Recent Photos Plugin for WordPress

February 28th, 2010

Recent Photos Plugin: can be used to display recent photos from your media library in the sidebar.

Updates: Version 0.0.2 – Added option to randomize photos

Detailed Description:
Recent Photos Plugin provides with a widget to display n numbers of photos in the sidebar.
The display can be customized through custom css or integrated in main style sheet file of your theme. Plugin also provides an option to use Thickbox (along with the patch code necessary for running thickbox on wordpress).

Download: Recent Photos Plugin.

Demosites:

  1. Demo with Default WP Theme
  2. This website shows the use of this plugin customised by css.

Installation:

  • Plugin folder in the WordPress plugins folder must be `recent-photos`
  • Upload folder `recent-photos` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
  • Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
  • Go to WP Admin > Appereance > Widgets and put the ‘Recent Photos’ widget in your sidebar
  • Configure the options as per your requirements and wordpress installation

Upgrade Instructions

  • Just Click ‘Upgrade Plugin Automatically’ within the WordPress Plugin Admin Area
  • Go to WP Admin > Appereance > Widgets and put the ‘Recent Photos’ widget in your sidebar
  • Configure the options as per your requirements and wordpress installation (New option for Randomize should be there)

Configuration Options:

  • Title: Title for the widget will be displayed as per your theme
  • Number of the photos: Number of photos that will be displayed in the sidebar
  • Randomize: Check to display photos in random
  • Browse Photo Link: Full link to your photos/gallery page
    Leave blank if you don’t want to show the link.
  • Use Thickbox: Enables/Disables the use of thickbox for this widget
  • WordPress Path: Applicable only if Thickbox is enabled
    This option is necessary to provide the patch for thickbox to correctly display thickbox related images (loadinganimation and close). If your wordpress installation is in a subdirectory provide the path for the same followed by a forward slash
    Eg. wordpress/ When the WP installation is in ‘wordpress’ subdirectory
  • Use Custom CSS: Enable/Disables the use of Custom CSS
  • Custom CSS: For styling this plugin requires following CSS ids and classes to be defined 
    #recent_photos_envelope{margin:0 0 30px 0;}
.recent_photo_image a {float:left;display:inline;margin:0 16px 15px 0;border:1px dashed #888;padding:5px}
.recent_photo_image a:hover {border:1px dashed #000}

    The above css code is default css provided with the plugin

Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How to integrate css code in your default style sheet?
A. Copy the default css code into your style sheet
#recent_photos_envelope{margin:0 0 20px 0;}
.recent_photo_image a {float:left;display:inline;margin:0 16px 15px 0;border:1px dashed #888;padding:5px}
.recent_photo_image a:hover {border:1px dashed #000}
#browsephotos{margin: 0 25px 10px 12px; float:right;}
Enable Use Custom CSS option in the widget admin
Make sure Custom CSS code textarea is blank (Should contain no spaces also)

Posted under: Plugins, Wordpress
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50 Responses to “Recent Photos Plugin for WordPress”

  1. Sharon J says:
    January 25, 2012 at 4:05 am

    I love this plug in! It is exactly what I am looking for. But unfortunately, unless I can exclude some photos or at least take specific photos from a sub folder, I will not be able to use it at this time :(
    i.e.
    I am doing a B&B site for a farm. I want all the pictures in the right sidebar to be photos of the farm. But now I have uploaded pictures of the rooms and that is all that shows now in the sidebar.

    Reply
  2. brooke says:
    January 1, 2012 at 9:55 am

    I can’t figure it out how to get 3×3 for 6 images (3 columns wide, three down). Can you please help?

    Reply
  3. Alanzicarelli says:
    November 4, 2011 at 10:42 pm

    Hi, very good plugin.
    I would like to let plugin load photos not form media library but from a subfolder of media library. Is it possible to do this?
    Thanks
    Alan

    Reply
  4. Rene says:
    October 24, 2011 at 3:43 am

    The only thing that would make this plugin better would be if it used prettyPhoto instead of thickbox. Any way to do that?

    Reply
  5. Add Recent Photos to Your Sidebar | WordPress Junkies says:
    October 14, 2011 at 11:04 am

    [...] Example 1 [...]

