Exclude Images From WordPress Gallery Display

I wrote this post yesterday which had several images as part of the content. One image was used in a different section of the post, but I wanted to group specific images together to highlight a point I was making.

WordPress adds all images uploaded during post creation to a Gallery. Once all the images have been uploaded, you can select the Gallery tab, and insert the gallery right into the post. However, I wanted to exclude one of the images. But there wasn’t anything in the image manager that allowed me to exclude an image. (WordPress guys, please add this feature.)

No worries though, the WordPress Gallery is really short code, and the short code allows for parameters. In this case, I was able to add the exclude parameter with the ID of the image I didn’t want in the Gallery, and whala, I was able to display what I wanted. You can get the ID of the image in the Library and hover over the image, you should see a value for attachment_id, make note of it. The short code lookes like this:

[ gallery exclude="123" ]

First Use Of Amazon CloudFormation

Amazon recently release a new product called CloudFormation. It’s basically an automated build out of several Amazon AWS products, driven by a simple XML file.

One of the templates offered out of the box is for a complete WordPress install. After following the wizard like instructions, I had a basic WordPress installation up and running in a matter of minutes.

I played with several WordPress settings, saved changes, added posts and pages, and even modified the theme.

Overall it was a painless experience. I downloaded the template XML so I could modify for future needs, and tuned the server off after about 4 hours. Total charges were around $3. Of course that’s with little data transfer.

One feature I haven’t been able to get working yet is WordPress MultiSite. I kept getting an error pointing to a location on the server that was throwing a 404 error. This could be a problem with a plugin. Further investigation is needed.

What I really liked was I could turn on a dev box for a demo or to work on a new site without having to setup a new web hosting. Not sure yet how feasible it would be to run the site 24/7, but for dev and test it would be great.

WordPress iPhone App Fail

I’ve tried, I’ve really tried, but using the WordPress client application on the iPhone just sucks. The last three posts I’ve created have all had problems. I fully understand it’s a free product, and there are no guarantees, but I expect more from the WordPress folks. Here is the latest snafu.

I have hesitated to upload photos to my blog from third party clients because I feared what happened tonight, would happen. I took several photos of my Family attending a play, created a new post in my iPhone WordPress application, inserted media from my phone, and posted. Of course, the posting had issues, mainly, the HTML used to show the photos was hosed. Here is what was sent to WordPress:

And here is what it should have looked like:

So, the post that was sent out to my RSS feed now has 6 photos with incorrect formatting and links. Frustrating to say the least.

Before trying to post to my WordPress blog, I sent the same photo set to my Tumblr site, via email, with zero problems.

The final thing I thought would take place is the creation of a Gallery. If I had included say 20 or 30 images, it would have been nice to see a slide show or at least thumbnails for each image. Instead, the images were inserted, full size, and with a large amount of images,  the post would have been several hundred feet off the screen. Just doesn’t seem like the whole posting media from the iPhone app is working right.

WordPress 3.1 Has A Feature List

Last week the development team for WordPress came up with a list of features/bug fixes they want to include in 3.1. As with all software, the end result may differ from this list. Check it out here.

Two things I’m excited about, and really hope are implemented, is a new multi site Admin, and a configurable Dashboard. This is kind of interesting, because at WordCamp Utah 2010, Matt Mullenweg asked Adam Dunford, “if you had a magic wand, what would you change in WordPress?” His response was a cleaner, configurable dashboard. Spot on Adam.

Looks like the WP team is shooting for a mid December release, with a feature freeze in mid October. That’s not too far off.

If you haven’t already upgraded to WordPress 3, you should do it soon. This is a fantastic release, seems to be very stable, and the further you fall behind the more problems you will encounter.

SMCSLC WordPress 3.0 Presentation Slides

Here are the slides I used in my WordPress 3.0 presentation last night for the Social Media Club of Salt Lake City (SMCSLC).

It was a great event, the audience was great, the other presenters (Dan Garfield @todaywasawesome) and panelists (Jake Spurlock @whyisjake) were awesome. It was a good WordPress night.

Thanks to Darin ‘Doc’ Berntson (@igobydoc) for putting the event together to coincide with the Eye Care for Kids charity concert after the club meeting. Doc really spends a lot of time promoting and supporting the charity. Take a few minutes to check it out.

View more presentations from Thom Allen.