CataBlog 1.2 is available today for general consumption. Among the many tweaks and enhancements is the new multiple images per catalog item feature. More to come on using it and certain pit falls you might experience upgrading. Please use caution and export your catalog before upgrading. Get CataBlog 1.2 Now.
If you upgrade and notice the categories aren't working right, please try this
- export your catalog
- re-import your catalog from your previous export with the replace all data function on
Thanks and remember to rate and confirm if it works with your version of WordPress.
Yikes! I backed up my catalog, exporting to csv before upgrading. Then I upgraded. I attempted to import my catalog with the csv Catablog built, and it says it can’t parse the file. When I look at it, it seems fine. Help! Thank you!
Don’t fret Jennifer, the fix is really easy.
If you still have your catalog data just export from 1.2 and reimport.
If you lost your catalog data then open the old CSV file in a CSV editor such as Microsoft Excel. Just add a column immediately after the ‘image’ column labeled ‘subimages’. You do not need to enter any data into the ‘subimages’ fields for all your data rows. Just make sure that there is the text ‘subimages’ in the first row on column 3. The rest of column 3 should be empty.
Sorry for the confusion.
That fixed it! Thank you! So, next question…how do we see the multiple images? I added supplemental images to a couple of my products, but when I view the catablog listing, it only shows one image, even when I lightbox in.
Also, would you consider adding a hierarchical categories feature?
I’m glad to hear you were able to get your catalog updated to the latest version.
To show multiple images you will need to load the
subimages.htmCataBlog template in the options panel. Simply login to your WordPress Admin and go to the CataBlog Options Panel, there click the template tab. The code in the textarea is the code that CataBlog uses to render each catalog item. Open the drop down menu withdefault.htmand change it tosubimages.htmand then click load. Don’t forget to click save at the bottom on all the option tabs.The template for multiple images is very simple, just like the default template. I would recommend reading more about Displaying Your Catalog In Posts for customizing the display of multiple images.
Good luck and let me know if everything works for you,
– Zach
hey guys – nice stuff… I’d love to be able to use it (and eventually donate to the cause)
BUT
I can’t manage to get past the initial step of creating the cover of the catalog (i.e.upload of the cover image)…. because I get the following order:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagerotate() in /home/www/web424/html/mainfolder/wp-content/plugins/catablog/lib/CataBlogItem.class.php on line 617
Any ideas?
Thx
Paul
Hi Paul,
The problem you are encountering is a server issue. If you manage your server yourself and know how to install PHP 5 I would recommend doing so while also including these libraries: GD and MultiByte String.
If you pay for web hosting I would call your hosting company’s technical support and ask them.
Your server’s PHP will need to have imagerotate() as a defined function for CataBlog to work, read more about that specific PHP function at http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagerotate.php.
I have installed your plugin and it shows great promise. But, I get this error whenever I try to save text, upload an image, etc.
“Can’t write uploaded image to server, please make sure CataBlog is properly installed.”
I installed it through the auto install feature right in WordPress, I have also set write permissions on the folder of the plugin. I am wondering why it seams to be correctly installed yet says it isn’t? Cheers,
Mark
Mark,
You said you have set write permissions on the folder of the plugin, this is not where files are traditionally uploaded in WordPress. My guess is that if you set write permissions to the wp-content/uploads/catablog folder and all its child folders you will be able to upload files. You might also want to revert the plugins folders permissions, that is up to you. I need to make that error message more clear. Good luck and cheers!
– Zach
Hey Zach,
Thanks that worked.
Still getting to know the plugin, but it seems awesome.
Cheers,
Mark
Hi Zach!
On the “Manage Catablog” page, how can I set the default category to “- All Categories [slow]”? That would be a great help.
All the BEST!
Have fun … Tony.
Hi Tony,
You may bookmark any of the different ‘Manage CataBlog’ pages, including what category is being used. That would be a good setting or preference to add in the future. Thanks,
– Zach
thank you for this fantastic plugin. perfectly suited to a new website i just took on!
having a little trouble importing data via csv. my “link” column is blank, because at the moment, i don’t intend them to link to out. i think that because this column is blank, it does not register the subsequent columns such as price and product code-
it catalogues the title, order and image properly, but not the description, price, categories or product code.
ideas?
thank you!
