Already having a decent reusable template in place for these types of WordPress plugins, it was easy to just dive into the Instagram API with a few prototype-style scripts and convert it into a formal plugin. Plus, having worked with the Flickr API for years, and experience doing similar work with the Google Data API for things like Blogger, Maps, and YouTube, not to mention creating my own API for my Daily Maui Photo offerings, this was a walk in the park.

Plugin Features

The features I was targeting aren’t very difficult by any stretch. And yes, I’m sure there are already a few different plugins (or one uber-plugin) that does all these things, too. But then where would the fun be in that?

Simple Grid View

First up was adding a photo album-style page over on our family blog again, simple enough. It’s just a grid view of my Instagram photos hooked into a Lightbox plugin to show the full view.

Instagram Plugin Grid View

Lightbox view for full-size photo.

View on Website

For this, and the other features to follow, the API results are cached to the file system for roughly six hours (I don’t typically post photos that many times in one day), which speeds up the page loading without having to hit the API every time. Room for a few tweaks there, but it’s good enough for now.

At the moment, this just uses a WordPress shortcode with a parameter for the thumbnail size, and it just sorts by recent photos in descending order, and lists everything (currently 70 photos at time of this writing). At some point, I’ll look to add paging and probably add a parameter to limit the number of photos as well.

Recent Instagram Feed Sidebar Widget

Next up was taking essentially the same display logic for the grid view and moving it to a sidebar widget. The first site this time was my photography website, which happens to be running with a premium theme I switched to within the last year.

That theme already came with a Flickr Photos sidebar widget that I was using, so ultimately I wanted to create something that fit the same look-and-feel. Take a look.

My Instagram Photos sidebar widget side-by-side with the theme’s Flickr Photos widget.

View on Website

I cheated here a tad, just by copying over the few relevant styles from the existing theme widget into my own widget, but it’s a standalone CSS file that can be customized to fit anything.

More importantly, I made the display configurable via the widget options to control the title, number of photos, and thumbnail size, as such:

Sidebar widget display settings.

This not only was a no-brainer to skip hard-coding these values inside the plug-in itself, but it made it easy for me to bring this back over to my family blog’s sidebar and test out a different look.

Sidebar configured with larger thumbnails to be one column.

View on Website

Single Photo Shortcode

The last plug-in feature for the weekend was to add another shortcode, but this time instead of displaying a grid, just to show a single photo. And in this case, include the option to show off all the information about the photo, too:

Single photo shortcode view, with meta data displayed.

View on Website

In this case, I opted to display them large enough to fill horizontal space in the post, and also included 4 photos. The image width and the display of meta data (caption, filter, date taken, location, link) are parameters in the shortcode, as well as the “link code” that’s part of the URL Instagram uses for sharing photos outside of it’s App on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Since the size and meta data display are configurable in the shortcode parameters, I could just as easily make a smaller size display to use as a preview image at the beginning of a post, a post footer image somewhere, or even inside a page rather than a post.

All for Now

So, with just a few hours each night this weekend, I came out pretty satisfied. There are a few aspects of this plugin that I’d probably want to go back and revisit soon, but for now, I’m leaving it as-is.

I’m toying with the idea of featuring a page of my Instagram images on my photography blog with more than just a sidebar, so if anything, that would likely drive more hours to be spent here.

But until then, I’ll probably spend sometime writing up notes on the other plugins I worked on these past few weeks to help with my family blog.

Again, those aren’t anything vastly different than the ones out there today, but just being able to have the skills, knowledge, and creativity to try and solve these simple problems yourself rather than shoehorning someone else’s idea of a solution into your situation is part of the joy of being a developer.

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It’s been a busy year so far updating my first iOS application, so how about we get caught up on the latest details…

Latest iPhone and iPad Releases

So far this year, there have already been two major updates to the Daily Maui Photo App for iOS.

Version 2.1

Version 2.1 is the latest release at the time of the writing. With it, full native support for the iPad is now available, along with the following features:

• Browse the last 18 daily photos featured on our website.
• Full screen Map View to browse recent photos from all across the island.
• Support for Retina display in new iPad (3rd Gen).

Version 2.0

Earlier in the year, the iPhone version was completely rewritten from the ground up to support iOS 5.0. In addition to being rewritten, the following features were added as well:

• Added higher quality images to support devices with Retina Displays.
• Added Twitter support using built-in iOS Twitter integration.
• New Banner Notifications using the Notification Center in iOS 5.
• Improved scrolling and UI features.
• Added full screen mode for viewing photos and captions.
• New Menu button with links to More Maui resources.
• Added Facebook logout option in Menu settings.
• Added option for Rating the App in the App Store.
• New option for sharing the App with friends by email or social media.

