Do you like WordPress? I do. This engine probably doesn't have the best architecture, sometimes its code is just awful, but its agility and excellent user interface attract lots of users around the world. I decided to contribute to the development of WordPress community and wrote a plugin Media Finder.
This plugin helps you find images and video on Flickr and YouTube quickly and easily and insert them to your post with one click. A lot of readers find posts with illustrations more interesting in comparison to the text-only posts. But we often don't have necessary illustrations which fit the subject of our posts. Here Media Finder can help you. It lest you find mediafiles on the largest storages of video and images on the internet, and illustrate your posts with them.
Installation (will take no logner than a minute)
- Upload media_finder.php file to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
- Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
Usage
It's extremely easy to use Media Finder. Just start writing a new post, then, when you need to insert image or video, press Add an Image / Add Video button (above the text editor) and go to Search tab on the opened window. After that enter the search query and press Enter. You'll see search results pretty soon after that. If you've searched for images, then in addition to inserting to the post, you can view it's larger version. And if you've searched for video, you can view larger version of the preview image and watch the video. And that's it!
UPD: From the version 0.0.2 I have added 2 options for the images search. First, you can specify the order of the images - by relevance, publication date or interestingness. Second, you can choose the license, end Media Finder will search only for images that support the chosen license. Thanks to iCounsellor who suggested this feature. In addition, all images that you insert to your post are by default linked to the author's photostream, because Creative Commons license requires it, but you can change it easily, if you want.
Supported browsers
FF2+, IE6+, Opera 9+, Google Chrome.
Web hosting support
Media Finder requires curl PHP library to be installed on your server. As an alternative, allow_url_fopen flag in php.ini flag should be set to 1. Don't worry, most fo the servers have the required library installed. If not, contact your hosting provider support service.
Support of different WordPress versions
I have tested Media Finder using WordPress 2.8.4, but earlier versions can also work. You can install the plugin and check whether it's compatible with your version of WordPress. Media Finder doesn't use database and doesn't make any unalterable actions, so you won't have trouble even in case of incompatibility.
UPD: Media Finder works with WordPress 2.7 and higher.
How you can help
- Just use Media Finder.
- If you like it, tell your friends or write a little post about it.
- If you find a bug or have an idea that will help to improve the plugin, write about it here in the comments.
- If you think you can improve design or functionality of the plugin and you wish to do it, I'll be glad to collaborate with you. Write to Kadalashvili at Vladimir at gmail dot com.
What I am planning to do
Of cource, I am planning to fix bugs as soon as possible. In addition, I am going to test the plugin for compatibility with earlier versions of
WordPress. I am also going to add some options for search, for example, sorting the results by date, relevance or popularity. If you have some ideas about adding new features, please share them.
Resources
Media Finder on WordPress plugin directory
Download
Happy blogging!
