It’s been a while since I posted anything here. And yes! Yes I do have a good excuse. I’ve pretty much taken the past month and a half to cook up a new WordPress plugin. It’s called ArtPress and should be in BETA very soon. I’m working on the logistics of launching it + squashing all the bugs. I posted a couple of questions here regarding a few areas in which I do not have all that much experience.
I’ve also created the first how-to screencast. Please watch it, and provide feedback in the comments section. I do have a few questions regarding it functionality. Please see below for specifics.
My Questions
- What do you think?
- When a user attaches the image to the piece, would it be better to add it to the end of the blue box, or at the beginning?
- Is there anything that you would add/remove/alter?
Could not hear you at all Michael, even with full volume, is it just me?
That’s a shame. The volume’s pretty low, unfortunately I recorded it with my speakers at full volume. Will make another and re-post. Thanks for pointing that out.
Deb,
I just re-recorded a new, louder version and updated the post above.
Thank you Michael, this is perfect.
Plugin looks very useful, has the potential to become the de facto plugin to create photography/art sites. Even t-shirt sites or other product-showcase/selling sites, anything that needs lots of images as an integral part can use this. Great idea.
My thoughts in the middle of the video was how much you’re going to price it. I’m just amazed how could someone release 1.5 months of his work for free. And there are those ambitious plans which could take a lot from you.
May be the way images are attached to a piece can be changed. This is what i think http://drp.ly/1qk31y
I am not sure if others feel the same, plus this might mean a lots of work for you.
Although i don’t know WP plugin coding & can’t contribute directly in the form of code, i will try to help in other ways, spread the word when its out, beta test, report etc.
Thanks for the your kind words! I really hope that this plugin will become useful to many creative individuals. That is why so much time has went into it.
Re: Pricing.
There are many different reasons for me to realease this plugin for free. Perhaps the one that outshines all others is that it will gain most exposure if not locked behind a pay wall. Believe me, you are not the first to say this and I don’t expect you to be the last and sometimes, when I look at how much time has gone into this project, I think, yeah I should probably be charging for this :) But I’m not going to. ArtPress will be free just like WordPress.
Re: Image Management.
While I hear what you are saying here, I do believe that it will be a lot of work to make the changes that you outline. The Image Box interface in ArtPress has been designed to enhance what WordPress already provides. It is coded as a module which can be defined as “A part of ArtPress which adds functionality, but is not necessary”. That being said, ArtPress does not actually have any code that deals with image uploading. It just provides a new way of accessing already existing functionality. I know that the process outlined in the video is a new way of doing things that may not really be intuitive to new users, but quite honestly it is the fastest. Having to access the Media up-loader via thickbox is very time consuming in my experience – and I’m a great test subject here – I’m rockin’ 512MB ram on a four year old box… native media upload crawls on my machine :(
Glad to hear that you’re down for helping out. I’m sure there will be plenty of things todo that do not require coding skills :)
Looks good Michael!
To answer your second question, I would add additional images after the first ones. That would be intuitive to me.
Feature that would be a nice-to-have. Is there a way that you could indicate that a piece was in a show — so, it is it technically for sale, but not from your website. I know people who sell on Etsy who have to remove things when they have things in a show. I guess that would be ‘not for sale’. Is there a way for the user to modify that text. For example if I wanted to say “Not for sale online’ or “On display”. Er, or is that too complicated. Not really sure if everyone would agree with my ‘ On display’ to indicate it was in a show. Just a thought.
As I understand it, if you are going to be offering this for free, you will have a ‘donate’ button at the point of download. I think people who value the time and effort you have spent on this and who also have the means should be able to pay you…
Cheers,
K
Hi Kindra,
Thanks for checking out the video and for your comments! I was thinking the same thing about the images… will most likely change it before beta. As for “hiding” pieces, this functionality is built into WordPress already. If you are editing a post, you can hide it by setting the “Visibility” to “Private”. On the same note, there is also a Classification system that comes installed which will enable you to set the “Location” of the piece (for inventory tracking) and for “Exhibits” you can read more about this here. Totally gonna have a donation button.
Love the plug in. My daughter is a fine artist and I would love to set up a WordPress site for her using this plug in. The PayPal functionality is a great idea!