Learn more about on the App support page.

Talk Story

As they say on the islands – Talk Story means to chat with friends, tell stories, and share memories. Here, it follows the same spirit. I’d love to hear from you on your thoughts, suggestions, issues, questions, or anything else related to this App. Or anything Maui, for that matter.

Along those lines, I’ve made the extra effort to build in direct contact options into both versions of the App, as well as creating an official Facebook Page for the Daily Maui App for iOS right here.

Stop by and leave some of your Aloha there.

Leave a Review

If you’ve already downloaded the App (or are thinking about it now) and enjoy these photos everyday, it would be great if you decided to leave a rating or review in the App Store. I purposely left out those nagging “Rate Me” alerts in this App – but that doesn’t mean I can’t leave a nice subtle reminder here, right?

Stay Tuned

Getting this latest release launched for the iPad was a major milestone for me – seeing that it’s another great leap to reach a larger and expanding device base.

Yet, as happy as I am to launch this version, I’m even more excited to move on to my 2nd Maui App already. In fact, I have 2-3 more ideas taking up space on my project list for the year at the moment, so stay tuned here and on Facebook for more updates in the coming months.

Related posts:

1. Daily Maui Photo App v1.1 Available

Vacations are great, don’t get me wrong. And vacations to Maui are completely awesome, I can assure you that.

Yet, every time we come back from Maui, it seems like there’s always more work to do when I get back than when I left, and that doesn’t include the usual “day job” activities.

Let Me Explain

Allow me to elaborate. I would consider myself a pretty passionate guy. One that embraces things he enjoys and cares about, and makes them part of my everyday life whenever possible.

And when those passions collide…well, watch out. To further explore this dilemma, check out the profile site I created over at krisnelson.me. That starts to sum things up pretty well, as far as my passions in life go.

You’ll notice that Maui pretty much leads the way on that profile site. Hands down, the majority of what I build online has something to do with Maui these days. Ironic, that we only spend 1-2 weeks there a year. At least for now, that is.

Next up is the photography work, which has really received a shot in the arm over the last few months with the birth of our first child at the end of last year. Photos, much like websites, have their own care and feeding in terms of capturing ideas, processing, and publishing (aka more work).

And then, of course, there is the web aspect that I’m passionate about, which includes publishing content, blogging, and social media. After all, the first two passions would only go so far if I could not express and share them with the masses online, now would they.

When Passions Collide

Imagine, if you will, the joining of all three of these forces at once? Being back home after a week on Maui spent attending a photography workshop and networking with other photographers and social media fans, too. That todo list starts to grow, and grow fast. Wasn’t this supposed to be a vacation, too?

Speaking of todo lists, here’s the grand master plan of things I need to follow up on now that we’re back home.

• Backup and archive all photos taken during the trip from my laptop to my primary computer.
• Publish photos already processed during the trip to my Photography Blog.
• Process any additional photos not yet worked on during the trip.
• Sharing photos on my Photography and Maui Facebook pages.
• Writing journal entries from our trip over at my Maui blog.
• Sharing photos and personal stories of our son’s first trip to Maui on our family blog.
• Writing my recap of the sessions and my experience over at the Maui Photo Festival and Workshops last week.
• Writing a review of the ThinkTank Photo bag I picked up for the trip (and worked very well)
• Share some of the video podcasts I saved on my iPad and watched during our flights.
• Follow up with all the great photographers and their photos that I met during the MPF workshops.
• Work in some of my newest Maui photos from last week into my Daily Maui Photo website.
• …and probably a few other things I can’t think of right now.

Phew, I’m going to need another vacation after all of this. That list doesn’t include the items I was already working on before I left, either.

And…that’s not even including the day job I have to get back to tomorrow. Sigh.

So, Why Bother?

So why do all this extra stuff and push the limits of my sanity? Passion. At the end of the day, I still love this stuff, and it wouldn’t be as rewarding and meaningful to me if everything just sat on my hard drive and was never seen again.

I can’t exactly pinpoint the moment where things just started to feel this overwhelming, but at the end of the day when I rest my exhausted head for just a few hours of sleep, I know that I’m doing things that I really love and am doing this for me. And although none of these things are bringing in buckets of money to fund my habits…er, passions…the relationships I’ve been building and the experiences I’m amassing will only help me further my passions in the future. To that extent, who knows what the future will offer.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Now I have to get back to work.

– Kris

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What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a micro-blogging service optimized for sharing various types of content, such as traditional blog posts, quotes, photos, links, reviews, etc.

