flickrRSS 5.0

It’s time to release a new version of flickrRSS. It’s actually been largely complete for the last three or four months, but I was waiting for the new version of WordPress to come out, and then just got lazy about rewriting the documentation. Much of the credit for this release goes to Stefano Verna, who cleaned up the source code, reworked some existing features, and added some new ones.

This is a major release, we’ve tried to make it as backwards compatible as possible, but it will likely break for some people. Here’s a quick run down of the major new features and changes:

  • New presentation logic with metatags
  • Revamped parameters system using arrays
  • Settings panel hides features that aren’t being used
  • Separated core plugin code from the settings panel

With the new presentation and parameters, it should allow you to customize the output a lot more. There’s probably room to add a few more meta tags, but it’s a good start. The system makes it easier to use things like Lightbox, although you’ll probably be breaking Flickr’s terms of use. Hiding unused features in the setup panel should make things a little bit easier for some people. The separation of code is mostly targeted at developers who reuse the code for other systems.

I’m pushing this out on the site first, before rolling it out in the automatic WordPress update system. Ideally, that will allows use to catch any unforeseen bugs before they become a major problem. The plugin should import your old settings without any trouble, but it’s possible that you may need to do the setup again (particularly widget users).

If you run into problems, please post on the new flickrRSS forum, I was running into a lot of spam problems with the old one.