ldaniels

A little late, but I have tried to adapt some of the more straightforward enhanced search plugins with Alex’s code. No luck so far. It is more complex than imagined. I know the entire WP search issue and its shortcomings is a lively one on the Developers forum as well as several regular forums.

I currently have different needs than Robin, or at least can live with the search as it stands until such time, but any suggestions would be welcome.

Lee

NextGEN has several template options that can do that. It appears the one you see on that gallery is the Carousel template.
You can find that template and others here:

NextGEN Gallery Templates

Hope this is helpful.

Hi Alex, as Robin says, they do not work for pages and posts. I started a separate thread to see if there are ideas about this.

Lee

The tags are included in the meta_data field with the EXIF/IPTC data. Tags are not a separate field – sorry!

I neglected to include the direct link to the article here:

Hope it helps someone!

Lee

I’ve been using 1.8 since the first alpha showed up on your Google Code page and it has been a great experience. I look forward to the final release and integration with the SEO image map solution!

Lee

Robin, you are right! The operators I gave you do not work. My first test worked for me only because I was mistaken on some assumed keywords on a site I manage and it turns out the photos I was thinking of were “woman” or “lady” and not girl. Sorry!
I can certainly get your photos of Egypt with Flag, but not without. Likewise “woman river” gives me that lovely shot of the woman in red, but “+woman -river” does not work.
Sorry!

I don’t know the FotoMoto API code as well as I ought, but I believe it would require some special coding by them in order to accomplish what seems to me is a very good idea. I know I’d use that function if it were available.

I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful this time, but I will give it more thought and maybe inspiration will strike!

Lee

This is not a NextGEN issue at all. It is an issue with your separate Thickbox plugin. NextGEN only comes with Shutter. It does not have any Thickbox or Lightbox plugins included.

If you use a different modal/lightbox/thickbox window, then you either need to complain to that developer or switch and use a different one with NextGEN.
PrettyPhoto does what you describe, but must be integrated with NextGEN in a very specific way. A lot of colorbox and lightbox plugins also do as you describe.
Two nice lightbox plugins are: Simple Lightbox and Lightbox Plus.

In any case, do not blame NextGEN for the failing of a different plugin. ??

Hi Robin,

I checked your site and the search function is working wonderfully! Great job!

I just wrote an illustrated tutorial for installing and getting the plugin to work. It is on the Code Fixers site.
It is essentially the same as I wrote above, but easier to follow with pictures and coaching. I’ll make it a separate topic in this forum and on the NextGEN site as well for those who are looking

As for FotoMoto, I feel your pain. They do make it easy to choose which images are for sale and which are not on the FotoMoto Images page after you sign in, just not in batches. I’ve done that on one site with only 600 images and it was tedious, but not as time-consuming as I thought it would be. The new site coming up will have many thousand images and will be more challenging.

FotoMoto are very responsive, but have a long list of proposed changes and triage them according to severity and greatest good for greatest number.

I will continue to follow your progress and work with interest.

Lee

This might be an obvious question, but do you have a Lightbox plugin installed? NextGEN only comes with Shutter. You need to have a separate Lightbox or Thickbox plugin in order to use the other options.

I’m so glad it worked for you!

By the way, the FotoMoto buttons are automatically added to the search results on all 3 sites where I run it, so it should not be a problem and will need no extra code. If that is not the case for you, let me know.

The operators are the “+” and “-” (plus and minus) keys. Example: I only want pictures of girls with dogs.
Search “+girl +dog” (without quotes)

and I only get a picture of a girl with a dog.

Example: +girl +dog -boy and we cut the guy out of the picture ??

It is all very simple to walk on water when you know where the rocks are under the surface.

Lee

Hi Robin,

You do not need custom fields search. That just searches internally on the admin side with results only you can see. Let’s start fresh.

Getting the NextGEN Search to integrate with the WordPress search:

1. Go to your theme directory (wp-content/themes/wyattphotography) and either re-name or make a backup of “search.php”

2. Make sure the plugin NGGSearch by Alex Rabe is installed in your plugins folder. (Important, since there is also a plugin called NextGen Gallery Search and many people confuse the two)
It is the plugin found here: at the top of the page.

3. Activate the plugin

4. In the plugins directory under the folder “nggSearch” is a folder called “Themes.” Find it.

5. In that folder there are two folders: “default” and “Twentyten”

6. Open the Twentyten folder and copy the search.php file. (You can use either default of Twentyten, but I generally use Twentyten.)

7. Place that search.php file in the main folder or root of your theme directory. You want to overwrite the file already in there.(In your case, place it in wp-content/themes/wyattphotography)

8. Open the search.php file and find the term ‘twentyten’ (including quotes). Replace the word ‘twentyten’ with ‘wyattphotography’ (including quotes). Save it and overwrite the file.

(Steps 6 and 7 can be reversed if you want)

This will integrate your gallery with your WordPress search.

I’m going to advocate this instead of a separate image search particularly for you as an editorial photographer. Buyers (personal and editorial and stock) love images that not only tell a story, but that have a story. You integrate those in every part of your site.

Understand that when a person searches for “Egypt” the search will return two separate sections:
1. A result section for your posts and pages about Egypt.
2. A separate result section for thumbnail images that are keyworded “Egypt” or that have “Egypt” in the title or description.

This is a value added situation for the searcher. “Cool! A story to go with the picture!” Maybe we’ll contact him about that as well. Or maybe it will just add extra depth and dimension to the body of images. And it will almost certainly encourage further exploration beyond the original search goal.

There is a reason PhotoShelter is pushing their integration with WordPress and partnership with GraphPress. ;0

The other solution that I pointed you to substitutes the WordPress search with the image-only search. A case of either/or. In your case, I think that would be an awful shame.

Still, I’m sure there is a way to have both, but I haven’t tried coding it.

At least try this way first and use it for a week or so. I found it annoying at first, but now would not do it any other way.

Call on me if you need or email me at danielsmediagroup at gmail

Lee

I’m so sorry! I’ll monitor this thread and am available if you need.
I think you may be making it harder than it is – so let me know if you get stuck.

Lee

NextGEN gallery has a wonderful search features that integrates with the WordPress search. You can find it here:

The plugin you are looking for is NextGEN Search Engine 0.7.0 available on Alex’s site at NextGEN Search

We had a recent discussion about it on this forum:
NextGEN Search Discussion

It works very well and I personally use it on multiple sites.

Lee

If you want your Thickbox effect again, make sure to either download the thickbox plugin or activate the one you already have. Same for lightbox and anything other than Shutter.

Glad you got it working!