Navigation

• •

In Phoca Gallery you can display images from your Google Picasa Web Albums application. What are the requirements to display the albums:

• Google account with active Google Picasa Web Albums application, see picasaweb.google.com
• PHP function json_decode enabled on your server (this function is included in PHP 5.2.0 or latest version)
• Parameter allow_url_fopen enabled in PHP ini settings.

If your server meets the requirements, go to Component - Phoca Gallery - Control Panel, click on Parameters and set Enable Picasa Image Loading parameter to Yes.

Set album and load images into your Google Picasa Web Albums application (Album and images need to be accessible to public).

Go to Phoca Gallery - Categories, click on Create or Edit Category. Now you are in Category editing, here you set:

• Category Title
• User (in Picasa Settings) - username which you are using for your gallery on Picasa Web Albums application (or user ID).
• Album Name (in Picasa Settings) - name of album which is included in your Picasa gallery (without # or without empty spaces, case sensitive - just copy the name from url bar in your browser)
• Authentication Key - in case your album is not public, add the authentication key to access this album.

and click on Load icon. Now information about your images from your Picasa album will be loaded into Phoca Gallery. This can take some time (depends on number of loaded images). If you are not able to load all your images in script running period, you can use pagination. See Picasa Loading Pagination parameter in Phoca Gallery.

After loading of images, these images are displayed in Phoca Gallery administration (images list) and in frontend of your site. As the images are external images, infomation should be set in your Picasa gallery (name, geotagging, ...). Be aware clicking on Load icon will load the information from your Picasa gallery and modifications you have done in Phoca Gallery (regarding images - name, longitude, latitude, ...) will be lost.

Google Picasa uses specific sizes for displaying images and thumbnails:

• Thumbnails - 32px, 48px, 64px, 72px, 104px, 144px, 150px, 160px
• Images - 94px, 110px, 128px, 200px, 220px, 288px, 320px, 400px, 512px, 576px, 640px, 720px, 800px, 912px, 1024px, 1152px, 1280px, 1440px, 1600px.

If the size of thumbnail or image is different from Phoca Gallery settings, then Phoca Gallery will try to correct the size. If you will use Phoca Gallery for displaying Picasa images, it is recommended to use the same size of thumbnails for Phoca Gallery which is used in Picasa, e.g.:

• Small thumbnail - 48px (50px is default in Phoca Gallery)
• Medium thumbnail - 104px (100px is default in Phoca Gallery)
• Large thumbnail - 640px (640px is default in Phoca Gallery).

You can modify the background image (shadow effect) for other than default Phoca Gallery thumbnail size in: Phoca Gallery - Themes, see Styling Background Image article.

If you have problems with getting information from Google Picasa, try to test:

• if your server meets the requirements:
  • PHP function json_decode enabled on your server (this function is included in PHP 5.2.0 or latest version)
  • parameter allow_url_fopen enabled in PHP ini settings
  • or cURL functions are enabled on your server
• if your user name is correct
• if your album name is correct (remove #, empty spaces, name is case sensitive - check uppercase and lowercase letters)
• If your album is public (album must be public while getting information from Google Picasa, after getting information about required album and saving category in Phoca Gallery, you can make the album private again).

Google™ and Google Picasa™ are registered trademarks of Google Inc.

• •