Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

Aylwin

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#1 09-15-2006, 12:31 AM

Join Date: Aug 2006

Posts: 15

Location: Finland

Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

There are quite a few blogging tools out there, from the simple to complicate, from free to paid. For me, I've settled with Wordpress. It's not very simple (at least not for complete newbies) but it's not too complicated to get working. But, it can actually be as complicated as you want it to be and with the right skills you can build a very impressive blog site.

I take lots of photos so naturally I want to share them also. My tool of choice is Gallery (version 2.x.x). It's probably more bulky and complex compared to the other options but it's modular, feature-rich, flexible and quite powerful.

The nice thing with Wordpress and Gallery is that I can integrate the two seamlessly together using a Wordpress plugin called WPG2. The result is a single site with my photos and posts all together with a uniform layout and design.

Of course, there are many different choices you can make when putting together a blog, an online photo gallery or both. Wordpress+Gallery+WPG2 might not be the best but it's the path I chose. In case anyone's interested in doing the same, I'll share some tips and tricks on this thread about how to put together a WPG2 site. If you have any tips/tricks of your own, please do share.

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My devsite

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Brandon

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#2 09-16-2006, 12:28 AM

Join Date: Jul 2006

Posts: 10,990

Location: Topeka, KS

Re: Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

I don't know any wordpress/gallery tips yet.. I've sorta lost time to finish up my wife's site

After I get the sites on the new server, I'll have more time for her site.

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Aylwin

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#3 09-16-2006, 01:08 AM

Join Date: Aug 2006

Posts: 15

Location: Finland

Re: Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

Getting Started

Before you can start integrating your site, obviously you'll first need to install Wordpress and Gallery. My advice here is to install Wordpress and Gallery one after the other and make sure that each is working fine on its own before attempting to integrate the two using the WPG2 plugin. Also, I recommend installing Gallery under your Wordpress directory. For example, if Wordpress is at yourdomain.com/blog/ then Gallery will be at yourdomain.com/blog/gallery2/. This is not really necessary but I find it easier to maintain the integrated site.

As for the actual installation and configuration, both Wordpress and Gallery are well documented:
Wordpress Codex
Gallery Codex

If you need help, their respective forums are very good:
Wordpress Support
Gallery Forum

IMPORTANT: Make sure you install Wordpress 2.0.x and Gallery 2.1.x. These version are required for WPG2 version 2.0.

Once both Wordpress and Gallery are working fine independently, the next step is to install the WPG2 plugin. You can find the documentation and support forums below:
WPG2 Wiki
WPG2 Forums

Of course, if anyone has any questions I can also try to answer them here.

Next time, I'll share some tips about optimizing your Wordpress theme for WPG2...

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My devsite

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Brandon

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#4 09-16-2006, 03:16 PM

Join Date: Jul 2006

Posts: 10,990

Location: Topeka, KS

Re: Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

I stickied this

I don't have time to look really cuz the format and new server..

but I will asap

thank you Aylwin

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Aylwin

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#5 09-21-2006, 06:04 AM

Join Date: Aug 2006

Posts: 15

Location: Finland

Re: Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

One of the important things you need to decide is which Wordpress Theme to use. There are many many themes available out there so you're very likely to find a theme of your liking.

Once you've downloaded and installed the theme of your choice, you'll most likely need to modify it a bit so it works well with your integrated WPG2 site.

I've optimized a few popular themes and made them available for download on my dev site. There are also some on the WPG2 forums.

If there's no optimized version of the theme of your choice, you can always make the necessary modifications yourself. I've written some instructions how to do that.

Wordpress theme optimization guide for WPG2

Before you begin
- if you need to modify the header.php file of the Wordpress theme to suite your needs, try to do this before proceeding
- it's recommended that you use a Gallery2 theme which is optimized for Wordpress integration, like the WordpressEmbedded Gallery2 Theme for Gallery 2.1.