Make sure that even if the value is empty, that the link column is there for each row. If not weird things will happen, also make sure the subimages column is there and “blank” or empty. If that doesn’t work let me know.
i did include the columns in the correct space and left them blank-
at the moment, i tried a new csv with a value in the link column.
i selected replace all data so it may take awhile. i’ll let you know how it goes:)
thanks again! this plugin truly solved a huge problem for me. and the built in store is fantastic. makes my life so much easier. thank you!!
I’m not sure I can help much more without seeing the CSV file myself, would you mind emailing it to me? Thanks a lot and hope to get this figured out.
BTW: How many catalog items are in your CSV? I’m curious because you said it might take awhile to “Replace All Data” when you import.
i’ll email it. almost 10,000 items.
I just wanted to post here that we found the solution. There was a syntax error in the categories column of lani’s CSV file. Each category was separated with a comma, while this syntax is acceptable in CSV format, I decided to use a different delimiter for categories. Once we replaced all the commas in the categories column with vertical bars ‘|’ everything worked fine.
We are having trouble with the slideshow showing up on the initial viewing of the site. It shows fine on our end with firefox but when we go to our clients computer ie7 it is not there and the client has to click on the header to get it to show…..
This sounds to me like an IE7 security issue to me. Read this Microsoft article and let me know if that clears up your question. The yellow bar that prompts you to load blocked scripts is due to the security settings of your client’s browser and can not be changed from the web server or CataBlog code.
Article Quote:
“Because ActiveX controls, or any browser extension, add features for Web sites, they also increase the possibility of a security vulnerability. Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) will reduce the number of ActiveX controls available to Web sites on the Internet and thereby reduce the chances of a security vulnerability. IE7 makes it easy to use common sites with important controls but lets users opt-in to using the advanced features that might be exposed by more obscure ActiveX controls.”
I would also highly recommend your client upgrade to at least IE8, it is vastly superior to IE7 and free.
This site is a catalog of her work…i really cant ask people who access her site to upgrade to ie8 for them to see the slideshow. my problem is the slideshow in preview not the upload flashbar in the edit mode….
we just got it fixed. thanks for your help….client should like the ease of use with the plugin….
I am curious what you did to fix the problem? Was it related to CataBlog or was it related to another component of the website? Have a good one 🙂
This may seem like a dumb question… I’m curious why you used so many “!important’s” in the .css, when it seems like all the catablog classes must be unique…?
Not a stupid question at all, I did it to ensure that other classes wouldn’t override what I considered important style properties. If you want to override these values you may also use !important as well in your custom CataBlog styles. Maybe it isn’t necessary, I will consider removing them in the future.
Hi. This plug-in seems like exactly what I need for my t-shirt site. I haven’t yet tried it, but I’d like to know if there is a way to display the catablog pages with pagination? I’d like to limit the number of results on a page to about 12 t-shirts.
CataBlog currently does not paginate your products automatically, I might recommend separating them into different categories and putting each category on its own page. You may limit the number of products per category are you see fit. Again, thanks for your interest in CataBlog and if you have a moment please go and rate along with confirm that it works with your version of WordPress at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/catablog/
Is it possible to reverse the order of items added to catablog? I’d like for the last item added to catablog to display at the top of the page, rather than be appended to the bottom.
Thanks
Hi Ben,
Currently it is not possible to reverse the order of items. The next release will most likely have the ability to order your catalog with the database query. Then you will be able order the catalog by date descending, just like you want. Thanks for your interest in CataBlog and please remember to rate it and confirm it works on your version of WordPress at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/catablog/.
Thank you!
For now I just went through CataBlogItem.class.php and changed all the ASC to DESC
Works for me! 😀
that works as well 😉
Hi Zach! Could I second the request to be able to sort products? That would be so helpful.
Thanks! This is really a great plugin, super easy to use.
