The visuals on your web site are important and so is its ease of use. It’s unfortunate that the default WordPress galleries are so unrefined and dull. The navigation between pictures can be confusing for your less savvy web visitors, depending on which theme you choose. You need to have some knowledge of CSS and HTML to be able to adjust for your visual needs. It can be a real headache and searching through all the gallery-related plugins on WordPress.org can be time-consuming and leave you just as frustrated, if not more.
I’m here to spare you that headache. And the fix is so simple.
Here are two plugins, when combined, create beautiful, easy-to-use galleries for any page and any purpose on your WordPress site… with zero extra effort after basic installation :
1. NextGen Gallery
2. NextGen Gallery ColorBoxer
Before we begin, you must ensure you are not using the latest release of NextGen Gallery. Yes, I said not. The latest release of NextGen came with many, many problems that have still been unresolved to my knowledge. Try to stick to a version before version 2.0 Here is where you can download a previous version of NextGen Gallery:
NextGen Gallery Plugin Download
The first step, in this simple process, is to download the NextGen Gallery plugin. We cannot use the “Add New” featured under your plugins menu in your WordPress Admin area for this one, because it will install the latest version of the plugin. So, download it from the link above.
Once it’s downloaded, unzip the file you downloaded. The resulting folder should be uploaded via FTP to your WordPress plugins folder which is within the WP-Content folder of your web site.
Once the upload is complete, head back into your WordPress Admin interface and click the Plugins option in your left hand sidebar. Choose Installed Plugins from the sub-menu. You should now see a list of all your installed plugins, including your freshly uploaded NextGen Gallery. Click “Activate” underneath it and be sure to ignore the update notification.
You now have NextGen Gallery installed on your site and need to install NextGen ColorBoxer. At the top of the list of installed plugins, there is a small text button that says “Add New”. Clicking this will take you to a search field. Here you can enter “NextGen ColorBoxer” and it should be the top result. Click “Install Now” underneath it. You will be prompted with a standard “Are you sure?” type message. Click yes.
The page that comes up next will show you the details and progress of the install, which should take seconds, tops. When it’s done, it will give you a link at the bottom of the progress, enabling you to activate the plugin. Go ahead and activate it.
Now, you’re site is ready to host beautiful, easy-to-use galleries! Let’s test it out, shall we?
In your WordPress Admin area, choose Gallery towards the bottom of the left hand side bar, and from the sub-menu, select Add Gallery/Images. At the top of the resulting page, choose the tab that says “Add New Gallery”. Type in your desired gallery name and click the “Add Gallery” button.
You should now be back on the image upload interface. Click the “Select files” button and choose some images. You can choose multiple images from this interface, or even just drag and drop. Be sure each image is smaller than your server’s upload limit. Most commonly this is 2 megabytes.
Once you have selected your images, makes sure the scale images button is checked, and you have chosen the Gallery name from the drop down menu. Click upload images. This is enough to display a gallery on your site, but if you want to refine it even more with image descriptions and make the gallery SEO-friendly, you want to choose the “Edit Gallery” button from the top of the page that appears once the upload is complete. Here you can enter tags, titles and descriptions of all of your images for more SEO- and user-friendliness.
When your gallery is ready to go, navigate to either the page or the post you want the gallery to appear on, from within your admin area. At the top of the editor window, you will see a new button. It looks like this:
Click that button, choose your gallery from the drop down menu and click “Insert”. Save your post or page and view it.
There you have it! A beautiful, refined, flip-through gallery that’s easy to use for all your web site visitors.
About the author
Courtney is a blogger and marketing manager. She maintains her own blog at www.courtneyheard.com
