Blog de Sébastien

This addon is the missing link between your pixelpost photoblog and your microstock online portfolio(s).

What it does:
- Allows you to easily save microstock image serial numbers/IDs along with your photoblog images.
- Provides template tags to link your photoblog posts to your microstock images so people can buy pictures, order prints from there, etc…

Download: http://www.windal.net/photoblog/microstock-1_1.zip
Demo: I am using it on my photoblog (SPB), see it live on this post (buy link).
Pixelpost forum thread: Please post comments, questions, suggestions, issues to the forum thread, I am just using my blog as a placeholder for this.

Currently supported stock agencies are: iStockphoto, shutterstock, dreamstime, fotolia, BigStockPhoto, StockXpert, Alamy (from version 1.1).

The addon was designed so that it is very simple to add support for a new stock site, a four line change in the code. As a matter of fact it could work not only with microstocks but with any sites that uses image URLs structured like this one: http://common-prefix-url/PictureSerialNumber. The Serial number can be anything, not just a number.

Installation:

Unzip the install file at the pixelpost root.

File manifest:

img/closelabel.gif	close icon
addons/admin_microstock.php	the admin plugin
addons/microstock.php	regular plugin that takes care of the new template tags
addons/MicroStockConfig.inc	couple of php classes, the brain of the microstock addon

Configuration:

First step, in the addon administration page, check the microstock sites you want to link to. For instance, I upload my photos to the following four agencies:

Once this is done (and saved), you will notice new fields in the pixelpost new and edit image pages, one per enabled site. This is where you enter your image serial numbers:

You can leave the fields blank if a picture is not online with a particular agency. In my example, the image I am uploading in the screen shot is only available at istockphoto and shutterstock.

Image serial numbers are pretty easy to find btw, they make it very visible on the stock image page:

the other ones have similar displays, I am sure you can figure it out!

Template Tags:

Once you have saved all this useful information, you can use any of the following template tags to link your photoblog posts to the microstock pages (available only in the image template) :

<MICROSTOCK_ISTOCKPHOTO_URL>
<MICROSTOCK_SHUTTERSTOCK_URL>
<MICROSTOCK_DREAMSTIME_URL>
<MICROSTOCK_FOTOLIA_URL>
<MICROSTOCK_STOCKXPERT_URL>
<MICROSTOCK_BIGSTOCKPHOTO_URL>
<MICROSTOCK_ALAMY_URL> (version 1.1)

will return the url of the stock page. In my exampe, <MICROSTOCK_ISTOCKPHOTO_URL> returns http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup.php?id=1816273

<MICROSTOCK_ISTOCKPHOTO_LINK>
<MICROSTOCK_SHUTTERSTOCK_LINK>
<MICROSTOCK_DREAMSTIME_LINK>
<MICROSTOCK_FOTOLIA_LINK>
<MICROSTOCK_STOCKXPERT_LINK>
<MICROSTOCK_BIGSTOCKPHOTO_LINK>
<MICROSTOCK_ALAMY_LINK>

return a pretty link to the page using the stock agency name.
Again, in my example, <MICROSTOCK_ISTOCKPHOTO_LINK> will get me
iStockPhoto

These tags will return nothing if you haven’t configured an ID for that particular stock agency or if the agency is globally disabled from the addon configuration page.

<MICROSTOCK_LIST_LINKS> will return a list of available links for that photo, such as:

• iStockPhoto
• Shutterstock

Finally, and this is more experimental, the <MICROSTOCK_LIGHTBOX> will display a “Buy” link, which will makes a lightbox-like modal box appear when clicked. The box contains some text (thank you for your interest blablabla) and a list of links to the stock agencies, same as the one you get with <MICROSTOCK_LIST_LINKS>. At this time, the text is not configurable, you will have to edit microstock.php to change it.
You can see it live on my photoblog here: http://www.windal.net/photoblog/archive.php/566/Crow_Creek_Falls, click on the Buy link above the picture on the right side. Works fine with ie7, firefox2 and safari, not so well with ie6…

I suggest you look at the addons/microstock.php for a full list of tags since I may not maintain that page in the future.