What’s new in picu 1.2?

Earlier today we released a new version of picu, which includes a few minor improvements under the hood, but also adds a new feature we were asked for a lot. This post will get you up to date about our latest version. We’re sure many of you will like it.

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NEW: Display a list of collections anywhere on your site

With the new version it is possible to display your collections anywhere.

Just add the following shortcode and you’re good to go:
[picu_list_collections]

By default, if you paste the above shortcode into any post or page, it will display a list of all collections that have been sent to clients. If you want approved collections to stay in the list, just add show_approved to the shortcode, like this:

[picu_list_collections show_approved]

We added a couple more parameters to further adjust the output of the shortcode:

• Use the email parameter to filter for collections sent to a specific client:
  [picu_list_collections email="support@picu.io"]
  In this case, only collections that were sent to support@picu.io are listed.
• Use the ids parameter to display specific collections by their ID:
  [picu_list_collections ids="45,67,89"]
  In this case only collections with the IDs 45, 67 and 89 are listed.

For the developers among you we also added the filter picu_list_collections_args, which let’s you change/add your own arguments to the underlying query. In the following example we want to order the collections by title (by default they are sorted by date):

function my_picu_list_collection_args( $args ) {

	$args['orderby'] = 'title';

	return $args;
}

add_filter( 'picu_list_collections_args', 'my_picu_list_collection_args' );

This works with all the parameters used by WP_Query and opens up a whole range of possibilities.

Want to create a general “Client Area”? Just create a page with the shortcode and all your collections get listed automatically.
Have clients you work with a lot on multiple jobs? Add a page for each client with a list of all their collections.

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Performance Enhancement

Some have reported that our lightbox view sometimes slows down, and in some cases even crashes, if clients click through lots of images at a fast pace. We’re sorry if this caused you any troubles, but we finally found the bug. (It’s a bit of an embarrassing one, to be honest.)

It’s fixed now and the lightbox should be faster than ever! 😉 Thanks to everyone who reported this!

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New add-on: picu Download

A feature that was asked for by a lot of you, is to enable downloads for images, e.g. so the client can use the collection images in their design drafts.

Our newest add-on Download does just that: If enabled, it automatically creates a .zip archive of all the images in a collection and displays a link for your client to download.

Alternatively you can also provide your own link, e.g. if you want to manually create the archive file and serve it via Dropbox or any other service.

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Sneak Peek

Speaking of add-ons: we are hard at work on our next add-on, which will finally add the functionality for your clients to add comments on single images! We also added some more advanced features that we’ll unveil very soon.

With version 1.2 of picu installed, go to picu > Add-Ons to get a sneak peek at the next add-on that will be released in November/December 2017 the first half of 2018. We are very excited about this one, and hope you are too! 😊

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We hope you like our latest release. As always: If you have any questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to contact us.