send featured images to flickr WordPress

Alessendro answers:

Since you are asking how to backup and publish your images from WordPress to Flickr.
I assume that you are a programmer.

You can read up on the Flickr Upload API and create yourself a plugin to do that.
The API document is here. [[LINK href="http://www.flickr.com/services/api/upload.api.html"]]Flickr Upload API[[/LINK]]

If you are not a programmer, you can always search for a plugin to do that within WordPress Plugin repository. But I am not sure if there is any.

Hope this helps!
Thanks!

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Paul Gregory answers:

I've had a look at the plugins available and considered your needs.

Although there is a plugin which will let you upload images to Flickr *through* the WP admin and use them in your posts - [[LINK href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-flickr-manager/"]]WordPress Flickr Manager (get the 3.1 version)[[/LINK]] - this does not store them in your Media Library, nor does it allow you to pick existing Media Library images, so therefore it does nothing for Featured Images.

There is also a Flickr backup plugin, but it works how you say "backwards", from Flickr to WP.

I cannot find any plugin that sends existing Media from WP to Flickr.

Let us step back. I'm not entirely certain what your purpose is. You should really be backing up your entire site regularly in a format from which you can reinstate the site. And if you are uploading your own images to be Featured Images, you should really have a backup strategy for your own images.

If a manual solution for backing up your existing featured images will suffice, then download from FTP the original featured image files - they'll be in /wp-content/uploads - and upload them to Flickr.

You also say "publish", so perhaps by backup you simply meant "copy".

If you need an automatic solution, more details are needed. I know you're not a developer, but you need to answer the question "at what point is the image sent to Flickr". A featured image might be a selection of a pre-existing image from the Media Library, or it could be uploaded. And it could change. Also, the post might be scheduled. So, is it sent whenever the post goes live, or whenever the image changes, or what? Or is it in batches, like you'd like to copy over all your existing images right now. And what other information is sent with the image? Are you expecting to include a link to the post page?

I imagine that checking whether an image has already been uploaded will be the biggest obstacle to what you're trying to achieve.

The only purpose I can think of for uploading Featured Image automatically to Flickr via WordPress is to use Flickr to promote your site - to link the images back to the blog. You'd have to check whether this is allowed in Flickr's TOS. I'm sure such a facility would be popular with the autoblogging community.

You need to get a little more specific about what you expect this plugin to do, and to produce examples by simply uploading the same Featured Images to Flickr and adding the details you'd expect to be sent from the post. I'm sure something could be commissioned for the right price.

If you do further research, then you probably need to look in the wider context of uploading Media Library images to Flickr, not specifically the Featured Image.

I hope this helps you.

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