    Reply
  6. Siege Digital says:
    September 30, 2011 at 3:24 pm

    Super handy, thanks

    Reply
  7. SK says:
    August 23, 2011 at 7:48 pm

    Hi,

    is there a pos. to make the plugin read från certain folder and NOT ONLY latest upploads? If YES, how? :D

    Appreciate the help

    Reply
  8. Alex says:
    August 16, 2011 at 10:22 am

    Hello!
    Thank you very much for this beautiful and useful plugin. But I faced one problem. I use nextgen plugin for making galleries, so all the pictures not in the “uploads” folder and “recent photos” plugin doesn’t see them. I’ve tried to find some option to give full path to the folder I need it to watch, but I didn’t find. Nextgen plugin also has “recent photo” widget, but it’s not so nice and it creates ugly thumbnails. Can I somehow make “recent photos” plugin to watch folder that I need? (/public_html/wp-content/gallery)

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      August 16, 2011 at 12:16 pm

      Alex,

      This plugin uses WP database to find images and not a folder.
      and also The plugin does not create any thumbnails, it uses the one created by WordPress (which is when you upload to media gallery in WordPress)
      Can you point me to your website where you are trying to use this?

      Thanks

      Reply
      • Alex says:
        August 16, 2011 at 6:27 pm

        http://avatar-vk.ru/ here it is, thank you! Maybe I’ve lost something. But nextgen plugin creates thumbnails by itself (maybe I’m wrong?) and path looks like this “/public_html/wp-content/gallery/anime1/thumbs” where pictures are located in “anime1″ and thumbnails in “thumbs” folders. Sorry if it’s hard to understand my problem.

        Reply
        • instruite says:
          August 18, 2011 at 12:58 pm

          Alex,
          I understand your problem, but sorry to say that this plugin can not load thumbnails from folder now, I will see if I can do that in next release but that won’t be anytime soon.

          You should check with nextgen developers and see if they can help you customizing their recent photos widget.

          If I find any simple solution in meantime I will let you know

          Thanks

          Reply
          • Alex says:
            August 19, 2011 at 12:20 am

            Ok, thank you! I’ll watch your plugin anyway, because its very nice and I’ll use it in my future projects. It’s very pleasant that you answer all these question. It’s very nice example which inspire me to help other people to :)

  9. Lili says:
    July 20, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    Hi,
    I’m having unexpected problems with the plugin…
    It worked fine, but suddenly (I think since I upgraded to the last version of wordpress) only the photos that I uploaded with my user are displayed in the widget, all the photos uploaded by the other user (also with admin status) will not appear… WIERD. Last time the other user had uploaded photos, they DID appear, but now suddenly they won’t. If I upload a new photo, it appears…
    Is there any solution to this?
    Thanks!
    Lili

    Reply
  10. wishing says:
    March 22, 2011 at 6:07 am

    I would like to show the images in the side bar but instead of them being in one column I’d like them to be in a grid like on your site. For example 2×3 for 6 images (2 columns wide, three down).

    Reply
  11. Vogue says:
    January 7, 2011 at 10:26 am

    Hi
    I agree with most of the comments this is a great plugin. I was wondering if there is anyway that you can exclude displaying photos in a specific category?

    Reply
  12. Eliot Lovell says:
    November 27, 2010 at 12:38 am

    Hi -

    Really useful plugin – thanks – just wondering if there’s a way to have it in more than one sidebar. I’d like to have a different one on the homepage than on the content pages of a site.

    Thanks :-)

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      December 12, 2010 at 4:59 pm

      The present version supports only one instance of widget.
      On my site I have manually coded certain pages to modify the effect of plugin (On home page and content page plugin works differently)

      If you can do some editing/coding on your blog on your own I can guide you through the manual process.

      Thanks

      Reply
  13. Zach Winterton – Marketing, Creativity & Music » Blog Archive » 3 Amazing Wordpress Plugins says:
    November 25, 2010 at 2:56 am

    [...] Recent Photos – This plugin adds a widget to your site that displays a thumbnail of the recent photos you have uploaded. There are a number of plugins that do the same thing, but this one is clean and crisp. When the thumbnail is clicked, it pulls up a nice Ajax gallery that lets you view the recently added photos. [...]

    Reply
  14. Zach says:
    November 19, 2010 at 6:19 am

    Love the plugin, its been working very well up until today. For some reason my latest album is not showing up in my recent photos widget. Any clue as to why something like this would happen?

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      November 21, 2010 at 5:23 pm

      I visited your site and I can see the Recent photos at the bottom
      But I am not sure which is your latest album? have you enabled the random feature in the plugin?

      Reply
  15. Sascha says:
    August 24, 2010 at 5:03 pm

    Hi, nice plugin… It’s nearly exactly what I need. Would it be possible to display additional images that are attached via thumbnail or custom fields? Maybe an additional config-field to define a custom field with an image in every post? I would be happy to support the development financially! ;)
    Do you think this is possible?

