how to best integrate flickr and a wordpress blog?

September 2, 2010 1:30 PM

Looking for a simplified workflow for posting flickr images into posts on a wordpress blog. This should be simple, and may well be, but it is driving me crazy!

I have a privately hosted wordpress blog, which I have had going for a few years now. I have a flickr account that I upload pictures to, and in the past have brought the photos into posts on the WP blog via various plugins (one good one I really liked was called "slickr", but it hasn't been updated in years and no longer works with the new versions of wordpress). Slickr had a nice interface for selecting and inserting photos, included a "lightbox" kind of effect, and just worked really well.

As far as I can tell with the latest version of WP (3.0), you can insert a photo from a URL, but it is kind of cumbersome...

Without getting too long winded, does anyone:
1) know of an awesome photo plugin for inserting flickr photos into a WP site that is compatible with WP 3.0?
2) have a workaround/workflow that you use for inserting flickr images into posts that isn't too cumbersome
3)other thoughts?

Thanks so much for your help! I could post a link to the blog in question if that would help...

posted by dan g. to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

THere's a "blog this" button in Flickr. Quite simple. You may have to go through a little process to "connect" your Flickr account to your WP blog, but it's not hard.

You can see in my blog (link in profile) that all of my Project 365 posts are done this way.
posted by pyjammy at 1:34 PM on September 2, 2010

Here's a link in the Flickr FAQ that might help:

http://www.flickr.com/help/blogging/?search=wordpress#152

And this is relevant (and the trickiest part)
***Note: If you use a Wordpress self-hosted blog, in your Wordpress dashboard under Settings > Writing > Remote Publishing be sure to check both Atom Publishing Protocol and XML-RPC. Then, in your settings on Flickr for that blog, enter your Wordpress API Endpoint; for example: yourdomainame.com/xmlrpc.php
posted by pyjammy at 1:36 PM on September 2, 2010

This is, like, completely the opposite of your workflow. But since you asked! I too have a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Although I host the images myself on the same domain, I'm an old-school control freak so I still insert the URL manually.

I keep a text file on my hard drive with code snippets:

[div align="center"]
[a href="http://example.com/images/2010/08/401-01.jpg">[img src="http://example.com/images/2010/08/401-01.jpg" class="postpic" alt="UFO" border="0" width="500" vspace="10"][/a]
[/div]

I just copy and paste that into the post, then copy and paste the URL in there. Two steps; four keystrokes. Super easy, from my perspective!
posted by ErikaB at 2:37 PM on September 2, 2010

Have a look at the FlickrPress plugin.

The screenshots there don't show it, but you also get a "Flickr" button above the editor that pops an overlay letting you get at images(not just from your account) via several methods.
posted by Su at 2:56 PM on September 2, 2010

[Oh, and I currently have this set up on a 3.0.1 install for a client. It works. There's just no data in the plugin page sidebar.]
posted by Su at 2:57 PM on September 2, 2010

Helpful answers noted - and here's my related question...

I have photos at flickr, all nicely tagged, titled and captioned. I have a wordpress site, privately hosted. I'd like all my flickr photos with their data dropped in to my wordpress site as individual posts. Each photograph and its content is the body of the post, the title of the photo is the title of the post, the tags of the photo are the tags of the post, and the date of the photo is the date of the post.

Any ideas?

The $5 I spent signing on to metafilter is the best internet money I've ever spent.
posted by eccnineten at 5:17 PM on September 2, 2010

This might not be as simple as you're hoping for, but it sure works for me:

Using The Flickr API

That may sound daunting at first, but it's only a pain to set up the first time. After that, it's a breeze.

When I want to post a batch of flickr photos on my blog, I copy and paste the code I saved when I set this up the first time. I only change the start and end times to indicate which photos I want (everything posted between Monday at noon and Wednesday morning at 10, for example... or all photos taken between Friday at 5pm and Saturday night at 11).

Here's more info on customizing searches using the flickr API.

And if you really want to be slick, you combine that with a jQuery Lightbox. I use slimbox.
posted by 2oh1 at 10:09 PM on September 2, 2010