Flickr has long had an extensive, well-documented API. Over the years, thousands of developers have taken advantage of it, coming up with some awesome apps. We love that.
We love it so much, we’ve revamped the /services/ section of Flickr, replacing it with The App Garden. What is it, you say? It’s a place for developers to promote their apps, right here on Flickr. We hope that it will make it easier for Flickr users to find the awesome apps that the Flickr API hackers have been building.
You will see that The App Garden already has some apps in it, and you might think “OOOH SHINY!!” You might also wonder how to get your app into the App Garden. I will show you!
Getting Started
We’ve tried to make things as simple and straight-forward as possible. You will find all of your API Keys under the Apps By Me page, which replaces the old API Key list. You will notice that they are all labeled as “Private” – we leave it up to you to decide when your app page is ready to be made public.
When you click on one of your apps, you will be taken to the owner view of your app page. This page is where you tell the world about your app – provide a description, link to a website, set screenshots, and add tags. When you’re ready, change the privacy setting to public. That will make your app visible to other users and allow it to show up in searches.
Managing Your Apps
Below the privacy settings, you will find the Admin section of the sidebar – your own little command center. You will find a link to a page with statistics for the app’s API Key (largely unchanged, though developers with higher user counts may notice a considerate speed up), as well as pages for disabling the key, editing the authentication flow for the key, and deleting the app altogether.
We love our API hackers and are happy to embrace them in a whole new way. We hope you like it.