Test File for AWSOM Pixgallery “index.php” permalinks issue now available
Hi everyone, if you haven’t been visiting Harknell.com recently you might not be aware that I’ve been working on a fix for a weird Fancy Permalink issue that causes “index.php” to be added to some people’s AWSOM Pixgallery galleries. This then totally screws up the links to the actual single image page causing 404 errors. I believe I have a fix for this issue, as well as a fix for the Visual Editor problem (where it doesn’t correctly populate the variable names for the tools). So far it has corrected the issue for one person, but I’d appreciate if anyone else is seeing this issue if they could go here: http://www.awsom.org/filerepository/awsompixgalleryabsolutefix2.zip and grab the test file and try this out. You may need to also set the option for “absolute linking” to yes in the Pixgallery options/settings page for the fix to work, but try it without that first. I’d really appreciate it if after trying this out please email me and let me know if it worked (or even more importantly) didn’t work to solve the problem.
“Hidden” AWSOM Plugin features: Custom Sub Gallery Images
I’ve come to realize that as a piece of software grows so does it’s complexity. As a result many features can easily be overlooked, especially if they are designed to be used in only specific circumstances. So I’ll post a spotlight on certain features or capabilities of AWSOM WordPress plugins from time to time that I think people might find useful, but may have overlooked.
The first such feature is the ability in AWSOM Pixgallery to select and display a custom image for a sub gallery in the thumbnail view. Normally Pixgallery uses your sort option setting to determine what image it uses to represent sub galleries in the thumbnail view–so it will typically show either the last added image or alphabetical image as the folder image. This means that in many cases the image displayed by the folder will change over time if you add new images to the folder. This can be good to alert visitors that new images have been added to a folder. However, in some cases you may not want this to happen and would prefer to have a set image for a particular sub gallery.
With Pixgallery it’s very easy to accomplish this. All you need to do is place an image file within any sub gallery folder and call it “pxggalleryimage” with any standard image format type (gif, jpg, png–so pxggalleryimage.gif is an example), and Pixgallery will use that image for the folder. This image will NOT appear as a member of the sub gallery, so you can use an image that you don’t even want to have actually appear in the gallery itself if you want. Every sub gallery can have it’s own individual custom image file, and you can even mix and match with some being automatic and some being preset. It’s yet another way that Pixgallery speeds up your workflow but allows you flexibility when you need it.
AWSOM News Announcement 1.4.3 released
AWSOM News Announcement plugin for WordPress version 1.4.3 has been released and is now available for download at the AWSOM.org website. This version now has it’s own embedded Advanced Visual Editor with more options than the standard WordPress version. This should clear up any issues for users of the WordPress 2.5.x series. It also has built in support for a wider range of web browsers (so this should make Safari users happy).
Be Careful of the Autoupgrade Feature in WordPress
As many of you who’ve upgraded to the new WordPress 2.5 version have maybe noticed there is an option on the Plugins page which basically suggests that you can auto-upgrade a plugin. I would strongly suggest you do NOT use this function right now. First off, this is not a feature that is directly supported by plugin authors, it is a function that works outside of the plugin. So if something goes wrong there may be no way for any plugin author to help you fix the situation since the plugin itself did not do the action. Secondly it’s been acknowledged that this feature is really not very robust yet and may very well fail and hose your entire WordPress insall.
I would strongly suggest that you continue to download all plugins yourself and upload them to the server. In the case of AWSOM.org plugins they all upgrade themselves properly when you reactivate them, so it’s actually not really more difficult anyway.
A Thank You For Your Support
I just wanted to give a thank you to our most recent supporter, Mr. R. Wilder, who used our Paypal donation link to donate to the AWSOM.org development fund. I’m a firm devotee to the free Open Source Software model, and I will never ever charge for anything developed here, so it really makes me feel appreciated when someone feels strongly enough about my work to help keep it going. I would like to point out that purchases from the Onezumi Studios Online store are also a great way of contributing to the site. Also, for those of you who would like to contribute but can’t do so financially, the other way to help is to simply tell others about our software and sites and therefore bring us more web traffic, which is a great alternate way of supporting us.
So, thank you Mr. Wilder and everyone else who has contributed and mentioned us, it’s what really let’s us know that what we are doing is right and is making a positive impact. It’s greatly appreciated.