After installing and configuring WordPress, I decided I’d like a gallery plugin to display my photographs. I didn’t really want a full-fledged gallery, just a small template modification or plugin that would allow me to display my photos of the local area for visitors who might be interested in seeing South Texas. This turned into quite a challenge. Here’s a short recap of my journey to blog image nirvana.

1. Gallery. The template that I started with, Scattered S2a, came with a “wrapper” for the popular Gallery software. So, assuming that I was part of the way there, I downloaded Gallery and began installation. Gallery is very full-featured, and has a lot of options that I really didn’t need, but hey, overkill is good. The server I’m running on is new, and many of the standard apps you’d expect to see still need to be installed, so immediate gratification was delayed. But I rolled up my sleeves and installed the GD libraries and ImageMagick. Then I installed Gallery 1.5.1-RC1 — warning: it doesn’t have WordPress’s famous 5-minute installation. After I got it working, I began to configure the wrapper. What a mess! It looks like it should really work on PHPNuke, not on Gallery, and all I could do was get it to generate a beautiful page of error messages wrapped uncomfortably inside my WordPress template, of course. I abandoned all hope and decided to try another package.

2. PHPgraphy. I used PHPGraphy on another project and customized it to the client’s liking in no time. So I figured I could do the same for my own site. I planned to create a new Page in WordPress and call the script from within the page. There’s no installation script per se — you just unzip it and plop it where you want it, then run it and check for errors. From the installation instructions: “Try to load the page and see if they’re any error messages at the top of the page. If you have some errors messages, you’ll have to play with your config file (config.inc.php) and/or with the permissions of the directory specified by the error msg.” Well, I had some messages. A lot of them. Seems I was missing some important components — or they were improperly installed. I threw up my hands and moved on to the next package I could find — something even more simple that apparently didn’t even require a separate gallery installation.

3. Lazy Gallery Plugin. At least the name was right. I was exhausted! This looked fairly simple, though. Just a simple WordPress plugin install, upload pic files to a directory, and BAM! Simple image gallery for lazy people. It could all be done in 6 steps:

1. Unpack zip to your the wordpress plugin dir ( /wp-content/plugins/ ).
2. Move the lazy-index.php file (now in the plugins dir) to your wordpress folder.
3. Create a folder for the gallery ( if you haven’t got one already ).
4. Configure the lazy-gallery.php file to match your settings.
5. Activate plugin the Wordpress backend.
6. Create a link to the lazy-index.php file in your wordpress folder.

I created a new page that called lazy_index.php, and this is what I got:

Now Viewing: » Gallery » Local Flora » cactus_1.jpg

Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagecreatefromjpeg() in /home/lori/loribravo.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/lazy-gallery.php on line 153

It also failed to create the thumbnails. I posted to Lazy Boy’s blog, along with 68 other people — some who had it working, and a lot that didn’t. So I would say that the support for this plugin just isn’t there. Maybe the boy’s just lazy Still, his plugin looked really sweet, and other people people had made it work — that irritates me.

I browsed around for something else that might satisfy what I thought was a fairly minimal request. I also had a friend of mine stare at the new server and recompile PHP one-more-time. Guess where I wound up?

4. Gallery G2+WP. Back at Gallery again. But this time, it was there to look at the beta release of the software. It has been completely re-engineered. My install (11 steps) went smoothly, with NO red flags. Everything worked smoothly, and I could easily use Gallery 2 to upload, view and manage my pictures. That being said, there are a dazzling array of options and configuration switches in Gallery 2. Before you start fiddling with them though, you should move on to the next step — a lot of what you change will probably have to be restored if you start jiggering with the base configuration just for the fun of it. But hey, if you’re having fun, take some time and learn more about how Gallery 2 works. It’s pretty cool.

The reason I looked at Gallery again was because some developers were creating a seamless WordPress/G2 plugin. Actually, there are two components: a WordPress theme for G2, and a plugin that gets installed in Wordpress. I won’t claim that the installation of this little gem went without a hitch. But I could tell I was making progress, and it was just a matter of tweaking to get the proper results. If you intend to go this route, here are your steps for installation of the whole thing:

1. Grab Gallery 2 and install it. Hopefully, your install will go as smooth as mine.
2. Grab the G2+WP software from the developer’s site. You’ll need both the plugin and the WordPress theme to get everything working together. You’ll also want to bookmark this page, as it has some most helpful hints.
3. Follow the instructions for installing the WP theme in Gallery 2, then install the plugin in WordPress.
4. Configure Gallery 2 to use the WP theme. Then go to your WordPress dashboard and configure the plugin.
5. Tweak, Tweak, Tweak. There’s a lot of support for this setup, but it’s spread out over several sites. The final thing to do is look at the WPG2 Wiki. Actually, it probably shouldn’t be the final thing you do — if I would have looked at it sooner, installation probably would have gone smoother. The trick is tuning the two packages to work well together.

If all this sounds confusing, that’s because it is. It’s easy to get “theme” and “plugin” confused, especially if you’re used to installing both in WordPress — G2 has themes as well, and specifically, it has a WordPress theme that works beautifully with the WP Kubrick theme and its derivatives. Spreading out all the instructions for configuring this setup also makes installation daunting. But more information is always better than less (did I tell you that I liked overkill?).

In the end, you’ll have a nicely formatted gallery that wraps around your WordPress theme. I’m very pleased with what I wound up with. In fact, I think I’ll go upload some more photos!