Good to know, I will keep that in mind. Been super busy with actually paying work lately so I haven’t had a chance to put much work in on CataBlog. Oh well, them is the breaks 🙁
hi zach:
i have what is a very basic question because i don’t know how tokens work. I would like to add a couple other areas in the admin panel (e.g. Vendor Name) and did the simple exercise of going through your code, locating every instance of ‘product_code’ (and its variations), and creating a new entry just below it called ‘vendor_name (and its variations). it looks ok but only returns %VENDOR-NAME%. i realize i don’t know how tokens work and what their relationship is to the WP database. is this a good way to go about adding those extra admin areas that will take data or will this simply not be possible with your plugin?
thanks so much.
I can’t support hacking the plugin, but I will say that a future version of CataBlog might enable users to create custom fields. Until then I offer my services as a paid consultant for any custom WordPress plugins you might need.
and i should add, the plugin works beautifully!
My next feature requests for the plugin:
-Multiple categories in shortcode (eg. [ catablog category=”cats,dogs” ] )
-Ability to hide description within shortcode so only photo is displayed (eg. [ catablog description=”hidden” ] )
-Pagination
Thanks Zach!
Awesome plugin!
Hi
I cant get the images to work with my web space, I get an error.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagerotate() in /home/www/web424/html/mainfolder/wp-content/plugins/catablog/lib/CataBlogItem.class.php on line 617
I read the above posts about updating PHP5 imagerotate
Here is the responce from my web host
“Unfortunately the PHP function that plugin uses has been removed from
our version of PHP because it has vulnerabilities. There isn’t much we
can do about this and suggest you contact the plugin writers for an
alternate solution or use a different plugin.”
Cheers
Pete
I am sorry to hear your hosting provider has removed imagerotate() from their build of PHP. Currently there is nothing I can do to fix this, perhaps in a future release I can only have the auto rotate (for images from digital cameras that use meta data to display the image’s orientation) procedure run if the imagerotate() function is available. Until then you will not be able to use CataBlog without hacking it, so sorry for any inconvenience.
– Zach
Hi, Zach.
As I said in my email: “great plugin!” And, thanks for the response…. (my apologies for not posting the ?’s here).
That said, I want to incorporate it into a blog site I’m piecing together, but I am unable to get my images to go from left to right (colums; i.e.: http://catablog.illproductions.com/demo/). They’re only lining up vertically. What I am seeking is: your demo sample– 100×100 (or like in your demo 150x150px) with a scroll over title and lightbox enlarge.
I am also trying to modify the font family, size and color of the catablog title (in “default” and “subimages” template classes found in the .css).
My apologies if these questions are a bit elementary…
Thank you for your time–
wm.
Sorry for the long delay, if you go to the CataBlog Options panel and switch to the template tab you should see a drop down menu, select gallery from the drop down menu and click load. You will have replaced the default template with the gallery template at this point, now click save and your catalog should look similar to the demo. Let me know of you have any more questions.
Hi Zach
Firstly, I just wanna say what an awesome plugin catablog is. It is really easy to use even for newbies like myself.
I have one sticky point, however, that I’m unable to figure out. When I add an item to my catablog I put a link to that product in the link box in the top right hand corner.
However when I click the title of an product it adds my blog url to that product’s link. For example
http://www.myblogsurl.com/www.myproduct‘slink.com instead of just http://www.myproduct‘slink.com.
Can you please help.
thanks 🙂
Sorry for the brief response, add http:// infront of your different site’s URL and it should work. That is how web browsers distinguish between local and external site links. Let me know if you have any more questions.
Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaasssss!!!! It worked.
Thanks very much Zach :))))))
REALLY FABULOUS WORK ! This has got to be the best shopping cart I’ve ever used for WordPress. Its simple, easily customizable and works perfectly with Paypal. Is there any way you could put product options into the next release? For example, if I was selling T-Shirts and I had colors white, black, red, blue and green I want customers to specify what they want. How could I do that in this current release? Is there some trick I missed in the documentation? The next more important feature would be pagination. How can I do multiple pages?
Thank you for the compliments, you have no idea how happy it makes me to hear such praise. As far as your feature requests, a drop down menu for product options could be manually entered into the store template, but it would be for every item. This sounds like a good future feature…if only I could dedicate all my time to CataBlog.
