Blogging to Drupal from Flickr

Wednesday, 9. April 2008


Drupal Modules as of 11/9/07

Originally uploaded by kentbye

If your blog is powered by Drupal you can blog images and videos from Flickr. This blog post was created with Flickr. First I found an image that was relevant, interesting and licensed under Creative Commons. I decided to use the image to the right which displays a graphical snapshot of the available Drupal modules. Then I clicked the BlogThis button that appears above images along with the more familiar controls. That button sent me to a Flickr blog form where I typed the blog title and content. Then I posted the entry directly to this blog. (Once I had posted it I opened it with MarsEdit to polish it and add some additional images.)

If you want to try blogging from Flickr you need to make sure you have both the Blog and Blog API modules enabled and configured in Drupal. You can see what modules are enabled and enable or disable additional modules at Home » Administer » Site building » Modules on your blog. You should also check the Drupal user permissions and verify that your users have permission to create blog entries using the Blog module and permissions to add content with the Blog API module. The user permission are found at
Home » Administer » User management » Permissions
. Your permission settings for blogging should be similar to mine (see below).

BlogPermissions

If you are running Drupal 6.x you may also need to apply a patch to the Blog API module to fix this issue.

Once your site has the Blog API module enabled and configured you can add your blog to your Flickr account. Open the Your account / Blogs page in Flickr and click Setup your blog. Flickr needs to know what kind of blog you have and lets you choose from a list of blog types that it knows about. For Drupal-powered blogs you need to select MetaWeblogAPI Enabled Blog.

MetaWeblogAPIEnabledBlog

Next you will need to configure your login details. The API Endpoint is the URL for the blog API. For Drupal with the Blog API module the API Endpoint would be http://www.yourblog.com/xmlrpc.php. You also need to enter your username and password so that Flickr can use RSD to retrieve your blogs details and capabilities.

FlickrBlogDetails

Depending on your Drupal configuration, you may be prompted to choose a blog. The Drupal Story and Page content types may be listed in addition to Blog entry. If that is the case, just choose the user: blog entry from the list.

FlickrChooseBlog

After selecting the blog you will have an opportunity to review your blog settings. By default Flickr will store your password and you won't need to enter it when blogging. If you prefer not to let Flickr store your password be sure to uncheck the box before continuing.

FlickrBlogDetailsAfter

You can also select a custom posting template. There are several standard layouts to choose from. Or if you are comfortable with HTML and CSS, you can create a customized template of your own. Finally, you can create a test post from theYour account / Blogs page. If everything worked the way it is supposed to you should see a test post from Flickr on your blog. Now go blog some Flickr images!


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