Google Bookshelves | Adam Harris

With this plugin you can add a widget to your site that shows books from one of the shelves on your Google Books Library. You can choose to show your Reading Now, Favorites, Have Read, or To Read shelves. You can also choose the maximum number of books that you want to display.

You can download it from the WordPress Plugin Directory.

If you would like to contribute, you can fork the project on github.

Have read

Getting and Managing Your First 1,000 Clients in Web Hosting

by Abrahim Ikasud

The guides brought to you in this book are gained by series of my own failures by doing things the wrong way. I hope by going through this guide book, you won't have to go through the same failures which I have experienced.By the end of this book ...

The Two Towers

by J.R.R. Tolkien

The second volume in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic adventure THE LORD OF THE RINGS One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger ...

Getting Things Done

by David Allen

Based on the premise that productivity is directly proportional to one's ability to handle tasks in a relaxed manner, the author offers strategies for self-management that minimize stress and enhance one's focus and efficiency.

The Fellowship of the Ring

by J.R.R. Tolkien

The first volume in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic adventure THE LORD OF THE RINGS One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven ...

The natural history guide

by H. Charles Laun

No description available

Kimberly K

This Widget is working great! However, I wanted to display the books horizontally across my homepage and not vertically in a sidebar. Possible?
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  Thank you for your suggestion! I’ll work on adding the feature to add it with a shortcode to any page. I’ll comment here when it’s done.
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  Alright, in version 2.0 you can use a shortcode to put it on any page or post. Once you’ve updated, go to Settings -> Google Bookshelves, put your Google Books ID in there, hit save, and put this shortcode on your page [google_bookshelves shelf="4" max = "5" layout = "grid"]. Just change the shelf number to whatever you want.
Kimberly K

Is it possible to randomly select books on page load instead of displaying only the top 3 (for example). Can I use a custom shelf? I really appreciate your help!
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  Actually, in version 2.0 you can use a custom shelf. And I’ll work on making the random option.
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  Alright, in version 2.1 there is a random option on both the widget and the shortcode. Also, I added an option for a custom title (the default is the shelf name).
JUAN

Hi Adam! When i use your plugin, and click over a book cover it says: “Image cannot be loaded. Make sure the path is correct and image exist.” I think is because of the theme… do you know how to fix it and make the click go to a _blank link? Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- juan
  
  Also, any possibility to put the covers bigger?
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  Hmmm… I haven’t seen this problem. So when you click on a book cover, it takes you to a page that says “Image can’t be loaded”? or the image just never loads? Is this on the widget or using the shortcode? If you have it up on your site right now could you give me the link? What version of the plugin are you using? Sorry for so many questions, I’m just trying to figure it out.
  
  As far as making the covers bigger, for the widget, they are the largest size (128x180px), but you could force them bigger with your own css. For example:
  
  .google_bookshelves_widget_book img{
  width: 192px;
  height: 270px;
  }
  
  For the shortcode, it uses a smaller thumbnail size (57x80px), and I might add the option in the shortcode to request the regular thumbnail size in the next version.
  - juan
    
    I think is something related with LIGHTBOX plugin… because i’ve added the link to the title and it works!
  - juan
    
    I’ve made this improvement and now it works correctly, perhaps you could update your plugin in order to work with LIGHTBOX plugin also (links over images): Line 364: echo ““;
    - http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
      
      I don’t really understand your code there, but it looks like you just took out the code that links to Google Books. If you notice on my site, if you click on the covers, it takes you to the google Books page about that book, which is what I think is the best functionality. I’m not sure what I should do for people using the lightbox plugin and I wasn’t aware until now that there was such a plugin that tries to turn every image on a site into a lightbox. Maybe I can just add the option to not have links.
lomas721

Hi Adam,
When I placed the plugin on my page it worked with your library, however when I put in my own library ID, it changed the layout of my page and now is not listing anything. Any ideas?
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  Hmmm… I’m not sure. I just tested to make sure I could change the library id on mine, and it works. What version of WordPress do you have and what version of the plugin? Are you using the widget or the shortcode? How exactly did it change the layout of your page? If you could attach a screenshot or a link that would be helpful. Or you can email me at adam [at] adamwadeharris.com
  - VT
    
    FYI – mine didn’t work at first, until I discovered that I had my Google Books shelf set as “private”. Changing it to “public” solved that problem.
    - http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
      
      Thanks for the follow up! I’ll add that to the instructions on the plugin.
http://renando.com/blog/ Chad Renando

Thanks Adam. I was following Hugo’s plugin and was working through an issue with the bookshelf showing intermittently. Gave yours a go to see if the issue was resolved but it is still there.

It loads OK the first time, but refreshing drops out some books, shows only some headings, etc. I played with Fiddler a bit to determine if I could see what was coming back, but could not see anything that helped.

Any assistance would be great!

http://www.sidewaysthoughts.com/blog/my-bookshelf/
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  Thanks for the feedback. I saw the problem on your site and I’ll look into it. It may have to do with have several of the shortcodes on the same page. I may try to load the bookshelves in asynchronously with jquery to see if that helps.
  - http://renando.com/blog/ Chad Renando
    
    Hi Adam,
    
    Thanks for the quick response.
    
    Give that a try. However, the issue occurs when I only have one shortcode. It is also evident in the widget on the right across the site, when I am not on the bookshelf page.
    
    Chad
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  I looked into it and didn’t find much. And recently I haven’t been able to reproduce the problem on your site. Is it still having the problem? But I did make an update to make the widget work better in any theme. I still want to make it load asynchronously with ajax, but I don’t have much time right now.
Ender

Great plugin. I am probably missing something very simple, but the links to the books in my site point to the german version of google and not english. Do you know where I am going wrong?
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  I’m looking into it. Not sure what’s causing it yet. I even added one of your books to my shelf, and it links to the english version for me. I’ll let you know when I have something.
  - Ender
    
    Cheers mate. Much appreciated
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  I looked into it, but I’m still not sure what’s causing this? Are you still having the problem? And what’s your site again?
Stacie Davis

Love the plugin! I’m unable to get more than 40 books to display even after choosing 100 as the max.

Here’s the WP page: http://chnm.gmu.edu/dimenovels/wp/digital-books

Here’s the bookshelf page: http://books.google.com/books?lr=&uid=111788334542639960255&as_coll=1001&sa=N&start=30

Thanks!
- Adam Harris
  
  Yes, it’s a problem I’m working on. I need to mention it on the WordPress page. Google only allows me to get 40 at a time and I haven’t fixed it yet to get more than that. Thanks for asking, and I’ll work on it. Hopefully it will work in a future update.
- Stacie Davis
  
  I found your post here about 40 being a limit of the Google Books API:
  https://github.com/aharris88/google-bookshelves/issues/1
  
  I tried using startIndex in the shortcode of Google Bookshelves but that didn’t have any effect. Is it possible to get startIndex to work?
  
  Thanks!
- http://adamwadeharris.com/ Adam Harris
  
  Thanks for your compliment! Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten around to fixing it to show more than 40 yet. But You’re the first person I’ve heard of that needed to show more than 40. The startIndex isn’t actually one of the options for my plugin. It’s a variable that the plugin sends off to Google. Basically I will need to modify my code to send off a request for books 1-40, then 41-80, etc. I’ll work on it as I find time, and if you know any developers, they are free to contribute on github.