Now for pagination. Since CataBlog does not create any actual pages for your blog, but content to put into pages I have opted to stay away from it. Currently I have suggested people use different categories to split up their catalog. This means if you want multiple page you need to make separate categories like shirts-1, shirts-2, etc… not ideal but it does work.
Again, thanks for your interest and support. Please spread the word and check back frequently for updates, ideas and tips.
Great plugin.
1 question.
Is it possible to import or other wise use the images i have in my wordpress media library?
Hey George,
Sorry for the delayed response, their is no direct import or transfer method to bring images from the WordPress Media Library into CataBlog. Since CataBlog stores all its media in another folder, you may manually copy images into the originals folder.
wp-content/uploads/catablog/originals/Once you are done copying images run the “Rescan Originals Folder” function (CataBlog Options – System Tab) to automatically create new catalog items from the copied images. Good luck and let me know if you need any more help.
– Zach
Hi Zach,
many many thanks for your great job!!
Only a simple question. How can I extend and add new custom fields?
I mean: I would like to add new fields to the catablog items, such as a new input text, a new text area and rabio buttons for example.
I tried “more fields” plugin but it does not work inside catablog.
Is there a way to do that?
Many thanks again,
Tommaso
Hi Tommaso,
Currently their is no simple way to add new fields. You may use the product code field as you see fit, but it is only one field. If you want to try and hack the plugin, I can not offer support in doing so, but it is very possible.
Hi Zach,
many thanks for your reply!
Maybe I will try to modify your plugin …
I will let you know!
I just updated a site to Catablog 1.2 and all my items are gone. The images are still in the uploads/catablog directory, but all catablog items and descriptions are gone. Was I supposed to export my data before updating and then import after the upgrade was complete? If so, is there a really obvious mention of this somewhere that I missed?
Thanks in advance for any help/advice.
I would recommend always exporting your data before upgrading.
Can you try going back to the previous version of CataBlog you were using and seeing if your catalog data returns? If so then you should be able to do an export from that version of CataBlog, update to the latest 1.2, and then import your previous catalog data.
Let me know if that works out for you and good luck,
– Zach
Thanks for the help, and I just want to clarify that this was user error and not at all a problem with the plugin. My bad. Keep up the good work!
Can you believe that I have only heard that a handful of times and it has now been a year of developing and supporting CataBlog. Thank you so much for the gracious comment.
Cheers!
Great work!
Just one little wish for the next release- it would be helpful if you could change the order of items in a particular category, as it used to be. Now, this option is only available for the whole items list. It is a little bit inconvenient, if there are more than 150 items in Catablog.
Many thanks!
Hi, Zach.
And, thanks for the response– your directives worked perfectly.
In brief, I ran into situation that has me scratching my head…
Everything was functioning as awesomely as you had intended during catablog’s conception/creation… then I added an (unneeded) ssl certificate to the site and the lightbox function in catablog stopped working. Since that was the only major change (adding the ssl), I figured this had to be the issue. And, due to the fact that I’m using paypal (making the ssl, well, unnecessary), I pulled it off the site…. but the problem persists.
When clicking on an image now, a new tab opens which shows the page that particular catablog is on. In other words: if a catalog gallery is in the middle of “page A,” when clicking on an image to enlarge it, a new tab would open instead, bringing the viewer back to the start of “page A.” I’ve checked the catablog settings multiple times and everything is configured the way I set it. So, my question is: is there anything that you’d recommend at this juncture, because I’m in a pickle. After checking and rechecking, the only (dreaded!) thought is to uninstall-then-reinstall it from scratch…. loosing all of the images, descriptions, placements throughout the site, etc. And, starting over.
Please advise and thank you for your time.
wm.
Hi Will,
A URL would be invaluable in this situation. Are you trying to access a stylesheet or javascript file through https when your server won’t serve that? I’ll wait to get a URL from you for more help. Cheers
Thank you for your response, Zach.
I have catablog in four areas of the site: here, here and here. One is “password protected” but an exact mirror of the third link provided….
My apologies for not including these in the previous letter.
wm.
Will,
Have you tried reloading the gallery template in CataBlog options? I think you choose the grid template and what you want is the gallery template. Cheers!
When I changed it to gallery, it was opening the enlarged images in a new tab…. no longer the lightbox. I have the gallery template activated now. By clicking on one or more of the previous links, youcan check out what I’ve described (in this letter).