Create wpg2header.php
- make a copy of your Wordpress theme's header.php file and name it wpg2header.php
- open wpg2header.php and look for:

Code:

	<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">

- below this line, add:

Code:

	<?php if (isset($g2data['headHtml'])) {
		list($g2_title, $g2_css, $g2_javascript) = GalleryEmbed::parseHead($g2data['headHtml']);
		foreach ($g2_css as $css) { echo "$css \r\n"; }
		foreach ($g2_javascript as $javascript) { echo "$javascript \r\n"; }
	} ?>

- look for a line like:

Code:

	<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><?php wp_title(); ?></title>

- in the line, replace

Code:

<?php wp_title(); ?>

with

Code:

 &raquo; <?php echo $g2_title; ?>

- at the end of the file look for something like:

Code:

<div id="content">

If the code doesn't exist, no problem. It's probably in the index.php file.

- replace it with or add:

Code:

<div id="wpg2content">

Update the style.css file
- open style.css and look for something like the example below:

Code:

#content {
	width:510px;
	float:left;
	padding:5px;
	margin:0;
	overflow:hidden;
	display:inline;
}

- create a copy of this block and name it #wpg2content:

Code:

#content {
	width:510px;
	float:left;
	padding:5px;
	margin:0;
	overflow:hidden;
	display:inline;
}
#wpg2content {
	width:510px;
	float:left;
	padding:5px;
	margin:0;
	overflow:hidden;
	display:inline;
}

- in most cases, the width of #content is the width of your theme minus the sidebar. Usually, we don't include the WP sidebar in the embedded gallery to have more space for the photos. So, we can make #wpg2content as wide as the theme. Example:

Code:

#wpg2content {
	width:740px;
	float:left;
	padding:0px;
	margin:0;
	overflow:hidden;
	display:inline;
}

Note: The above code for #content and #wpgcontent are just examples. The actual code will depend on your particular theme. Also, other parameters (like padding or margin) may need to be tweaked.

Add the WPG2 alignment classes
- at the end of style.css, add:

Code:

/* WPG2 alignment classes */

.g2image_normal {
	margin: 4px;
}

.g2image_float_left {
	float: left;
	clear: left;
	margin: 4px;
}

.g2image_float_right {
	float: right;
	clear: right;
	margin: 4px;
}

.g2image_centered {
	display: block;
	margin-left: auto;
	margin-right: auto;
}

Revalidate
- go to Wordpress Site Admin and click on the WPG2 menu

--------------------
My devsite

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emiratesmac

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#6 10-13-2006, 02:07 AM

emiratesmac will become famous soon enough

Join Date: Oct 2006

Posts: 4

Re: Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

I've used a particular forum with corresponding RSS feed as a sort of blog on my site. I wouldn't mind using WP, in fact I do on many other sites I run, but I'd love to see integration with vB. At least so that a post to the blog in WP automatically creates a new thread in a vB forum, whereby users can comment on the story in vB. And a count of the number of comments showing up in WP would also be nice.

Any such thing exists somewhere? If not, I'll probably just keep using vB however limited it is.

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Brandon

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#7 10-13-2006, 06:42 AM

Join Date: Jul 2006

Posts: 10,990

Location: Topeka, KS

Re: Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

That would be nice, I haven't seen anything that does that but I haven't been looking.. I still have some work to do on our blog, one of these days I'll have time for it.

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vwdforum

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#8 10-29-2006, 06:07 AM

Join Date: Oct 2006

Posts: 32

Location: Durham UK

Re: Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

I've had a RSS feeder installed from vbulletin.org where It creates posts from any rss feed. That might be usefull in this case. Get it to post the feed every 12 hours and then get it to auto delete and duplicate threads

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My Forums uVme Forum, Booze Britain, Close Protection Forum, Magazine Subscription

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Brandon

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#9 10-30-2006, 01:14 AM

Join Date: Jul 2006

Posts: 10,990

Location: Topeka, KS

Re: Blogging with Wordpress, Gallery & WPG2

Quote:

Originally Posted by vwdforum

The 3.6.x series has an RSS mod like this built in. We're using it here to post the vBulletin.com updates in the one forum section.

A better version of this would be available at Code Monkeys site

Articlebot RSS Feed Poster For vBulletin - vBulletin Modder

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