NextGen Gallery Alternatives

[Lisa at OG]

Okay, so I told you all I would share my MaxGalleria experience w/ you. I just implemented it to a third client site to replace NextGen. I use the MaxGalleria import function to move all my NextGen galleries over to specific galleries on MaxGalleria. Finished in two minutes -- everything is there -- looks great. No issues. This would be great for anyone who has a lot of galleries in NextGen who want to switch over quickly to a new solution. 😉

[Mealtog]

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for sharing your final thoughts on MaxGalleria. Glad you found something that works.

For simple and free, I still think this works wonderfully. So happy with it; not tied to any 3rd party, responsive; so fast. http://www.studiopress.community/topic/nextgen-gallery-alternatives/page/2/#post-69400

[Lisa at OG]

Thanks for sharing that with us Mealtog. It's always good to have alternatives. Different people will have different needs and the scrolling is a nice addt'l feature on the JetPack one you suggested.

[Mealtog]

Hey Lisa, Jetpack is nice if your server can handle all the extras but that exact function used to be in WordPress. It was removed and placed into Jetpack.

[Lisa at OG]

Sorry Mealtog, I am a bit confused. The article link you provided sends us to "Best Responsive WordPress Gallery" which suggests installing the Jetpack Plugin? And I think you also have to sign up for a WordPress.com account too?

[Ruairi]

Lisa

Although, I haven't tried this plugin on the Genesis framework just yet, Justin Tadlock's Cleaner Gallery which is solid, well coded, future-proof and a great all round gallery plugin.

It's my got-to gallery plugin and it's free.

---

Ruairi Phelan CEO at Cyberdesign Craft.

[Tom]

Lisa -- yes, a logged-in connection is required for some of the Jetpack services. I gave up on Jetpack when I found their Photon CDN couldn't handle .gif's (for the few that I had reason to use), their publicize tool failed to maintain connections and it all seemed like too much work when there are other good alternatives.

I'm not averse to exploring it again, but a priority would be finding a gallery manger that can deftly handle thousands of images in many small collections.

---

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[Mealtog]

Lisa and Tom, yes, you need the Jetpack plugin to re-activate the carousel / slideshow feature that used to be inside WordPress. Recent updates saw this removed and moved to Jetpack. Note, Jetpack is released by WordPress so it's a plugin, just not 3rd party.

And yes again. I have also given up on Jetpack more than once. @braddalton and I have had this same discussion. Jetpack is rather large as a plugin. I have also tried Slim Jetpack (a 3rd party developer took the best of Jetpack and re-released it). But I wanted the least amount of risk for breaking WordPress and be less dependent on 3rd party developers to roll out current plugins. I would hope that because Jetpack is a plugin put out by WordPress, there is very little chance of it breaking WordPress itself. We can hope right?

There is actually a solo plugin out there that does exactly what Jetpack Carousel does but again, I am trying to use less 3rd party plugins.

Here is why I now use Jetpack.

1. I don't find it to be bloated. Maybe my server has lots of resources to handle it.
2. I like Jetpack Comments and WordPress Connect (allow users to comment using Twitter, Facebook or WordPress accounts)
3. Carousel (image slideshow in a lightbox)
3. Spelling and Grammar
4. Contact Form (replaced the 3rd party plugin I used to run)
5. Widget Visibility (replaced the 3rd party plugin I used to run - tried one of the most popular logic widget plugin out there and ran into conflicts with W3 Total Cache)
6. Very interested in Tiled Galleries (have not had time to test it out yet)

Tom, to manage a very large Gallery, the normal Jetpack Carousel may not be sufficient for high demand users. If you do try Jetpack >> Tiled Galleries, let me know how it works out. I would be interested to know.

Here is the link to the actual responsive gallery described in the article above. http://www.ads-links.com/index.php/responsive-wordpress-gallery.html Nice?

[Summer]

There are a large number of people who have no need or interest in signing up for WordPress.com in order to be able to use Jetpack. There are plenty of website designers with lots of clients who don't want to connect their websites to WordPress.com just to be able to have a working website.

That's why we use the other plugins from the repository, or find premium ones that come with support and justifiable reasons to sign up for something. I understand the rationale behind it for people who want to host their sites on WP.com, but leave the rest of us a separate bone, fer cryin out loud.

And for me ad-links.com is a questionable site, so Main page is a "For Sale" sign, so that's an "avoid" flag in my book.

