Flickr Plugin for Jekyll Blogs

Use this plugin to embed Flickr photos in your Jekyll blog. You can:

• embed whole Flickr photosets (albums) as photo galleries in your posts and pages, and
• generate a post for each photo uploaded to your Flickr photostream.

This plugin was developed by Lawrence Murray for use on indii.org. All photo posts (e.g. here), photoset posts (e.g. here) and the photography section of the website use the plugin extensively.

Please follow on:

• Flickr
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Getting started

It is assumed that you already have a working Jekyll blog set up and that you wish to add this plugin.

Step 1

Obtain a Flickr API key and secret:

1. Go to https://www.flickr.com/services/api/keys/ and log in with your Flickr account.
2. Click Get Another Key and follow the instructions.
3. Make a record of the Key and Secret that you are issued, as well as your Screen name. You will need these in Step 4.

Step 2

Install FlickRaw:

gem install flickraw

Step 3

Install this plugin by copying the indii-jekyll-flickr.rb file into the _plugins directory of your Jekyll website.

Step 4

Add the following to the _config.yml file of your Jekyll website, replacing the values with your Flickr screen name, and the Flickr API key and Flickr API secret issued to you, respectively:

flickr:
  screen_name: You
  api_key: 039eb467bcfe412309bd0e09c2aa8f61
  api_secret: fe34a61c35c84fea3950bcf6eac

There are other options, but these are the essentials.

Step 5

Rebuild your website:

jekyll build

This should run without errors. Be patient, as it will take some time to download all of the meta data of your Flickr photos. In future you will be able to use the cache to speed up this process.

Step 6 (optional)

To pretty things up, it is recommended that you install Lightbox 2. The plugin outputs HTML compatible with Lightbox 2.

Basic usage

To embed a whole Flickr photoset (album) as a photo gallery in a post or page

Use the tag:

{% flickr_photoset "Landscape Photography" %}

Replace Landscape Photography with the name of the photoset (album).

To generate a post for each photo uploaded to your Flickr photostream

Add, to the flickr section of your _config.yml file, the following options:

  generate_posts: true
  generate_photosets:
    - "Landscape Photography"
    - "Street Photography"

replacing Landscape Photography and Street Photography with the names of the photosets (albums) containing the photos that you wish to post. You can, of course, list just one photoset (album) or more than two. Photosets (albums) thus allow you to select a subset of your Flickr photos to post on your blog. This does mean that you need at least one photoset (album), though. You can add this through the Flickr website if you need to.

To add extra options to the YAML frontmatter of the generated posts, list them with this option:

  generate_frontmatter:
    layout: photo
    author: You
    

Example configuration

The additions to your _config.yml file may look something like this:

flickr:
  screen_name: You
  api_key: 039eb467bcfe412309bd0e09c2aa8f61
  api_secret: fe34a61c35c84fea3950bcf6eac

  generate_posts: true
  generate_photosets:
    - "Landscape Photography"
    - "Street Photography"
  generate_frontmatter:
    - layout: photo
    - author: You

Advanced usage

Using the cache

Pulling down all of the meta data on your Flickr photos each time you run Jekyll can be time consuming. After doing this once, it is recommended that you add the following option to the flickr section of your _config.yml file:

  use_cache: true

When you make any changes on Flickr, set use_cache to false, or comment out the line, and run jekyll build again to update the cache.

The cache is stored in a local directory, named _flickr by default. You can change this with the option:

  cache_dir: _flickr

Changing photo sizes

You can set the full and thumbnail image sizes with the following options:

  size_full: Large
  size_thumb: "Large Square"
  

The above values are also the defaults. Click the Download link on an image on the Flickr website to see the list of sizes available.

Changing the look

Thumbnail images and full images may be styled with CSS:

• Thumbnail images are output with class="photo thumbnail".
• Full images are output with class="photo full".

To change this or anything else about the HTML output, modify the indii-jekyll-flickr.rb file itself. Search for the gen_thumb_html and gen_full_html functions.

A more advanced example configuration

After some of these extra options, the additions to your _config.yml file may look something like this:

flickr:
  screen_name: You
  api_key: 039eb467bcfe412309bd0e09c2aa8f61
  api_secret: fe34a61c35c84fea3950bcf6eac

  generate_posts: true
  generate_photosets:
    - "Landscape Photography"
    - "Street Photography"
  generate_frontmatter:
    - layout: photo
    - author: You

  use_cache: true
  cache_dir: _flickr

  size_full: Original
  size_thumb: "Large Square"

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I just include one photo in a post or page?

You don't need a plugin for this. Just click the Download link for the image that you want on Flickr, copy the URL for the size that you want, and use a HTML img tag to include this in a post or page.