly appreciated.

  35. Mike, on November 3rd, 2007 at 9:38 pm Said:

    I cannot get the plugin to show up in the plugins menu after uploading the folder. I have also tried uploading the php file by it self, that didn’t work either. any ideas.

    I’m using WordPress 2.3

  36. Zeus, on November 12th, 2007 at 5:17 am Said:

    Plugin works great! Best one I’ve tried out! Thanks so much

  37. Dave, on November 24th, 2007 at 7:58 am Said:

    Plug in works great, super find. Thanks so much.

    Is there a way to deactivate the plugin for just one page (not post)? I’m using 2.3.1 as well.
    TIA,
    Dave

  38. PabloAM, on December 7th, 2007 at 3:35 am Said:

    I have this problem:
    “Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘}’ in /home/users/23/pablopsb/www/www.pabloam.com.ar/wp-content/plugins/picasaWebAlbumWidget.php on line 13″

    can you help me, please?

  39. larry, on January 7th, 2008 at 10:20 pm Said:

    same error as pablo…when activate…get error on line 13 parse error and cannot activate. has this been tested with 2.3.1???? HELP

  40. Cyrus, on January 12th, 2008 at 8:15 pm Said:

    Hey. Great plugin! I’ve been looking for something like this.
    but is there a way of changing the thumbnail sizes? Is 144 the lowest it can go?

    Thanks.

  41. m@, on February 25th, 2008 at 7:33 am Said:

    I tried out a new theme, but it won’t work as the default selections for widths are too wide for the columns in the theme. Do you know if it’s possible to change the width setting? I tried a simple find/replace as that is my knowledge of code, but that won’t allow me to grab the feed anymore and the images don’t even show up.

  42. sean, on March 5th, 2008 at 1:50 am Said:

    At the time of writing this your Picasa Web Album widget is the only working plugin of its kind. All the others are broken. Thanks so much.

  43. blamsa, on March 30th, 2008 at 5:08 pm Said:

    In wordpress 2.5 doesn’t work. I try to add the widget to the sidebar and when I press the save button the widget doesn’t add.
    Any solution??

  44. rkn, on March 30th, 2008 at 9:04 pm Said:

    Yep, not working with WP 2.5. Any solution? is my question also.

  45. Max Hoffmann, on March 30th, 2008 at 11:33 pm Said:

    Hi Stefan,
    I would like to add that I really like your plugin and I am anxious to use it under 2.5

    Thanks in advance,
    Max.

  46. Nicholas Yax, on April 1st, 2008 at 9:01 pm Said:

    I am having the same problem with 2.5. Add widget, click save changes, widget is not in sidebar anymore.

  47. rkn, on April 2nd, 2008 at 2:35 pm Said:

    I wrote to Stefan and his words are: “Hope to give you a working update by saturday night”. So, let’s wait till Sunday. Thank you, Stefan!

  48. Kivela, on April 4th, 2008 at 5:51 pm Said:

    Uploaded a new version of the plugin. (and migrated my own blog to 2.5) Do let me know if you face any problems.

    Kind regards, Stefan

  49. m@, on April 4th, 2008 at 9:25 pm Said:

    Works great. Thanks for the update. I appreciate it.

  50. Max Hoffmann, on April 5th, 2008 at 1:06 pm Said:

    Yes, thanks for the update. Works over here too. Thank you very much!

  51. WordPress Plugins Database » Plugin Details » Picasa Web Album Widget, on April 9th, 2008 at 7:18 am Said:

    […] Visit […]

  52. Ike, on April 12th, 2008 at 2:29 am Said:

    Hey… this is the best random picasa photos plugin…

    I have a minor problem; With english characters in picasa album names, everthing goes fine but when I use non-english characters in album names the pictures show up once and never again for another session.

  53. Vytenis, on April 12th, 2008 at 8:55 am Said:

    Hi,

    Thanks for a great plug in! Others I have tried don’t work. Keep up the good work!

    –
    V.

  54. www.evertuelle.com » Mentions légales, on April 12th, 2008 at 8:31 pm Said:

    […] Picasa Web Album Widget de Stefan Venken, […]

  55. JB, on May 1st, 2008 at 9:00 pm Said:

    Hello, I am using wordpress 2.5 and picasa2 - I used the rss feed to find my album and it is empty when I put it in. If I leave it blank my published albums images show up?? Is there something new with the album ID’s. I see the RSS code is different than the example you have originally posted.

  56. Freeman, on May 10th, 2008 at 12:07 am Said:

    Hi Stefan, i just changed my theme of WP and i’m not using anymore the Widget system. Either, i’m looking for a solution to use your (or maybe other ?) plugin to see my picasa albums to my web site

    any idea ?

    help would be appreciated ! kind regards

  57. nformation » Widgets, on May 21st, 2008 at 1:33 am Said:

    […] one of my photo galleries visible on the page again. The widget I’ve been using is “Picasa Web Album Widget” in case anyone is looking for […]

  58. WWW-KR, on May 29th, 2008 at 11:49 pm Said:

    This Plugin doesn’t integrated the Pictures to the Boxes in i3Theme 1.6 Theme. Whow can I do to fix this problem?

  59. KAM, on June 4th, 2008 at 10:04 pm Said:

    Widget works great! I didn’t think I would find one - thanks for your work!

