NextGEN Gallery

Note: We no longer recommend the NextGEN Gallery plugin. We recommend using the default WordPress gallery instead.

This plugin allows you to manage and display your images in more advanced ways. You can have different thumbnail effects, slideshows, and organize your galleries into albums.

Creating New Galleries

Go to the Gallery > Add Gallery / Images menu. In the “Add new gallery” tab (the default if you do not have any galleries yet), type in the name of the first gallery you want to create and click the “Add gallery” button. Repeat this process for each new gallery you want to create.

Adding Images to Galleries

  1. Gather the images you want to use. If you are using more than one gallery, we recommend organizing the images into folders – each gallery in a separate folder.
  2. Important: Resize the images if they are large. Look at the pixel size (dimensions). Usually you want no more than 800 pixels wide and 600 pixels high. We recommend using 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels high to ensure visibility on smaller screen resolutions. Use Picasa or a similar program to resize the images in bulk. If you do not resize the images before uploading them, you will come across the following issues: it will take longer to upload, there is a chance that the uploads will fail (especially if an image size is more than 1MB, or if you are trying to upload more than 100 images at a time), and the images may expand to their full size when clicking the gallery thumbnails.
  3. If the galleries do not already exist, you will need to create them first. See the previous section.
  4. Go to the Gallery > Add Gallery / Images menu. Go to the “Upload Images” tab (the default tab if you created at least one gallery already). Click “Browse…” and select the images from your hard drive (hold the Shift or Control key down to select more than one). Then select your gallery from the “Choose Gallery” drop-down. Click “Upload images” to upload the images. If you are uploading a lot of images, it may take some time to complete the upload, so you will need to wait until all of the on-screen messages stop before you click to another menu. If you do not wait, the upload process will not complete.

Displaying NextGEN Images and Galleries

To display an image from a NextGEN Gallery, the image must be in a NextGEN Gallery. For more details, see the sections above. Then go back to the Edit Page (or Edit Post) screen. Click the Add NextGEN Gallery icon in the upper right of the editing window. Click the Picture tab, then select the image name from the “Select picture” drop-down list. If you want to resize the image, specify the dimensions in the “Width X Height” boxes. Otherwise, delete the values in those boxes. You can select the “Effect.” If you use the watermark, you must adjust the watermark settings in the Gallery menu. The “Web 2.0″ effect adds a mirrored effect to the bottom of the image. The “Float” determines the image’s horizontal alignment.

To add a new gallery or slideshow from NextGEN Gallery, you must first upload the image(s) to the NextGEN Gallery. For more details, see the sections above. Then go back to the Edit Page (or Edit Post) screen. Click the Add NextGEN Gallery icon in the the upper right of the editing window. Click the Gallery tab (it is the default tab), then select the gallery ID and name from the “Select gallery” drop-down list. The “Show as” options are “Image list,” which displays a gallery of thumbnails, “Slideshow,” which displays a slideshow of those gallery images, and “Imagebrowser,” which displays a single image with navigation buttons. Select the appropriate one, and a shortcode will be inserted into your page/post. That shortcode will be dynamically changed into the image list / gallery / slideshow on the published site.

Editing Galleries

Go to the Gallery > Manage Gallery menu. Click the title of the gallery you want to edit.

To change the alt and title text, description, or tags, enter it in the text boxes next to the appropriate images. When you are done, make sure to click one of the “Save Changes” buttons directly above or below the image list. The topmost “Save Changes” button only applies to the “Gallery settings” section.

To change the order in which the images appear, click the “Sort gallery” button directly above the image list. There you can choose from one of the existing sort options or manually drag and drop the image thumbnails into the order you want. Make sure to click “Update Sort Order” to save your changes.

Settings

The settings for NextGEN Gallery can be accessed via the NextGEN Gallery > Options menu. These settings are organized into tabs within the Options menu.

  • Images. If you check “Automatically resize,” NextGEN Gallery will resize your images as you upload them. This is useful if you are uploading large images that will take up more space than the screen size. However, the images can sometimes be distorted. For maximum image quality and faster upload time, we recommend using a program to resize your images before uploading them. Recommended maximum dimensions: 800×480 pixels, which should fill most of the browser window on a 1024×728 resolution, leaving margins and space for a caption underneath.
  • Gallery. You can change the number of images displayed per page, as well as the number of columns. We recommend that you uncheck the box next to “Integrate Slideshow” to prevent the slideshow/picture list link from appearing next to your gallery.
  • Effects. We recommend switching the “JavaScript Thumbnail effect” drop-down to “Lightbox,” and activating the Lightbox Plus plugin. You can then change the popup image effects through the Appearance > Lightbox Plus menu.
  • Slideshow. To enable the slideshow, you need to set the “Path to the Imagerotator (URL)” to “wp-content/uploads/imagerotator.swf” (without the quotes). There are a variety of options you can set, including the default slideshow dimensions (this can be overridden for individual slideshows), the duration between slides, the slideshow effect, and more.