Category Archives: Computers

Solving a challenge: Inserting single images from a NextGen Gallery

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
June 18 2020

Some time ago, I switched my site over to using the Next Gen Gallery, and at first, it was a great tool. The only limitation it has, in my view, is that it doesn’t really handle needing to insert a single image at a time. The NG Gallery infrastructure is designed around galleries, not surprisingly, and it wants very much for you to insert a gallery, not a single image. If people want to insert a single image, they should use the media library, or at least that’s the natural logic.

But I have about 15000 photos in my short-term photo collection (I haven’t processed everything yet) and when I’m done, it will likely be around 35-45,000. That’s a lot of photos in the gallery, and the main reason why photographers don’t use the media library, since it would just bloat the media tool that comes by default. NGG solves that problem by having a separate file structure for its uploads, but offers no tool to insert a single image from a gallery.  » Read the rest

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Testing Ultimate Blocks on my WordPress site

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
June 4 2020

I’ve been testing all the big block collections, and it’s time for Ultimate Blocks. Not to be confused with Ultimate Addons, a different block collection.

Ultimate Blocks comes with 20 different blocks, let’s see if I want any of them in my personal collection:

  1. Button — It says “improved” but since I didn’t see the original, hard to say. It has four different sizes, flex/fixed/full width, colours or transparent, rounded or square, etc. What doesn’t work for me is that it is just one button…if you wanted to put several side-by-side (like a horizontal menu), you’d have to wrap it in some other kind of box/container.
  2. Call to Action — Title, text and a button, nothing unusual, but I do like the button is set up so that it overlaps the container (i.e. half-in, half-out). Not bad.
  3. Click to Tweet — I suppose if you were trying to get a campaign going, you could write a default tweet and then click the button to share.
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Testing Premium Blocks for Gutenberg in my WordPress site

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
June 4 2020

As you can see from about 10 of my last 20 posts, I’m on a run testing out various blocks on my Gutenberg site. The next “collection” to consider is called “premium blocks” and we’ll see if it lives up to the name. There are 12 blocks in the collection:

  1. Accordion — A really nice simple accordion block. I already have one with massive styling with Stackable, or highly workable with Kadence, but if I didn’t, this one would definitely get the job done. Easy to add items above each other, and then once created, to change typography, spacing, borders, padding, and even shadows. Nice.
  2. Banner — I have no use for it, but it is a block to put an image with a title and description over it, with some basic animation. There are six options, and depending on which you choose, the title and description pop up when you hover, or the description is added, or the title slides in, etc.
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Testing blocks in Orbit Fox on my WordPress site

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
June 4 2020

I’ve already worked through a bunch of major block collections, and chosen which ones make the grade and which ones don’t. So I had seen the recommendations for Orbit Fox and thought I would give them a try. Except I already tried Otter’s collection by itself.

When I opened up the one called Orbit Fox, I got the exact same block options as Otter. They’re identical, and I’ve already reviewed them (https://polywogg.ca/trying-out-otter-blocks-for-my-wordpress-site/). Well that was a waste of time.

But, while I’m here, I can check out the plugin’s other features I guess.

  1. Social Sharing Module — This allows you to create sticky buttons on the left side of your screen for your content, making your share buttons always visible. Umm, how about no? It totally doesn’t integrate with your theme in any way, shape, or literally, form.
  2. Gutenberg Blocks — Pass, as I said above.
  3. Uptime Monitor — I already have that in Jetpack.
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Trying out Otter Blocks for my WordPress site

The Writing Life of a Tadpole
June 4 2020

I’ve already gone through and reviewed the blocks from various collections — Default+Jetpack, Advanced Gutenberg, Atomic Blocks, Kadence, QodeBlocks, Ultimate Addons and Stackable. Stackable was the clear winner for me, and I kept a handful from Kadence + Ultimate Addons + Advanced Gutenberg, plus the defaults. I ditched all of the Atomic Blocks and Qodeblocks — there were just better options available or I didn’t need the blocks they had to offer.

I’m going to do a quick test of 13 blocks from Otter to see if any are worth keeping. One of their “big” offerings is built-in animation like bouncing or fades, none of which I have much use/need for…some great transitions, just not for anything I’m doing. And I’m a little disturbed it adds animations to EVERY block, not just the Otter ones.

  1. About Author — A simple bio block that pulls data from WordPress admin about the author of the current post.
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