FCG worked, then crashed,

[OctoberAbduction]

FCG worked all of 30 seconds. Then I couldn't get anything to work. UNinstalled, reinstalled...have no idea what template to put the code in (I'm using WP-Twenty Eleven theme). I'm ready to scream and tear my hair out. There's no bacon or chocolate in the house. Frustrating as hell.

What I have done:

Uninstalled, reinstalled six times.
Gone outside and screamed.
Assured neighbors I wasn't being murdered but felt like hurting something.
Ate a bag of chips and drank a soda.
Changed my category name and quadruple checked it to make sure I had it right.
Deleted and reposted NEW blog posts and images to ensure I got the right articleimg.
Double checked every line of code in all my templates to make sure I didn't have the code inserted twice.
Prayed.
Watched the install video for the 25th time.
Thought about cutting my wrists and bleeding into the keyboard as a sacrifice of sorts.
Wrote everything down like a checklist and went through it one item at a time.
Threw my WordPress for Dummies book across the room.
Wept.

[Diamond]

Let me share my experience with i have seen a lot of posts for this theme and for the edegree theme about challenges people are having getting the image slideshow to work on their site. I hadn't even tried to set it up when I first installed the theme, although that was what made the theme so appealing to me.

So I finally tried, and by piecing together some hints from other posts and some trial and error, I did it. You can see the results on my website ( http://www.kermitwallace.com/ ). BTW, all the pictures I used are my own. I resized them to the suggested size from the theme settings (586px in width x 261px in height) before uploading them to my site.

I'm going to assume you've already installed and activated the "Featured Content Gallery" plugin, but I'll tell you what settings I used on the config page. Here are the exact steps I went through - I hope this helps you.

1. Get your images together. I used iPhoto on my mac to export about 10 pictures at the suggested size (as above).
2. Use the Wordpress Media Library and upload those pictures to the media library of your blog. That's it - you don't need to put them in your posts/pages unless you want to.

These are the settings for the "Featured Content Gallery" settings page:
1. I have a "Category" for some of my posts called "featured". I chose "Select here to use category selection" and typed the word "featured" into the "Category Name" field. For "Number of items to display" I put 9 although I haven't changed that number to see what effect it has.
NOTE: I was able to also use the posts/page ID's but it was more of a pain in my opinion. If you want to know how to do it that way, send me a message and I'm happy to walk you through it.
2. For the gallery width, height and text overlay height, I put 586, 261 and 65 respectively. This is so the space for your pictures matches the size of the pictures without any weird bordering going on, and so that the text that displays for each image is a decent size. I would only change the last number (the 65) if you want to try something different for how much text to display.
I left everything else on this page as is, although I did play with the transition times. Make sure you click the "Update Options" button at the bottom of the page when you're done.

OK, this is where it can get a little tricky. Remember all those images you uploaded to your media library? You need the full path and filename for each one. What was easiest for me was just to get the path of one by editing it - the path is shown at the bottom of the edit screen (ie. http://kermitwallace.com/wp-content/upl ... G_2254.jpg ) and then just change the filename on my posts to the particular image file I wanted. So here's the step-by-step directions:

1. Edit the post you want associated with a particular image.
2. Go to the "Custom Fields" portion of the screen and click the "Enter new" link. Type "articleimg" (without the quotes) into the field.
3. Paste the full path for the image file you want associated with this post into the "value" field, then click the "Add Custom Field" button. You need a different image file for each different post to make the slideshow work.
4. Scroll back up to the top of your screen and check the box next to the category you specified on the "Featured Content Gallery" settings page.
5. Click the "Update" button.
So what this did was add the 'articleimg' custom field to the post, associate an image with the post (note, this doesn't show the image in the post) and associate the post with a category.

Once you've done this to a few posts (you need at least 2), you'll see them show up on your homepage. I didn't use the 'featuredtext' custom field to use different text - the theme will pick up the title and the first bit of text and display that, which was good for my purposes.

So that's what I did. As I said, it did take some trial and error (and I was kinda scared reading posts from people editing javascript files and permissions and all kinds of stuff that I knew I wasn't prepared to do) but all in all, it's a simple process once it's laid out.

I may need to edit this post if I realize any omissions or errors, but in the meantime I'm happy to help if you try these steps and run into any problems.

Good luck!
Diamond White

[admin]

thank you for your post!