In addition to having your own Tumblr blog, you can also follow other Tumblr blogs, mark posts from others as favorites, and even “reblog” someone else’s post on your own stream. That last feature makes it very easy to share content you like with your followers and spread the reach of your own content.

Why Daily Maui Photo on Tumblr?

Seeing as the primary goal of the Daily Maui Photo offering is to add a little Aloha to fans all over the world on a daily basis, this is yet another great way to help reach more and more people.

Plus, using the reblog feature, not only can users spread our daily Maui photos, but I can also share additional Maui content I find from other Tumblr streams, and even sources like Flickr, Facebook, and some of my favorite Maui blogs. This is really exciting because now I can go from a single photo a day to a photo plus links, photos, and posts from other sources as well. It makes for a more engaging experience and hopefully more views throughout the day.

Where to Go

If you’d like to see for yourself, head over to the Daily Maui Photo stream on Tumblr and have a look. You don’t need to have a Tumblr account to view the stream and see what other content I’m sharing.

If you’re already a Tumblr user, I invite you follow along and if you see something you like, please pass it on.

More Tumblr Updates Soon

At the present time, Tumblr doesn’t offer a way to publish my existing Daily Maui Photo feed directly to my stream, so I still have a little work left to do. There is an API that supports adding posts, photos, etc. and I’m about 75% finished with using that to post our daily photo automatically.

After that’s finished, there are also a few other idea for Tumblr streams I can see working on in the future. I could easily see adding one for the #MauiSunset Catalogue that’s powered by the Flickr group with the same name. There’s also another Maui by Photo spinoff that’s about 50% done that could also pop on Tumblr by the end of the year, too.

Finally, I can see sharing some of my photography work on a Tumblr stream of it’s own to supplement the portfolio site and blog that I have now and give me a chance to share some of my favorite photos from the photographers I follow online.

Certainly more to stay tuned for.

– Kris

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My Computer History (the brief version)

I don’t remember the specifics of my first PC, but I know it was around the fifth grade. My grandfather had a setup in his basement that I used a few times, and our family inherited on of his older machines during an upgrade. We also had Apple IIe machines in grade school, too, and I remember Number Munchers, Oregon Trail, Odell Lake, and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago.

Back to that first PC, it was DOS based and wasn’t strong enough to run Windows 3.1 at the time. Most of my time was spent learning Q-BASIC, and I wrote a problem that cataloged my entire CD collection at the time. I came up with a concept of storing album titles in one file and then the song titles for each album in a second file (which I later learned was a basic relational database premise). I also spent most of 8 grade honors math writing programs on my TI-81 graphing calculator, including a slot machine, solitaire, and a crude Mandelbrot generator.

I then took a summer school class prior to freshman year of high school to learn HyperCard, and then took more programming classes the rest of high school. Pascal was the trend at the time.

I scored my first laptop senior year and it was 333MHz running Windows 98 (2nd edition, I believe). That’s when I really started getting used to a PC with a GUI and started discovering the Internet and all it’s joys at the time. I started college (DeVry) just 3 weeks after high school graduation, which began with a year of COBOL (snore). Year two featured Visual Basic 5, MS Access, and C++, before taking a course of Java my last course of my 3 year term. It was actually extra credit for making my Java apps to run as applets in web pages that got me working with HTML for the first time, and after doing our senior project in Front Page 2000, I was on my way.

Even then, I know Front Page was awful, and started working on webnelly.com just around graduation from college in 2001. I started a website for my former high school hockey team in 2002, installed the old version of the PHP community forum software my web host at the time and started teaching myself PHP and MySQL. In parallel, I landed a support programmer job in November of 2001 and transferred my separate VB and JSP knowledge to learning ASP and MS SQL. 4 years later I was leading team of developers building eCommerce sites with ASP.NET for some of the largest software publishers in the world. Nice!

My PHP and MySQL work continued as a hobby, and while taking my first formal web design class in 2007 and preparing for a 2nd trip to Maui, I created my first Maui website, and well, the rest has been a giant wave of Aloha and staying on top of the latest tech (which is almost a full time job these days).

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Version 0.3 Details

Version 0.3 is a minor release, correctly a security flaw that was uncovered by a third party security website. The flaw corrected in this release was actually part of the admin settings in the widget panel itself, and not directly exposed to the use of the plugin on the website. And since the code for the admin settings used by this plugin do not interact directly with any of the WordPress data or sensitive information in the database or files, the threat was considered minimal.

