This is a test of my new Photo Dropper toy.

photo credit: Claudia Snell

Well, there’s been a lot of talk on the interwebs about this “Photo Dropper” plug-in for WordPress so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Basically, it’s a tool that will search Flickr for images that are licensed for use under Creative Commons.

After I installed Photo Dropper a search box appeared under my edit window in WordPress allowing me to search for usable photos and then select small, medium or large. It also has a link to the original post on Flickr so you can see the photo at full size rather than the thumbnails that appear after search.

The install process was super simple. The instructions actually worked. No fighting there(yippee!!).

Well, I got the picture I wanted to show up. So far so good
I selected the “medium” size and it popped into my post right where I wanted it along with the appropriate credit and link back per Flickr rules and CC license. Nice!

I had to go change the license on this picture in my account. It turns out that I’ve got all my photos up there as “all rights reserved” - I’ll have to change some of that. It also didn’t seem to like it when I put spaces between my search terms - not a big deal.

Overall, it’s a cool utility - it did what it said it would do. I am unharmed. That’s all I can ask.

That’s it, I’m going to leave this blog alone for the rest of today. I’ve managed to backup my databases, upgrade to the latest WordPress AND install/try this little toy and nothing is all busted up. It’s time to go eat chocolate and celebrate.

Update: Feb. 27, 2008

Aral Balkan reviews Photo Dropper and makes good points about some features he’d like to see. For instance, being able to control the positioning of the image directly while placing it instead of having to mess with it via the HTML editor.

I also had issues with the “large” size image. The logo image and attribution that are automatically added ended up scrunched up the the right of the image instead of dropping below it (very ugly). I made many efforts to fix the positioning but was not successful. I ended up using the “medium” sized image. I plan another session of trying to get it to work this weekend/when I get time.Overall, a really cool tool. It is just the first release of it so it’s actually really good.