Tim, Thanks for taking the time to check it out and comment! Been pluging away at this one for what seems like a lifetime :) Almost there. Would be interested in helping beta test the plugin when it’s ready? It does a bunch of crazy stuff I know that I probably left a thing or two out. If so, please let me know and I’ll add you to the list.
Awesome man! Good job with this one. My girlfriend is a photographer, so this will be useful for her site :)
Sometimes it is funny how everything works out. I read the post yesterday and thought.. gee that’s nice, but I had no need for it. Then my best friend calls last night and tells me that his wife is now taking pictures for all the schools in her district this coming year and asks for a photo site… lol what timing…
It’s hard for me to come up with suggestions without tearing the plugin apart first, but when your ready let me know and I’ll give it a whirl. Pretty sure you still have my email addy from our prior chats on other projects.
I suppose the only question I have from the short demo would be how to assign an image to more than one piece. The video shows only orphaned images on the side. Am I correct that an image can only belong to one post?
Would love to have you tear it apart… just be sure to set aside an afternoon for this :) It’s almost 10,000 lines long :) I still have your email address and I’ll be sure to put you on the testers list. Thanks! And Yes, you are correct, an image can only be assigned to one “piece”. The interface featured in the video works only for posts given the ‘piece’ post_type. All other post types will have the standard “Featured Image” interface. If you can think of and use cases where it would be beneficial to associate and image from a portfolio two two different “pieces” please let me know. The only case that I can think of is where an artist has created reproductions of their artwork that have a separate attributes from the original. I can see how it would make sense to “recycle” the image in this case, but I can also see how the benefit in actually photographing the reproduction and using a separate image. Wondering what you thought about all of this?
Thanks! Should work well for a photography site. Was wondering if you or your girlfriend might want to provide some feedback on this post that outlines some of the built-in classification methods for “pieces”. Don’t really know what photographers are looking for in this respect. But I’m going to be redesigning the interface soon (probably version 1.1) so that it can include many more than it already does. My goal is for the plugin to be useful to as many visual artists as possible.
I spoke to my friend a bit more this evening about what his wife is after and can try to explain a bit better. Who knows, it may lead to a few new ideas.
1. she is going to be the school picture photographer and will be selling the kids pics to the parents. As it deals with children there are many laws in place protecting minors, but I am not sure what aspects to deal with other than the obvious.
– only the parent/student should be able to access the individual students pictures. (don’t want strangers browsing online galleries of kids)
My idea to tackle this one is to give each parent a user/pass when they get the pics taken. Now comes the part of only allowing them to access the area. I am considering using s2members plugin for this as I can restrict pages on a per user basis. I quickly considered using buddypress groups for this, but that was a no-go from the start as there is no privacy built-in. I even considered using 3.0 multisites where each customer technically has their own full website, as the workload is no more than using a single wp install. Still thinking about that route. That is probably the most secure, but is also the most difficult to deal with for your plugin. (assigning a piece to a given sub domain only)
I’m curious what you think the best ‘privacy’ setup would be, as most photographers are doing this as a paid job for a specific client.
–this same concept would work for any photographer, whether kids, wedding, event, etc.. only the client should have access to the pics. (unless it’s marked as ‘featured’ for display throughout the site as an example of the work quality)
2. She wants to sell multiple sizes of the pics, 5×7, 8×10, wallets, etc… so giving the ability to create a metabox for each photo with photo sizes/cost would be nice. Each one would have its own price structure.
3. All sales would go through paypal directly to her.
4. Would be nice to integrate it with online photo printing services.
Customer chooses pics, pays via paypal, then behind the scenes the ‘raw’ photo is sent to a service for printing and shipping. (there are a number of good sites that do this).
5. Have option to download ‘raw’ digital download of the photo.
6. ability to ‘group’ pictures together into a single price package.
7. ability to specify quantity of images purchased.
10 5×7 copies etc…
8. add automatic permanent watermark to the photo for display on the site.
As I said earlier, I have had little to no time to think through what I would like/need in a photo plugin like this. I’m only going on a short phone call of ideas that she has. They will be at my home next Tuesday, so I hope to have some better ideas for you then, as we will talk and map out all of her requirements for her new website.