Can Photonic and Meow Gallery plugins coexhist?

Are you using Photonic to build a shortcode for your Zenfolio galleries? If so, are you using MG also to build a gallery using shortcode? Does MG use the gallery shortcode? In such a case you will have conflicting uses of the gallery shortcode (because Photonic also uses the gallery shortcode in its default setting) and one plugin will override the other.

The very first option in Photonic, accessible via Photonic → Settings → Generic Options → Generic Settings → Custom Shortcode, gives you a way out. Here you can configure Photonic to use a different shortcode, e.g. photonic and that will keep your galleries from treading over one another.

Thank you. I’m still new to WP. I have a post template but it does not appear to have a Meow gallery shortcode anywhere on it and yet, when the Meow plugin is running, it seems to over ride your plugin and all I see is the Missing Meow gallery short code or whatever it is. I will try and check the settings in my plugin, theme, or Post template in Highend to see if I can disable the default Meow gallery embed code that pops up on its own or implement the suggestion you just made.

Sound promising! That was quick!

Works! But I see three small problems

1. the Zenfolio gallery is appearing at the top (and maybe I can disable that)

2. when I click on the thumbnail it says (content protected by owner) and maybe I can change the setting in the Zen gallery but then the images might become downloadable?

3. I’m checking to see that I can select the featured image too and this might be ok

Thank you!

1. the Zenfolio gallery is appearing at the top (and maybe I can disable that)

You mean the information about the gallery is showing up right above the gallery? You can control that from Photonic → Settings → Zenfolio → Zenfolio Photoset Header Thumbnails, wherein you can select what you want to show.

2. when I click on the thumbnail it says (content protected by owner) and maybe I can change the setting in the Zen gallery but then the images might become downloadable?

Images are always downloadable – if users can see it, they can download it. There is no way you would be able to show an image and prevent it from getting downloaded, as, to show an image, the browser has to first download it internally. People sometimes use techniques such as disabling right clicks etc., but those are very easy to bypass and still download.

1. I don’t think so, no. If you look at this page you will see a thumbnail and link to Zenfolio above the gallery even though “Disable lightbox linking
Check this to disable linking the photo title in the lightbox to the original photo page.” is selected.

2. ok

3. For Blog posts I am assumed I still have to upload a Featured Image to WP since the images in the gallery aren’t actually in WP? That’s not a big deal, I just wanted to ask.

I’m ready to jump for joy but that 1. point isn’t resolved so I’m holding back lol

Also once the Meow Lightbox gets an update and starts working on my site again, I’ll be running two Lightbox plug ins. Not sure what to do about that. Can I just use one or ??

Thank you

1. I don’t think so, no. If you look at this page you will see a thumbnail and link to Zenfolio above the gallery even though “Disable lightbox linking
Check this to disable linking the photo title in the lightbox to the original photo page.” is selected.

Umm… I didn’t ask to disable lightbox linking in my previous post. You need to look under Photonic → Settings → Zenfolio → Zenfolio Photoset Header Thumbnails. There are specifically 3 options there that you will need to set:

• Hide Photoset Thumbnail
• Hide Photoset Title
• Hide Number of Photos

3. For Blog posts I am assumed I still have to upload a Featured Image to WP since the images in the gallery aren’t actually in WP? That’s not a big deal, I just wanted to ask.

Correct. The reason for this is, a given post could have multiple Photonic galleries, each representing something different (like, a random search from Flickr). So featured image setting is always in your hands and out of Photonic’s scope.

Also once the Meow Lightbox gets an update and starts working on my site again, I’ll be running two Lightbox plug ins. Not sure what to do about that. Can I just use one or ??

I don’t know that. You can disable Photonic’s own lightboxes and use external ones (via Photonic → Settings → Generic Options → Generic Settings → Inbuilt Lightbox libraries), but sometimes the lightbox you are trying to use goes way beyond what I can support. You could also disable other lightboxes on your site if the other plugins let you do so, and use Photonic’s lightbox for everything (via Photonic → Settings → Generic Options → Generic Settings → Photonic Lightbox for non-Photonic Images), but if the gallery you are trying to apply this to has a very atypical markup, you might face challenges again. Bear in mind that Photonic comes out of the box with 13 lightbox scripts, which is the highest of any plugin (free or paid), so the likelihood of your finding a suitable one is very high.

The only way to find out is to give it a try.

So far it didn’t work—allowing Photonic to be the Lightbox in place of the, currently defective I think, Meow Lightbox. Maybe it is proprietary as you said, but Jordy is not like that so I don’t think that is the reason. I didn’t see any setting other than enabling or disabling the ability to use Photonic as the Lightbox for non-photonics images/galleries.

I’m waiting to hear back from the Meow team. Other than this one last issue, which you explained is a possible hurdle in using more than one lightbox plugin, Photonic is amazing!

Maybe it is proprietary as you said, but Jordy is not like that so I don’t think that is the reason

If it is on this site, it is almost certainly not proprietary. If you have a URL, maybe I can take a look.

I didn’t see any setting other than enabling or disabling the ability to use Photonic as the Lightbox for non-photonics images/galleries.

Didn’t follow you. Have you tried all the lightboxes that Photonic uses? Some of them like LightGallery, Fancybox3, PhotoSwipe and Magnific are pretty modern and feature rich. Does MG let you disable its lightbox?

Sure. The gallery using your plugin works fine https://tomrayphoto.com/2020/02/27/wedding-4/

Other galleries built with Meow Gallery work too but their Lightbox is being de-bugged at the moment (I think) and so the Lightbox doesn’t work.

I enabled your plugin to work across the site with non-photonics galleries (by clicking on the check box in Photonic) but as you can see, in other gallery blog posts like this one build with Meow Gallery https://tomrayphoto.com/2019/10/08/e-session-based-on-wedding-template/
your Lightbox is not having any effect. It’s not the bells and whistles I’m referring to, it is the fact that it is in not working well with Meow Gallery that seems to be the issue, or visa versa or ???

I enabled your plugin to work across the site with non-photonics galleries (by clicking on the check box in Photonic) but as you can see, in other gallery blog posts like this one build with Meow Gallery https://tomrayphoto.com/2019/10/08/e-session-based-on-wedding-template/
your Lightbox is not having any effect.

Ah… Set this: Photonic → Settings → Generic Options → Generic Settings → Include Photonic JS for non-Photonic Images / Videos. Note that this is a different setting from what I had you use in one of my previous posts.

Basically Photonic scripts are not loaded in pages that do not use Photonic (intuitively so, to keep your site cruft-free). Since this page has no Photonic, by setting this option you are forcing it to load the scripts.

Clicked on it, saved it, refreshed the gallery post page and still not working for some reason.

or did you want me to deselect the “Photonic Lightbox for non-Photonic Images” one?

or did you want me to deselect the “Photonic Lightbox for non-Photonic Images” one?

No, that setting is fine.

The issue is that Photonic expects an a tag around an image to associate a lightbox. In your case the galleries are plain images without an a tag, so Photonic is not finding anything to attach itself to.

Maybe look for something in MG’s settings that link an image in a gallery to its full-sized counterpart?

checking this out after looking at the plugins inside LR https://meowapps.com/meow-gallery-tutorial/ but a lot of it is over my head right now but this might you understand how he designed it. Not sure how many inquiries of this type you will need to fix but you might get a few more out there as Meow syncs with LR so it will become even more popular I would imagine and so will your plugin I would think.

Once they update Meow Lightbox I might discover that it does not interfere with yours, I don’t know.