Alpine Phototile for Pinterest

GALLERY

Proposed Features

Below are a number of features that have been suggested and will be implemented as soon as I find the time to do so.

Fix/improve Pin It button
Add titles and captions
Thumbnail pagination

General

The Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin can retrieve pins from a personal Pinterest account or pinboard. The photos can be linked to the your Flickr page, a specific URL, or to a Lightbox slideshow. Also, the Shortcode Generator makes it easy to insert the widget into posts without learning any of the code. This lightweight but powerful widget takes advantage of WordPress’s built in JQuery scripts to create a sleek presentation that I hope you will like.

Because Pinterest has not officially released their API to developers, the Alpine Phototile for Instagram wordpress plugin’s functionality is fairly limited. In other words, Pinterest is not quite ready for people to make plugins and apps, so the only thing that the Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin can do is retrieve the most recent pins or pins from a certain pinboard.

Pinterest has rather odd size options: 75px, 192px, 554px, 600px, and 930px. In most cases, the size is only an approximation of the image’s actual size.

Plugin available at WordPress.org.

Features : Pinterest WordPress

Display Pinterest pins in a sidebar, post, or page
Multiple styles to allow for customization
Lighbox feature for interactive slideshow (Fancybox, prettyBox, or ColorBox)
Simple instructions
Widget & shortcode options
Feed caching/storage for improved page loading

Style and Demos

Below is an example of the Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin using the Wall style with the “pin it” button, corner curve, border, highlight, shadow, and Fancybox options enabled (click an image and the Fancybox slideshow will appear).

The Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin includes 8 display styles: Vertical, Windows, Wall, Cascade, and Gallery. (Click the links to preview the styles)

Quick Start Guide

After installing the Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin on your WordPress site, make sure it is activated by logging into your admin area and going to Plugins in the left menu.
To add the Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin to a sidebar, go to Appearance->Widgets in the left menu.
Find the rectangle labeled Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress. Click and drag the rectangle to one of the sidebar containers on the right.
Once you drop the rectangle in a sidebar area, it should open to reveal a menu of options. The only required information for the plugin to work is a Pinterest wordpress Username. Enter this ID and click save in the right bottom corner of the menu.
Open another page/window in your web browser and navigate to your WordPress site to see how the sidebar looks with the Alpine PhotoTile for Pinterest wordpress included.
Play around with the various styles and options to find what works best for your site.

Additional Features

Caching

Since version 1.0.1, the Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress has included a simple caching function that will store the results of a Flickr feed for 3 hours. This function offers a significant performance boost as only one visitor will experience the short load delay caused by fetching and parsing a Pinterest feed.

The cache time can be edited by going to the plugin’s settings page, located at Settings->AlpineTile: Pinterest->Plugin Settings.

Pit In Button

The Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin includes an option to add a Pin It button to each image, encouraging visitors to repin.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Pinterest Board Tag?

The pin board’s tag is the text id that Pinterest uses to distinguish boards. The tag is all lowercase and uses dashes instead of spaces. The tag can be found by going to the URL of the pinboard. For example, the URL for KylinUntitled’s Design & Prints pinboard is http://pinterest.com/kylinuntitled/design-prints/ and therefore the tag is design-prints.

I’m getting the message “Pinterest feed was successfully retrieved, but no photos found”. What does that mean?

This message simply means that while no distinguishable errors occurred, the plugin found your feed to be empty. This might occur if you set the plugin source to a pinboard, but you have not actually pinned any of photos to that board.

I’m getting the message “Pinterest feed not found. Please recheck your ID”. What does that mean?

This message can mean two things. First, it can indicate that the username and Pin Board Tag were input incorrectly, causing the feed to fail. In this case, you should try to correct and re-save your IDs. Also, see “What is the Pinterest Board Tag?” above.

Second, this message can also mean that the server your WordPress site is being hosted on has prevented the feed from being retrieved. While it is rare, we have encountered web-hosts that disable the feed fetching functions used in the PhotoTile plugin. If this is the case, there is nothing we can do to override or work around the settings on your host server.

Can I insert the Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin in posts or pages? Is there a shortcode function?

Yes, you can display photos in posts or pages using what is called a shortcode. Rather than explaining how to setup the shortcode, I have created a method of generating the shortcode. Check out the Shortcode Generator on the plugin’s settings page (Settings->AlpineTile: Pinterest->Generator).

Can I insert the Alpine Phototile for pinterest wordpress plugin anywhere on a page using PHP code?

Yes, using a shortcode and the WordPress function do_shortcode(), you can place the plugin anywhere on your WordPress website. The code should look something like this:

If you want the plugin to conform to a certain width or height, you can edit the style of the surrounding DIV tag:

Why doesn’t the widget show my most recent pins?

The plugin caches or stores the Pinterest photo feed for three hours or the time set on the Settings->AlpineTile: Pinterest->Plugin Settings page (see Caching above). If the new photos have still not appeared after this time, it is possible that Flickr is responsible for the delay.

Can I show more than 25 pins?

Currently, no. Pinterest’s RSS feeds are limited to 25 photos. Until the official Pinteret API is released, the number of pins and the places from which they are retrieved will remain limited.

Why does it take so long for the plugin to load?

The Apline PhotoTile plugin actually takes less than a second to load. The reason you may see the loading icon for several seconds is because the plugin is programmed to wait until all the images and the rest of the webpage are done loading before displaying anything. The intent is for the plugin to avoid slowing down your website by waiting patiently for everything else to finish loading. If you are still looking to speed up your website’s loading time, selecting smaller photo sizes should always help.

Can I put captions below the photos?

No, I have not yet found a good way to add captions to the images, but I am working on it.

The Alpine Phototile for pinterest works in display mode but when I put the shortcode in my page, nothing happens and there is no error message. What’s wrong?

A number of users have reported this problem and unfortunately I am not sure exactly what is going wrong. However, one simple fix has been to go to the plugin’s settings page (Settings->AlpineTile: Pinterest->Plugin Settings) and put a check next to the option “Always Load Styles and Scripts in Header”.