Random Image without Gallery

mrblah · Post by **mrblah** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 8:45 pm

I've been searching this forum for an answer but I don't see one. I was wondering if there is a way to display a random image off to the side with either Flickr, Picasa or the internal media gallery? I've looked at the Flickr and Picasa plugins and they seem to just show recent images. I know there is the Gallery2 plugin but my current hosting does not allow a big gallery. Any help on this would be great.

Thanks.

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 8:55 pm

If you know which images you want to display, then you could upload them to the media manager and use the random quotations plugin to display the thumbnail in your sidebar, and just change the link address to where the original is, or to your flickr album. Its a little bit of work, and might not be exactly what you want but it would do the job to begin with.

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 10:22 pm

Or you can take a look at the "Unified Sidebar Image Display". You can configure it for "Media Library". This plugin lets you pick a directory from which to display a picture, control the rotate time, and allows you to cache results for slightly faster results.

Or there is a "FLICKR Sidebar Plugin", but you will need to check the readme file with it to make sure you have everything it needs.

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 3:52 am

holy carp matthew, when did that one appear? Might have to try it myself.

mrblah · Post by **mrblah** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:51 am

mgroeninger wrote:Or you can take a look at the "Unified Sidebar Image Display". You can configure it for "Media Library". This plugin lets you pick a directory from which to display a picture, control the rotate time, and allows you to cache results for slightly faster results.

Or there is a "FLICKR Sidebar Plugin", but you will need to check the readme file with it to make sure you have everything it needs.

Thanks for pointing out that plugin. Ok so I have the Unified Sidebar plugin installed and working for the most part. I tried adding a couple of image hotlinks from photoshack. They are photos that I uploaded.

The actual image shows up when I go to media library so I'm assuming the hotlinking is working but the hotlink isn't put in a specfic directory so I am not sure how to point the Unified Sidebar Image plugin to it. Should this plugin work with hotlinks?

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 7:29 pm

mrblah wrote: Should this plugin work with hotlinks?

Doh... I've never used hotlinking, so I never thought of it before.
If you give me a few days I'll find someway to get the images included. I think, however, it will be an all or nothing configuration option like "Include hotlinked images" (yes/no)... Will that work?

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 8:47 pm

carl_galloway wrote:holy carp matthew, when did that one appear? Might have to try it myself.

*grin* I snuck that one in a few months back...

mrblah, I have verified this plugin is actually working with hotlinked images under the 1.1beta_4 release.

Unfortunately, since we are in beta I don't have a test bench of 1.0.1 at the moment (which I assume you are using). But from looking at the code I would actually expect it to work.

So, what I would recommend if you only want to rotate through a few "select" files is to create a directory called "rotate" or something in the media library, then add any hotlinked images to the directory (it should work, even though you aren't downloading anything).

Then set the image rotator plugin to only use those images by choosing that directory in the plugin configuration.

Otherwise, if you just want the plugin to rotate through all the images you add you can set "Pick a default directory" to "all directories".

(actually thinking about it, "all directories" is poorly labeled. It is actually the top most directory, or the "Media Library" itself. If you pick that option and "Output images strictly" you will only show the images that don't have a directory assigned to them.)

Does that make sense?

mrblah · Post by **mrblah** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 2:23 am

mgroeninger wrote:
carl_galloway wrote:holy carp matthew, when did that one appear? Might have to try it myself.
*grin* I snuck that one in a few months back...

mrblah, I have verified this plugin is actually working with hotlinked images under the 1.1beta_4 release.

Unfortunately, since we are in beta I don't have a test bench of 1.0.1 at the moment (which I assume you are using). But from looking at the code I would actually expect it to work.

So, what I would recommend if you only want to rotate through a few "select" files is to create a directory called "rotate" or something in the media library, then add any hotlinked images to the directory (it should work, even though you aren't downloading anything).

Then set the image rotator plugin to only use those images by choosing that directory in the plugin configuration.

Otherwise, if you just want the plugin to rotate through all the images you add you can set "Pick a default directory" to "all directories".

(actually thinking about it, "all directories" is poorly labeled. It is actually the top most directory, or the "Media Library" itself. If you pick that option and "Output images strictly" you will only show the images that don't have a directory assigned to them.)

Does that make sense?

I guess the part that I'm stumped on is how do I get the hotlink images into a certain directory. When I have the plugin use "all directories". it works but then the plugin will show everything.

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 3:43 am

*laugh* Wow... it appears I don't have a clue about what I am talking about... You are right... you can't put hotlinked images in a directory... ('cause the hotlink is stored in the same path the directory would be...)

Wow...

Let me take a look at it and see what I can come up with...

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 10:59 pm

Ok, sorry about the delay... I had to think about this one...

I just committed version 0.8 of the "Unified Sidebar Image Display" plugin to CVS. This version adds the option (under the media library source) to only display hot linked images in the sidebar. It also allows the user to limit the hot linked images selected from the database by a keyword, so, for example, you can have all the hotlinks from photoshack.com, you can put "photoshack.com" in the key word.

Of course, if you have only specific hotlinks you want to show in the sidebar it might be best to name them something like "public_hotlink01.jpg" or what ever, and then use "public_hotlink" as the keyword...

Honestly, I don't use hotlinks, so this may or may not work for most people... I would appreciate any feedback you can send my way, and I will try to incorporate suggestion in the plugin.

The plugin should be available on spartacus tomorrow sometime, or if you would like to test before then just send me a note and I can send you a copy...

mrblah · Post by **mrblah** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 5:05 am

mgroeninger wrote:Ok, sorry about the delay... I had to think about this one...

Honestly, I don't use hotlinks, so this may or may not work for most people... I would appreciate any feedback you can send my way, and I will try to incorporate suggestion in the plugin.

The plugin should be available on spartacus tomorrow sometime, or if you would like to test before then just send me a note and I can send you a copy...

Thanks for the quick change! I downloaded the changes from cvs. It does exactly what I wanted to do. I'm only using the hotlinks for this plugin so I just tell it to use all hotlinks. Maybe oneday I'm spend some money for hosting images but I don't need to with this.

Thank you!

mgroeninger · Post by **mgroeninger** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 7:38 am

Glad it works for you!