Meow Apps WP/LR Sync, a the is a Lightroom Publish Service for WordPress

1. Introduction

Note: The tutorial at Meow Apps is very detailed so no reason to explain every step in this article in detail. Only the high level steps I performed for our-travels.com are shown below.

1. Bought the app
   https://meowapps.com/wplr-sync/
2. Read extensive documentation at Meow Apps site (tutorial)
3. COnsists of free and paid software

2. Install and configure

2.1 Adobe Lightroom plugin

1. Copy the Lightroom plugin WP/LR Sync you bought into your Lightroom plugins folder
2. Start Lightroom and manually install the plugin in Lightroom via the Plugin manager.
3. Setup a Publish service for WP/LR Sync. I created one specific for this site and will later create them for other sites I maintain. I created a specific user in WordPress for this as being an Author. This hopefully to have different upload user assigned to the images synced. And tightens the security a little bitFilled in the WP/LR Sync Authentication info first and tested with the login button it works. Needed to save the settings. So re-opened them again to check/modify the other settings.
4. I changed the default Synchronisation & Metadata settings:
   
   Into:
   
   In the dialog a link is provided: https://meowapps.com/wplr-sync-custom-fields/, but it does not work. Via the tutorial page at Meow Apps website I found the link https://gist.github.com/jordymeow/fc5f92818e17a42facb912417bf9d70d.

   Adobe Lightroom recently got updated with additional metadataSee for more details:
   https://iptc.org/news/iptc-announces-new-properties-in-photo-metadata-to-make-images-more-accessible/
   https://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/specification/IPTC-PhotoMetadata#alt-text-accessibility
   https://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/specification/IPTC-PhotoMetadata#extended-description-accessibility
   https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-support-for-new-iptc-accessibility-metadata/idi-p/12797354
   https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-implementation-of-alt-text-and-extended-description-fields-is-incomplete/idc-p/14301422

5. The default settings for rest of the metadata:
   
   Changed into all meta:
   
6. I customised the filename as follows:
   
7. Changed the File settings w.r.t. jpeg compression as follows (same as Meow Apps recommends in their tutorial:
   
8. Set image sizing to same settings as provided in the Meow Apps tutorial, except I checked “Don’t enlarge” just in case.
   
9. Metadata settings set as shown below.
   
10. Normally I use a watermark when publishing from Lightroom, but disabled it now as the site uses own photos/images and from others. Might change in future.
    

The Adobe Lightroom plugin is now setup.

2.2 The WordPress plugin Photo Engine

1. Install the free wordpress plugin via add new plugin on your wordpress site and activate it
   
2. Within WordPress admin menu go to Meow Apps > Photo Engine to configure
   
3. I changed
   
4. Tab “Keywords”
   
5. Changed:
   
6. Next tab “Consolidate with Lightroom” –> nothing done
   
7. Next tab
   
8. Our-travels.com makes use of the NInja firewall . Which seems to block uploads:
   
9. Potential issue
   
10. The NInja Firewall Policies was already set to enable uploads. So not sure why warning above is given. Could not find another related setting in Ninja Firewall so lets hope it is an potential issue.
    
11. In the media library I did not yet see the filter for collections. Could be because they are not there yet.
    
12. A new menu item “Keywords” appeared for the keyword tags. Currently empty as nothing synced yet.
13.  I created first a full backup of the site

3. Initial Sync to link photos

ddd

1. As our Lightroom cata log contains a lot if images I pre-selected the Lightroom folders from our holidays since 2004 as most of our photos on the website originate from our holidays. This will speed up the checks.
   
2. I pressed the start button:
   
   This will take a long time, likely a day of 2. So I let it run
3. dd