  60. Doug, on June 10th, 2008 at 4:20 am Said:

    Hi Stefan
    Outstanding effort. I love it. Great job.

    Doug

  61. Bas, on June 12th, 2008 at 10:57 pm Said:

    Thanks! Will definitely be using this.

    Bas

  62. Max Hoffmann, on June 19th, 2008 at 4:36 pm Said:

    Silly question, but …
    Is this great plugin supposed to work for more than one user, i.e. could one enter more than one username and the plugin randomly picks pictures from gallerys of those users?
    Is there an easy way to extend this?

    Best regards,
    Max.

  63. Max Hoffmann, on June 20th, 2008 at 8:15 pm Said:

    Hi Stefan,
    here comes the answer I raised earlier today on your blog. I needed your plugin to pull pictures from more than one user. I make a blog with two friends and we want to show pictures from each of us in a random manner. Now one can enter several names seperated with space or only one user. It does not work with the album id anymore I think but it works for me. Let me know if you are interested in a diff or something.

    Take care,
    Max

  64. 50+ Wordpress随机插件 | 帕兰 像, on July 1st, 2008 at 12:36 pm Said:

    […] Picasa Web Album Widget: 随机显示Picasa图像到Wordpress的侧边 . […]

  65. 五毒 » Blog Archive » Wordpress随机插件, on July 11th, 2008 at 3:32 am Said:

    […] 可以指定显示某个分类文 下的图片. Picasa Web Album Widget: 随机显示Picasa图像到Wordpress的侧边 . Wordpress 随机日志插件Random […]

  66. ilkerjaN, on July 11th, 2008 at 10:18 pm Said:

    perfecto

  67. JoaoVr, on July 18th, 2008 at 7:57 pm Said:

    Its possible to add other thumbnail sizes? Like with 200?
    Thank you

  68. » Picasa Web Album Widget - WordPress Plugins Catalog, on November 28th, 2008 at 8:27 pm Said:

    […] Plugin Homepage » […]

  69. JoaoVr, on November 30th, 2008 at 5:51 pm Said:

    Hi There,
    Is the plugin WordPress 2.7 compatible?

    Dindt saw it on:
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Plugin_Compatibility/2.7

    Thank You

  70. SAP Lobby » 50+ Wordpress随机插件 zz, on December 25th, 2008 at 5:27 pm Said:

    […] Picasa Web Album Widget: 随机显示Picasa图像到Wordpress的侧边 . […]

  71. En.nicuilie.eu Blogs » Top 1000 WordPress Plugin Authors, on December 31st, 2008 at 10:16 am Said:

    […] Picasa Web Album Widget […]

  72. Jonathan, on January 21st, 2009 at 6:03 pm Said:

    thanks, works ;-)
    But the thumbnail option is a bit confusing: its the option to activate, that people come to the album clicking on the thumbnail.

  73. 我想网 » Blog Archive » 50+ Wordpress随机插件, on April 3rd, 2009 at 7:01 am Said:

    […] Picasa Web Album Widget: 随机显示Picasa图像到Wordpress的侧边 . […]

  74. 50+ Wordpress随机插件 | 互联网的那点事..., on April 11th, 2009 at 11:02 am Said:

    […] Picasa Web Album Widget: 随机显示Picasa图像到Wordpress的侧边 . […]

  75. نت نوشت » 5 راه برای ایجاد آلبوم از گالری های Picasa برای وب, on May 16th, 2009 at 12:19 pm Said:

    […] دیگه هستش برای وردپرس که اطلاعات کامل و تنظیملتش رو اینجا می تونید ببینید. var addthis_pub = ‘alipb’; var addthis_language = ‘en’;var […]

  76. 4images, on May 16th, 2009 at 1:04 pm Said:

    Thanks in advance

  77. Resim, on May 16th, 2009 at 1:05 pm Said:

    Plugin works great! Best one I’ve tried out! Thanks so much

  78. All Car Pictures, on May 29th, 2009 at 1:44 am Said:

    Those are nice festivals. I was able to witness the Durbar Festival when I was assigned in Nigeria for a project. I enjoyed their festival and was amazed at how the Nigerians celebrate it. I also wish to roam around the world and witness other countries’ festivals, too.

  79. All Car Pictures, on May 29th, 2009 at 1:45 am Said:

    But the thumbnail option is a bit confusing: its the option to activate, that people come to the album clicking on the thumbnail.

  80. Program İndir, on May 29th, 2009 at 1:45 am Said:

    […] Plugin Homepage » […]

  81. maxgxldealer, on May 31st, 2009 at 11:01 pm Said:

    Mornin`

    nice content..
    thanx man for sharing

  82. Lunar Meadows » Blog Archive » Welcome!, on June 22nd, 2009 at 2:28 am Said:

    […] Arthemia theme for WordPress and uses the following plugins: Twitter Tools, WP-o-Matic, the Picasa Web Album Widget, and Advanced Excerpt. Any flaws in the code of this site are most likely entirely my […]

  83. CrashR, on July 15th, 2009 at 2:04 am Said:

    Wordpress 2.8.1 is out now. Will you be updating this plug-in? Last time this was updated was April of 2008.

  84. Daniel, on December 10th, 2009 at 1:57 am Said:

    Muito obrigado, um otimo plugin. Perfekt!!
    Thanks
    Daniel

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