Can you remove the <a /> tag and its closing tag from the template all together and try again? I think I might be getting at what is going on wrong here, the link around the image itself is firing before the open LightBox script is fired.
Ok…
I removed what I thought to be the “” closing tag from the gallery template. I was actually trying to locate the opening tag, because I didn’t think I could remove the “a” portion of the “<a href="%IMAGE-FULLSIZE%"……" at the beginning of the code. I tried removing the closing tag first, but to no avail. So, I removed the "a" portion as noted and it removed the link component of ea. image. I noticed you use "” and not what I’m seeing which is “” Am I in the wrong place (Catablog > Options > Templates)?
I guess this will be more helpful. Can you try this in your template code.
<div class="catablog-row catablog-gallery"> <img src="%IMAGE%" class="catablog-image" width="%IMAGE-SIZE%" alt="" /> <strong class="catablog-title" style="width:%HOVER-TITLE-SIZE%;">%TITLE-TEXT%</strong> <div class="catablog-description">%DESCRIPTION%</div> </div>Thanks for the c&p (copy-and-paste).
I just tried it. I actually got a very similar result a few moments ago… That code removed the link component per image, but that appears to be about it. I left it as is… please have a look.
Ok, so I just noticed you are loading up two copies of jQuery, might not be a problem but could also be an issue. Since WordPress has its own enqueue scripts to deal with this, I will assume that a lot of your scripts are hard coded into the theme. That is ok, but you should remove the hard coding to jQuery and also put the
<?php wp_head(); ?>call above your hard coded script links. Let me know if that helps? Also you could try removing all scripts except for the CataBlog generated code and see if that works. If it does that means you have an error somewhere in your code.Thanks again, Zach.
These directives may take me awhile, so I’m going to dig into them now… I’ll post back with an update (and hopefully closure report) this evening.
Thank you for the time allotted.
wm.
THANK YOU for your responses and for looking into all of this! Although, we’re not there yet, I just had to note it! Your time is much appreciated!
You may always like the CataBlog Facebook Page at the bottom of this page to show some gratitude. Also rating CataBlog and confirming it works with your version of WordPress at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/catablog/ is very much appreciated.
My pleasure.
I don’t have an FB acct, but I’m going to est. one just for that purpose.
Hi, Zach.
Everything’s working fine.
Thank you.
wm.
Hi Will,
I’m just curious but what did you end up doing that fixed the problem?
Nothing. 🙂
As I was exploring your last option, I reached out to my host (for the 4th time) and told them how this thing had a handful of people stumped. Because of the timeline, and when the problem occurred, my theory was the ssl, but my frustration w/ them stemmed from the fact that the ssl had been removed. Then it hit me. I changed the domain name and dns over (from our development url to the actual domain name/url) 24hours before the ssl was installed. So, in essence, their position was the ssl is gone, something had to get thrown out of wack when the domain switched, and not when the ssl was installed. He said it was not uncommon for certain elements of the site to act a bit funky for 72hours or so…. and its been about that. It was still the same this morning, but when I went back into admin and started toying with it (e.g.; changing templates, enabling/disabling the LightBox option, etc.) it worked.
Hi there – I love your plugin but I need to show the items in reverse order (I have numbered them), so number 1 would be at the bottom of the list, not the top, is this possible yet?
Nevermind, found the answer thanks!
Love it when that happens 🙂
I really don’t know what I would do without CataBlog. Just want to say thanks for your work on it!
Is there a way to rotate the images in catablog?
Having trouble with several of the pages, I also get a syntax error when trying to regenerate images. I have exported and imported the database several times and checked for the sub images column. Everything seems to be correct, but still having errors. Some of the pictures are displaying too large and covering the heading text. Is there a log file that shows where the error is in the database?
All of the database calls made by CataBlog are done through the standard WordPress functions, so if you have error logging setup for WordPress they will be in there. That said, I don’t think your problem is database related. Sounds to me like your images may be corrupt, can you try with a different set of images. Also, make sure to clear your browsers web cache, sometimes that can fix images showing up in the wrong resolution.
Hope that helps, good luck 🙂