My favorite place to look for images is Compfight. It searches Flickr for your search term and the results are based on the specified license, in my case I use Creative Commons.
When I arrived at Compfight, recently, I was presented with the info they had released a WordPress plugin! Cool!
So, I gave it a spin!
Compfight WordPress Plugin
The thought of being able to search Compfight within the WordPress admin and it would automatically add attribution … whoa. That sounds EPIC!
Here’s what I found.
First, here are the Compfight options:
You can select your image license search, safe search and the default image sizes for small, medium and large. Not too shabby, but what the heck happened to my WordPress Admin background? Whoever programmed this to happen should be flogged.
As you can see in the next screen, the Compfight plugin has effected the entire backend of WordPress:
UPDATE: The background atrocity has been rectified!
When you’re in a post, click the Compfight icon to launch into your Compfight search.
When the results pul-up, scroll through them as usual and pick your sized, as defined on the Compfight WordPress admin:
Ta-da! Inserted and attributed!
Very cool.
Now, let’s look how it looks on the user end:
Uh, oh. My design is 620px wide and the Compfight plugin has locked the image size selection to their own presets. The medium image size only allows 500px and 640px. The same goes for the small and large.
Also, after further review, I found that the image is not downloaded to your site, but simply linked to Flickr. If the photo is removed from Flickr, it will no longer display on your site, plus, you loose your image search leverage with Google.
Conclusion
I was really psyched about this plugin. The thought of search and attributing so quick and easy was extremely appealing, but in every area, the WordPress Compfight Plugin is a #FAIL.
However, if the pre-defined image sizes work for your blog and you don’t mind linking straight to Flickr, you need to try this plugin.
Mark Robinson says
I’ve used several plugins that all work in the same way (with exception to the BG pattern atrocity) and found the same issues.
Sad as It would be really great to be able to use flickr creative commons images in sites easily.
I guess it comes down to 2 things.
Flickr are keeping strict control over how people are engaging with their content and rightly so. If we are taking images from their site then it means they are getting less traffic which we all know would be a downer for any site owner.
Second – If a user wants to revoke the creative commons license then they have that right and so by letting them remove the image protects the people who may be using that image from any liable action in future.
Its still a pain though!
Eric Dye says
Good thoughts, Mark. Thank you!
Shawn says
Hi Eric, thanks for the review! This is just our first release of the plugin. We have already addressed those issues for V2. I’ll be in touch when we release V2 so hopefully we can make it an epic #WIN
Thanks!
Eric Dye says
Awesome! Let me know!
Shawn says
Admin background image was a bug. It’s fix and the new version is uploaded. Thanks for alerting us!
Eric Dye says
WOOT! Great to hear, guys! Thank you for the update!