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WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

[Mealtog]

@Summer, it's your choice whether you think Jetpack is worth it or not. I am sharing my own good experiences with it so far and am hoping it helps others who are in the same boat with this current NextGen issue.

Summer, you are mistaken. As for your statement about avoiding the site, the domain you posted is NOT the same as the one we are talking about lol

Edited again, darn auto correct!

[Lisa at OG]

Summer, this is one reason why we choose not to use Jetpack. We don't want to sign up for an account when we use a plugin for client sites. I am primarily looking for solutions that will work well, have little conflicts with other popular plugins, and have a user friendly interface for non techie clients who use the site when we are done.

I'm interested in looking at Justin Tadlock's Cleaner Gallery that Ruairi suggested. Anyone else have experience with that plugin?

[Lisa at OG]

Hey @ruairi, just took a look at Cleaner Gallery. The beauty is that it uses the native wordpress gallery but more custom AND you can add a simple line of .php and copy the plugins css/gallery.css file into your theme's stylesheet so you don't even have to install the plugin? Have I understood that correctly? PLUS, it works alongside 18 different lightboxes like prettyphoto and fancybox.

The only limitation I can see is that you would have to use yet another plugin like WP Gallery Custom Links to link images through to pages. I only say that because I noticed someone tried to add html in the caption and it spit out the code into the caption -- although, I suppose that could also just be that the HTML is being picked up in the title attribute? Besides, if someone didn't need link functionality this would be a straight forward and simple alternative to a NextGen basic gallery. Anyone else want to add their feedback on this....

[Summer]

@Mealtog, that's weird... the first time I removed the /index.php/responsive-wordpress-gallery.html to take a look at the rest of the site, I got the the big red warning page. The bad URL in the msg was just me typoing again

And youre right, for me personally, I don't think Jetpack is worth it, and wouldn't use it as a first option for any client site I'd build. I understand and approve of pulling some of the WP features out and making them plugins, because some of those functions are more suited to being plugins. I just don't see the need to make sure that a client signs up for a WordPress.com account in order to be able to use it. What happens if the person at that company leaves, taking their WP.com sign up with them, and all of a sudden the website breaks? Checking to see if Jetpack is still using a valid or active key isn't typically going to be the first thing I'd check when I get that emergency phone call 🙂

For my media sites, as long as the Co-Authors Plus social add-on keeps working without me needing Jetpack or Slim Jetpack, I'm a happy camper!

@Lisa, I haven't used Cleaner Gallery but I swear by the Members plugin also written by Justin Tadlock, so that is a good enough referral 🙂

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WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

[Tracy]

I'm pretty tired of this whole thing, the website the plugins LOL. So I too am trying out the MaxGalleria now and initially liked it but not as much as I liked the NextGen (before the upgrades) I'm having trouble with the thumbnails stacking instead of displaying a gallery. I'm using the 'tight' skin. All browsers seem to be a bit different. Chrome stacks them on occasion until I refresh the browser a few times. Firefox seems ok (the times I checked) Safari seems to be the worst for stacking and doesn't fix it when refreshed and Opera looks good but the light box opens up on a blank white background with no prev or next arrows etc.

[Lisa at OG]

Hi Tracy, It does get frustrating that's for sure. I have responded to your message in MaxGalleria support forums. I noticed this just happened with my demo gallery but only when using a gallery other than the standard skin. It does seem to be inconsistent. FYI, I just checked out your website in Safari 3.0 and Chrome 30 and it looks great. No stacking. I also just opened your website (the mallards?) into the latest version of Opera 17 and the arrow was working just fine (I can't attach a screenshot here but let me know an Email and I could send to you)!

[Lisa at OG]

Okay, I've sourced another alternative that is very simple and uses the native WordPress Media Gallery. I've installed a plugin called Lightbox Plus Colorbox by Dan Zappone. It is not so user friendly as NextGen but it does the trick. The dashboard is very simple and does give you some lightbox styles to choose from. Alternatively, you can add custom CSS styles which is great.

I checked it cross browser on the latest version of Opera, Chrome, Safari, IE, and Firefox as well as the iPad. Works fine. No issues. Loads quickly and I'm using it on WordPress 3.7 with no issue either.

BTW, I also added some html so that two captions below one of my images would be links to other pages and it worked with no issues although the captions don't show in the lightbox -- only in the original window. This is a good find until Dave can address the stacking issue happening in MaxGalleria in certain browsers.

