Photonic Gallery & Lightbox for Flickr, SmugMug & Others

You can install the plugin through the WordPress installer under Plugins → Add New by searching for “Photonic”, or by uploading the file downloaded from here.

Alternatively you can download the file from here, unzip it and move the unzipped contents to the wp-content/plugins folder of your WordPress installation. You will then be able to activate the plugin.

Once you have activated the plugin, refer to Photonic → Getting Started for a list of capabilities and documentation.

If I disable the plugin what happens to the galleries?

Obviously, your galleries will not show. If you are using Gutenberg you don’t have to worry about anything. If you are not using Gutenberg and you are using the native gallery shortcode, you will not see any empty shortcode tags on your site. But if you are not using Gutenberg and you are using a custom shortcode that shortcode tag will now show up.

When I click on a gallery in the Visual Editor nothing happens. Is the plugin working?

Yes, the plugin is working. Unfortunately the integration of Photonic with the visual editor is complex, and there is a likelihood of conflicts with other TinyMCE-specific plugins. If you come across such a conflict, please report it on the support forum. In the meanwhile you can disable the visual editing capability of Photonic ( Photonic → Settings → Generic Options → Generic Settings → Disable shortcode editing in Visual Editor ) and you should still be able to edit the gallery shortcode directly through the text editor.

My gallery layout seems to get messed up with random text showing up at various places. Are you sure the plugin is working?

Yes, the plugin is working. The issue you are facing is that you have another plugin (typically some sort of a lightbox plugin) that is modifying the markup generated by Photonic.

Of course, it would be easiest if you were to disable that plugin. If a lightbox is all you need, Photonic’s lightbox can be used to display regular photos as well, from your admin dashboard under Photonic → Settings → Generic Options → Generic Settings → Photonic Lightbox for non-Photonic Images . This will ensure consistency across Photonic and non-Photonic images.

However, if you really wanted to keep that plugin, Photonic offers a way out there too! For each provider (e.g. Flickr, SmugMug etc.) go to the Settings page, e.g. Photonic → Settings → SmugMug → SmugMug Settings → Disable lightbox linking and set that option.

What about other photo-sharing platforms?

Suggestions are welcome for other photo-sharing platforms.

What about other JS lightbox libraries?

You mean apart from the 17 that Photonic currently supports?? If you have specific suggestions please feel free to contact the plugin author, but only pure JS, GPL-compatible lightbox scripts will be supported.

Note that there have been slight modifications have been made to some of the lightboxes to make them play well with newer code.

Are there any known issues?

The TinyMCE integration for the plugin is complex, predominantly since Photonic doesn’t rely on a separate shortcode. This can cause potential conflicts with other plugins. If such a situation arises, please report it in the Support Forum , and disable the visual editor capability for the shortcode by specific post-types ( Photonic → Settings → Generic Options → Generic Settings → Disable Visual Editing for specific post types ). If that doesn’t work, you can go thermonuclear on Photonic’s visual editing ( Photonic → Settings → Generic Options → Generic Settings → Disable shortcode editing in Visual Editor ) – you will still be able to edit the shortcode using the Text Editor in WordPress.

The “Mosaic” layout may sometimes show 1px wide gaps between images if you set the padding between images to 0. This happens due to rounding errors in the height and width calculations. To avoid this, it is recommended that you use a padding > 0 between images for this layout.

Apart from these, while the plugin can handle pretty much whatever you throw at it, Lubarsky’s Law of Cybernetic Entomology states:

There is always one more bug.

Bug reports are welcome, and handled enthusiastically.

Are translations supported?

Yes, but only for the plugin front-end and the wizard. The Settings pages are not translated at this point. Also note that any strings included in the third-party JS scripts are not translated.