Observations widget is not working anymore

I use the function “Embed a widget for this project on your website” for my projects and I have always visualized well the observations on my web pages, but now the widget seems to not work anymore.
I have try to regenerate the code from the link present in both the homepages my projects but even the preview provided in iNaturalist seems to create no results.
Thanks in advance for any useful suggestions!

link
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/widget?project_id=30694&logo=logo-small.gif&limit=5&order_by=observed_on&order=desc&layout=large&commit=Configure+»

Mine is working OK.

Do you have any script-blocking add-ons such as uBlock? They can block the script.

just to clarify, it looks like the widget may not be working for projects, but it seems to be working okay for an individual, place, or taxon.

No, I have nothing like that active on my browser. I tried to use different browsers but the problem is always the same.
Thanks for your advice anyway.

I can confirm. I use on my website widgets from two places and generated on my personal observations and they work well.

Just noting that the blog widget is pretty ancient and not something iNaturalist will develop further, so I can’t promise any fixes for this.

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Very sad news…

it’s not super difficult to make your own widget though…

Well then please share some tips here, just to help not only me but the community. There could be other people who needs the same. Thanks!

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example: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_observation_grid_widget.html
example usage: https://jumear.github.io/stirfry/iNat_observation_grid_widget.html?project_id=30694&rows=3
example code: https://github.com/jumear/stirfry/blob/gh-pages/iNat_observation_grid_widget.html

there are more elegant ways to do it, but this was what came out of my brain first. it should provide a few ideas / tips for someone who’s interested in building a (better) widget.

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Thanks!

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Agree this is sad news. We have a number of community groups, scientific societies and various others that use the project level widget to provide a link between the iNaturalist community and their own website.

Can confirm that we have several groups where the project level widget is not working.

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i see this more as an opportunity to get the community involved in making a really great widget. the iNaturalist API offers pretty much everything you need to make a widget, and i’ve even provided a little prototype of my own above. (you might even be able to fix the existing widget, since a lot of the iNaturalist code is open source.)

even if you don’t know how to code, you can help to define some (business) requirements or draw up a screenshot or provide other new and interesting ideas.

a big part of what sets iNaturalist apart is its focus on community and on open development… i think it’s time to ask not what iNaturalist can do for you, and instead ask what you can do for and as part of the iNaturalist community.

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I’ve just been trying to resuscitate a project widget, unsuccessfully. The old code no longer works, and the new code suggested by the iNat widget page also doesn’t work. The suggested projects.widget? code just doesn’t seem to do anything.

I therefore tried tweaking the observations.widget, which at least still produces a stream of observation thumbnails. However, if I add https://inaturalist.org/observations.widget?project_id=28292, to just show the observations from a project, that’s not working. It’s giving me thumbnails of observations, but not those from that project. That’s odd, as the website version, https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=28292, works just fine.

Something seems pretty busted with the iNat widget function. That’s a shame, as it was a convenient and easy way for external websites to display the results of their iNat projects.

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Pisum, I would like to try and contribute to a Really Great Widget, but I feel I fall at the first hurdle of the 75 px x 75 px limit, which is tiny. Is there any way to display larger thumbnails?

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yes. if you notice the names of the image URLs provided by the Get Observations API endpoint, they will be something like https://static.inaturalist.org/photos/[photo ID]/square.jpg. the square.jpg files are 75px x 75px. but you can also use small.jpg, medium.jpg, large.jpg, or original.jpg, which will be larger. if you use these other versions of the image file, though, you’ll probably have to crop them to a square (or else do some other fancy cropping), since they won’t necessarily be squares. it’s not hard to do, but it was more effort than i cared to do in my example. you’re welcome to adapt my code as you like if you’re not building your own from scratch.

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Also remember - the larger the widget - the slower the destination website is to load.
Google penalises slow sites (in the same way that a reader will … wait … a moment. Then move on)

Has anyone who uses the widget had complaints from readers - that it doesn’t work?
Do people actually click thru to iNat?

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Thanks, Diana. Yes, my main aim of any coding is to make it fast. I have very laidback rural bandwidth, so I know instantly whether my code is economical enough or not. I am the master of minimal code (if I may say so myself ;-). Even 100 px is better than 75. I do not wait for pages to load (except on iNat, because it is incredibly resource-heavy, but I want to be on the site).

@pisum thank you! Cool, then I can have a bash. I will definitely be starting with your code as a base because my js skills are rather lacking, but my lightning fast html & css are pretty tip-top. You have done a perfect job of the backend, so I can now have a go at making it pretty and responsive on the frontend. If that’s what’s needed/required? Well, it’s something I would like, so I’ll go ahead and do it anyway, even if just for me.

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The New Zealand helpdesk/feedback page is receiving lots of complaints on dead project widgets. I really hope that the iNat developers fix the code as widgets are an excellent way to connect third party websites to the iNat world, far better than a simple link does.

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looks like the project widget has been resuscitated. :zombie::woman_zombie:

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