[Tom]

@mealtog ... Your confidence in Jetpack is admirable, but they are not without fault. Please see this article from yoast.com: Jetpack and WordPress SEO. Joost deValk may also not be infallible, but he showed remarkable restraint when Jetpack walked all over courtesy and convention (and his plugin) a little less than a year ago.

Carousel IMHO is just another display tool of dozens available. (NextGen alone supports ~18.) I'm looking for something that reduces labour and adds management on the WP backend: image organization/access and author ease of selection and reference in the post editor. NextGen seems to have thrown these away with 2.0+.

---

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[Brad Dalton]

I use the native WordPress gallery which you can also extend using Slim Jetpack and a range of other plugins.

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Tutorials for StudioPress Themes.

[Tom]

@coralseait ... It looks like you may have been replying to me in #69170 ...

"would custom post types with category and tags help? Or is the need for physical folders on the file system as well?"

Physical folder support can be a big plus for organization and also updates with FTP; it's one of the first things that attracted me to NGG

You have good point that images can be managed and referenced as just 'data', where the repository is just the image collection. I guess that would be an element of a strong contender to replace NGG. How would you use CPT and tags/tax to manage images and galleries? (seems like it could be alot of work!)

---

Choose your next site design from over 350 Genesis themes.
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[Ruairi]

Lisa

I gave Cleaner Gallery a quick test using Genesis here is a quick mockup (note: I have used the Thickbox Script in the demo, because it is native to WordPress and will work for all themes) Cleaner Gallery - Genesis. I have just bought the Executive theme today and to say I'm impressed is an understatement. 🙂

The Cleaner Gallery is really simple and easy to configure. When installed, you simply go to Appearance > Cleaner Gallery. On the settings page there are options for image sizes, add captions etc... Then you have a few checkboxes. I ticked the Thickbox options which loads the css and js files for the demo.

The important part is to link the 'External Image Script', the plugin supports about 18, I think. So if you wanted to use prettyPhoto you would select prettyphoto from the dropdown menu.

The plugin does not support the scripts themselves so you'll have to load them yourself in your ...yourtheme/lib/(prettyphotos)

Then in your functions.php, you would load your css and js something like: (not tested)

/** Load PrettyPhoto **/
function prettyphoto_scripts_method() {

	wp_enqueue_script(
		'prettyPhoto-min',
		get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/lib/prettyPhoto/js/jquery-1.6.1.min.js',
		array( 'jquery' )
	);

	wp_enqueue_style(
		'prettyPhoto-css',
		get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/lib/prettyPhoto/css/prettyPhoto.css',
		array( 'jquery' )
	);

	wp_enqueue_script(
		'prettyPhoto',
		get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/lib/prettyPhoto/js/jquery.prettyPhoto.js',
		array( 'jquery' )
	);
}

add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'prettyphoto_scripts_method' );

And that is the configuration out of the way.

For your clients to use it is the same as using the default WordPress Gallery.

Create a post
click 'Add Media'
click 'Create Gallery' in the top left of the screen
select the images and add titles captions etc...
click 'Create New Gallery' in the bottom right of the screen

Now, this is the important part - make sure on the 'Link to' dropdown option that you select 'Media File' (prettyPhoto, Thickbox, lightbox2 - 'Media file' relates to the Image Script you selected in the Appearence > Cleaner Gallery settings )

Then select the number of columns, I choose four in the demo.

click 'Insert Gallery'

click 'Publish or Update'

The thing about Cleaner Gallery is that you can sleep easy knowing that the code is sound, especially if you use the default Thickbox. If want to do something extraordinary with this plugin you can get support at themehybrid.com, it costs $29 per year - which is not just about the hybrid core framework - it's great for all things WP. As of writing this, six days ago, on the support form for this very plugin a client reappeared after two years looking for support - basically having issues supporting html5 on IE8. They got an answer they needed, even though themehybrid no longer supports IE8. The client is a dev working for NASA! (I am not kidding!)

NASA still use IE8 as their default browser!

With Cleaner Gallery you know that it is going to play well with WP and all other plugins - it is easy to use, can be configured to support many scripts, you know it will last well into the future, the code is professional and there is always the option of having support being provided directly by the author.

Give it test run, see what you think?

I hope this helps

Ruairi

PS You can see default and Jetpack usage here 🙂

---

Ruairi Phelan CEO at Cyberdesign Craft.

[Author]

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