Regardless, the code for the admin settings have been reworked to eliminate the flaw that was discovered, and by simply upgrading to the latest version, it will be repaired without any further action.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Plugin: Daily Maui Photo Widget

Feel free to check it out at http://about.me/webnelly.

Both the concept and setup of these profile pages is very basic. You get a vanity URL for signing up, and you upload a background image, add your name, bio, a few links, and viola. In just a few moments, you now have a personalized landing page that you can use as a landing page or bio address for things like your Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn profiles.

And despite being such a simple concept, browsing through their directory will soon reveal that there are some very talented folks creating beautiful profile pages with this service. I, myself, don’t have too many portrait photos to choose from (nor am I that photogenic), so I chose one from 10,000 above sea level from my trip up to the Haleakala summit. Who knows, at some point maybe I’ll get on a creative tear and snap something else.

Find Your Friends?

One thing the site still lacks, in my opinion, is the ubiquitous “find my friends” feature that allows you to import your email contacts, Twitter, or Facebook friends in order to scope out their profiles and add them to your directory. You can do a name search, but that’s a little more time consuming (or we’re all just getting spoiled). Perhaps it’s on the way.

In the meantime, if you end up giving the service a shot and wanted to share your profile with me, let me know. I’d be interested in checking it out.

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The current listed price for a new iPad 16GB Wi-Fi model (first gen) is down $100 to $399, with the refurbished model down another $50 from there. Considering the specs for what I would need aren’t that different between the original and the new iPad 2, I decided to help Apple out and take a first gen model off their hands.

Why I Went First Gen?

The main reason I was looking to pick up an iPad was for app testing and development, either natively or mobile web apps. While I don’t have any formal plans yet, the first candiate will likely be releasing an iPad version of my Daily Maui Photo app.

For what I would need, therefore, is pretty much the same between the original iPad and the specs of the iPad 2. I don’t plan on building anything apps that use the cameras or the gyroscope. And sure, the faster processor would be nice, but the fact that the screen resolution hasn’t changed (like it did between iPhone versions last year), I’m pretty happy to save $150 on last year’s model.

Practice First

It will likely be a short while before I dive straight into building apps specifically for the iPad. It’s a matter of preference for me, but I like to spend time with the device and other apps to get a better handle on the UI conventions that work well and which ones don’t. Sure, I could just take the same UI that I built for my iPhone app and make it bigger as-is, but I don’t feel that’s what apps on the iPad are all about.

It’s only been a few hours already playing with a few apps that I already had on my iPod, and it’s neat seeing how some of the developers are using the extra real estate. I know, it’s not a big news flash since I’m a year behind the party here, but hey, it’s new to me.

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Now it’s easy to showcase a new photo of Maui each day right on your WordPress blog, anywhere and on any theme that has supports for Widgets. And with multiple layouts to choose from, you can select the one that fits best with your blog.

Daily Aloha for Your Readers

This WordPress plugin is just the latest extension of the Daily Maui Photo website. Thousands already enjoy these daily photos on Facebook and a strong following is growing around the @DailyMauiPhoto account on Twitter, too. So why not add your many blog visitors to that list, too?

This plugin is easy to install and use, so you’ll be up and running in no time. There are currently five different layouts to choose from, which you can view on the support page. Switching between layouts is just as easy, using the built-in Widgets panel on your WordPress dashboard. Just chose the style you want from the list and that’s it. You’ll never have to look at code or manually change files after installation. Like I said, it’s that easy.

What’s more, all the code and photos run on the Daily Maui Photo server, not yours. Why does that matter? It means you don’t have to worry about added processing time on your server or page delays while the photo is being displayed.

Not Using WordPress?

Why not?

Just kidding. Although this plugin is currently for the WordPress platform, I am working on a separate widget that can easily be copied into any website or blog template. I probably won’t post it for a few weeks, but if you’re interested in using it now as a beta user, please let me know.

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You can now see, in one place, just how much work I really do around Maui, how many Facebook pages I manage, and that 3rd Twitter account you never knew I had.

What’s New

Well, everything. The previous version of the site – which I was so ashamed of I never listed it in the profile here until now – was more of a JavaScript playground rather than useful for anyone to use. It also fell short of my primary goal for this site: to be my single-view online map of all my work online.

I feel this new version of the site brings that goal to fruition with a much cleaner and aesthetic feel to it. And for something that looks like it could make a good slide presentation, it’s actually put together with a surprisingly minimal amount of code.

You can read more about the specifics of this site and how it’s build on the kris.nelson portfolio page.

It’s actually one of the better site write-ups I’ve done in my portfolio section (for shame). I hope some day my other sites get that love and attention in their bios, too.

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