    Regards Sascha

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      September 18, 2010 at 3:14 pm

      Presently this plugin just uses the files added to document library and does not search in the posts itself.
      I will consider your request when I start working on the next version of the plugin.
      Thanks

      Reply
  16. Michael Montesa says:
    August 1, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    Hi,

    I loved the plugin. Very simple and clean. My only problem is the loading and close button does not show. I’m mac base and use firefox and safari. It doesn’t show anything in firefox at all and in Safari, it shows that the image file is missing. I deleted the plugin and installed it again but it doesn’t do anything. I check the files and they are all there. Don’t know what to do..thanks in advance.

    Mike

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      September 18, 2010 at 3:18 pm

      Hi Micheal,

      Just Checked the playground.instruite.com site on my mac and every think seems to be working fine.
      Can you point me to your site where you are having the problem?

      Thanks

      Reply
  17. Annmarie Kostyk says:
    July 23, 2010 at 6:57 am

    LOVE this plug in! Question…For some reason this widget is blending in with my Recent Post widget. Any way to fix that that’s not too technical. I’m not very computer savvy.

    The photos are eye candy! Literally!

    Reply
  18. Johanna says:
    April 12, 2010 at 8:01 am

    I adore this plugin, and I only had a simple question. I tried everything I could to get the area the photos are in to center, and I couldn’t figure out how. I eventually found a work around, but I don’t remember what I used and I am running a new install of WordPress. Is there a simple way to do this?

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      April 12, 2010 at 11:03 am

      Hi Johanna,
      I am assuming that you want to put the recent photos to appear in the center of the sidebar on the you Johanna’s Place blog and from what I can see on your site I think you are using the custom css part of the plugin too. To get the photos in the center you need to add left margin to the recent_photos_envelope div.
      Your present css code is

      #recent_photos_envelope{margin:0 0 10px;}

      change it to

      #recent_photos_envelope{margin:0 0 10px 20px;}

      You can change with that 20px value to get the alignment you want.

      Thanks.

      Reply
  19. mark says:
    April 6, 2010 at 2:19 pm

    I don;t want every image I upload to the library to be available to the plugin. How do I separate them?

    see – http://www.tentcity4.info and look at the recent photos sidebar – it contains an image I uploaded to represent an available PDF download in the latest post.

    Thanks!

    Mark

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      April 7, 2010 at 11:44 am

      Hi Mark,
      With present plugin code its not possible to exclude certain images.
      After having a look at your site, I have an idea how you can do it on your site but it requires little code tweaking.


      Go to WordPress Admin Dashboard -> Plugin -> Editor
      Select 'Recent Photos' in the Dropdown box for 'Select plugin to edit' and Click 'Select'
      Search for "post_mime_type"=>"image/jpeg,image/gif,image/jpg,image/png"
      Replace it with "post_mime_type"=>"image/jpeg,image/jpg,image/png"

      This will remove the pdf icon from your sidebar but in future if you add any gif format image that will be excluded too.
      I will see if it can be implemented in any easy way in future release but it may take time.

      Thanks,
      instruite

      Reply
  20. Peter4 says:
    March 30, 2010 at 1:32 pm

    Hello: Thanks for the new version – it is excellent!

    One thing though, is it possible to randomize the ‘folder’? If you look at the site in question (www.pearlstreetchildcare.com.au) we want to show 6 images in the sidebar, but have these 6 images randomly selected from the folder/page where the images were added. How is this possible?

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      March 30, 2010 at 5:26 pm

      Hi Peter,
      Glad you liked the new version.
      Regarding your query, I am not sure I get it fully what you are looking for. Because when I saw the site you mentioned there is only 1 page where all the photos were added.

      Reply
  21. Peter4 says:
    March 29, 2010 at 4:11 pm

    Hello, I have configured your plugin to show only 6 images out of 30+. The problem is I want to randomise the 6 that show each time the page loads…how do I do this??? Thanks

    Reply
    • instruite says:
      March 29, 2010 at 4:50 pm

      Hi Peter,
      Present Plugin does not have option for randomly displaying the images.
      I will add your query as a feature request to To-Do of this plugin and try to implement it in future release.

      Thanks

      Reply
    • instruite says:
      March 29, 2010 at 11:22 pm

      Hi Peter,
      Just upgrade the plugin to 0.0.2 version and you should see the option for Randomizing the photos in the widget configuration panel.

      Thanks.

      Reply

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