Image Gallery Option

Hi loquos,

Thanks for asking this question and making me aware of the ‘add gallery’ option that will be confusing some people.

My intention was that you could easily swap between images that you may have loaded up for this product already, without having to look through all of the media library. Under each image in the gallery tab is an ‘insert into post’ button.
I overlooked the ‘add gallery’ button right at the bottom and there is no support for adding multiple images to a single product – it might be a good idea for an enhancement at some time in the future and I will add that to my ‘to do’ list.

So you are not doing anything ‘wrong’ it is just that I have not included support for galleries – try clicking ‘show’ and ‘insert image’ for an individual image in the gallery tab and all should work.

Thanks again and I will add this to the FAQ for the next release (if you have any specific ideas for how you would like a gallery to work in the future then please send me the details via my website contact page )

Best wishes,

Brian (PeoplesGeek)

Thanks! I was playing around with the idea of showing multiple images (or a t-shirt design) and when I noticed the gallery option, I thought “hey, why not?”.

Makes more sense now that you’ve explained it – that “gallery” is this instance is not in the typical WordPress Gallery sense, but as a repository for images to use, so you don’t have to dig through all of your images again to find the image you want to change to.

One other question: I am using your nifty plugin (which I hope to make a small donation to the cause with my next paycheck) as a way to link to my Society6 items. Because I want them to appear in my main feed as they are added (since I am making new designs all the time) but I also want a way for people to click directly to the latest list of all items for sale, I had used the Shorthand button to create posts for each item (once created in the shop) and assign that post to my ‘prints’ category for easy menu navigation.

To my question – I notice that when I click on the category these posts which contain shop items are housed in (and houses only shop items) that the resulting “page” that displays showing the selected category is very slow to scroll down. I don’t notice this on other categories-set-as-menu-items links, so am I abusing the system here somehow? Why would making individual posts to house the shorthand code for the shop items slow down a feed?

Thanks again!

Hi Loquos,

I’m glad you are enjoying the plugin and the best way to find things out is to play and ask questions. Oh – and donations of any size are always highly appreciated. ??

I think I understand your description of how you are creating posts for each item in your Society6 page. Can you give me a link to look at it so I can make sure I am on the same wavelength?

It may be slower because if you have a category of posts created by shortcodes then there are a lot more queries run (each post is created one at a time while the category page is displayed). With other categories the posts are all retrieved at the same time with one query.

It might be possible to make this more efficient – I’d like to see your category page before I do any other investigation to make sure I have understood.

Cheers,

Brian (PeoplesGeek)

I guess you can tell I’ve been playing around a lot! ??

So, I’ve tried two different ways, the first way here: https://www.lotuskey.com/wordpress/category/prints/

And the second way here: https://www.lotuskey.com/wordpress/prints-shop/

The first way is as I described above – each product is put into its own post, which I then link to a category (used only for products) and then have the link to that category for easy access. This way it goes through my feed as well as having a static location. [I feel I should note here, I am loading original images from my desktop and creating products via your plugin, then directing the link to the appropriate item in Society6. I’m not a hard-core coder, so I’m not sure if any of this has any bearing on the outcome of things, but I thought it was a detail I should mention.]

The second way was something I just tried, to see if loading speed was faster. I created a page and inserted the Shorthand code to show all items in the shop.

The load speeds seem to be the same. Maybe this isn’t a code issue and is just a loading speed issue on my end? I’d have to ask other friends to check it out and see how it loads for them. The scrolling just seems a lot more jerky than my other “display category” link: https://www.lotuskey.com/wordpress/category/portfolio/

Hope I’ve been more help than hinderance! Thanks again for all the great (and quick!) responses!

Forgot to mark this as resolved. ?? Thanks again!

Hi Loquos,

Thanks for showing me the pages – love the artwork!

One of the things I saw is that the images are very large for web display (1 & 2 MB images). This may explain the slow loading on the first display and you might want to optimise these images for web to make them smaller. I think that will make a big difference to the page load time.

Best wishes,

Brian (PeoplesGeek)

Ha! See? I knew it was something I was doing – I just didn’t even think about the images themselves. Thanks for the tip… and the compliment!

Finally have some money! How do I donate?

Hi Loquos,

Any donations are much appreciated!

There is a donate link on the plugin main page under Author in the left hand column
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/pg-simple-affiliate-shop/

Or you can go to the link directly
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=2H2HYH6LVFM4Q

Best wishes,

Brian (PeoplesGeek)

Done! Thank you for a great plugin!