Version 3.0: highlight on images
The more I dive into the WordPress Media code, the more it seems interesting to extend it to improve the way WPMovieLibrary handles backdrops and posters. I’ve spent most of the last two weeks reading code from WordPress’ core in an effort to replicate some of its features and adapt them to WPMovieLibrary, and I’m pretty satisfied of the result so far.
One of the biggest weaknesses of the plugin on that part is the way version 1.x and 2.x images are loaded to the Media Modal and the limitations it causes, such as importing posters one at a time only, or not being able to set preexisting images as backdrops or posters. Remote images download also is quite archaic, passing images URLs to a PHP script handling the download, all this through Ajax queries… Such a mess. Good news is, all these troubles will be addressed in version 3.0, including the possibility to set any images as a backdrop or poster and setting it as featured no matter if preexisting or imported from the API.
WPMoly3 new Media Modal feature: better way to import backdrop and posters
All of this is made possible by the Media Modal custom extensions I managed to develop lately, and it was quite a struggle due to the partially undocumented code I had to explore; took me a while to piece everything together. I might blog about that part on my own site as I have a feeling it will be helpful to some devs out there looking desperately for documentation on how to pass remote images to the WordPress Media Uploaded (PlUpload).
WPMoly3 new Media Modal feature: set existing images as backdrops or posters
I’ve not yet added to the metabox the possibility to unset a backdrop or poster, ie. removing the media from the list of backdrops/posters without completely deleting it, but it seems like a good idea so I’ll probably add it to the todo list.
I hope next week will see the end of that part of the development so we can move on to deeper parts like the API connection. Maybe I’ll take some time first to correctly set up the translation system and nonces implementation, those are two important parts that should be done before any serious work on the backend. To be continued!
Hello, you are doing a good job! I like it.
Here are some suggestions that probably will be helpful for many webmasters.
1. Fully filterable movie grid on frontend (genre + year + rating, = final result …). When it will be made with Ajax, make sure that all films not load at once, I mean the code and images. Because it will be useless for sites with thousands of movies.
2. Movie rating auto fetching together with metadata. + scheduled autoupdate ideally:) (It saves lots of time for webmasters)
3. Choice for movie images auto import at once with metadata. (With the ability to set how many images per movie sitewide)
3. Extended MASS import. For example first 1000 popular movies, or first 1000 Top Rated movies. Complete with Images (With the ability to set how many images per movie sitewide) and with movie rating.
– These ideas will save a lot of time to people who are planning to create a large website with thousands of films.
What do you think about it?
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your suggestions!
1/ That’s definitely what’s planned for frontend, Ajax-powered grid with pagination and filtering options. It was actually the reason behind version 2.1.5, which was dropped to work quickly on version 3.0.
2/ That’s a recurrent suggestion from the start, and I’m still very reluctant to the idea. Importing ratings as metadata will most likely lead to confusion with the existing rating detail, and like you mentioned it will require and auto-update implementation to be of any use since ratings change through time; that’s a lot of complications for something I don’t find much use in. The plugin is meant to help you manage your library; what’s important is your opinion of the movies you own/saw, rather than the average ratings extracted from some remote service.
3/ Definitely planned, in single and multiple movie import, sitewide or on a per-movie basis. It’s kind of possible already through settings, but not as evolved as I’d want it to be.
4/ Also something I’m very reluctant to implement: that’s typically a feature that would be useful only to people building movie databases with the plugin, or similar websites (professional reviews, streaming sites, etc). And that’s in no way what the plugin is meant for: it’s meant for personal movie collections management… I’ve had a blog draft on that subject waiting for a while now, I’ll try to push it live soon for clarification 🙂
Bonjour,
Je suis d’accord avec toi Charlie sur les points 2 et 4. Sur le point 4, c’est bien pour cela que par exemple allociné et imdb ne mettent pas à dispo leur API aux particuliers et que même themoviedb n’autorise pas a conserver les données autre que pour une utilisation personnel.
Sinon, ravi que le plugin cela avance.
Cdlt.