UPDATE: January 15, 2013- Hello everybody, I can’t believe how popular this post has gotten! In light of this, and in NextGEN’s acquisition by Photocrati I have installed the latest version of NextGEN on this site and am in the process of putting together a new client gallery with it. I am hoping to have a new version of this guide up soon. Thanks for stopping by! If you have any questions feel free to comment below or here.
As much as everyone loves the NextGen Gallery by Alex Rabe (myself included), a comprehensive guide to how to actually use it seems to be as scarce as the proverbial hens’ teeth. The first time I installed it for a client, I have to admit the sheer amount of options and settings was a little overwhelming. At any rate, you came here for a manual so here it is.
Once you have downloaded, installed and activated the NextGen Gallery Plugin, when you go to your WP dashboard, it appears at the bottom left like so:
NextGen's Location in the WP Dashboard
Clicking next to the plugin’s name will open a list of tools and settings for NextGen:
NextGen Gallery Tools and Settings
Here’s a quick guide to the various areas of the NextGen toolbox:
1: Overview
2: Add Gallery/Images
3: Manage Gallery
4: Album
5: Tags
6: Options
7: Style
8: Set Up
9: Roles
10: About
1: Overview
Opens a page that contains general info about Next Gen. You can see a count of your albums, galleries and images, the names of recent donors to the plugin’s author (some nice exposure in exchange for a little support-these things don’t write themselves), updates from Alex Rabe’s blog, related plugins (good to check out for ways to extend Next Gen) and your Graphic Library settings.
Step 1. Click on Upload Images
2: Add Gallery/Images
Fairly self-explanatory, this is where you would go to create a new gallery or add images to an existing gallery. Click on “browse” to select an image from your computer. Then, select the gallery they will be uploaded to.
Step 2. Select your images
3. Manage Gallery
This brings you to a list of all your galleries. Click one of your galleries to edit the following settings:
Title: The title your gallery will have when it’s displayed on a page.
Description: A brief summary of the gallery’s content
Path: The file path for your gallery.
Page Link To: When the gallery is displayed as the content of an Album, choosing a page here will create a linked image and title that can be clicked on to go directly to that gallery’s page.
Preview Image: Lets you choose which image will be displayed when the gallery is shown in an Album.
Author: Lets you show the Gallery’s author.
Create Page: This feature allows you to create a page for the Gallery if you need to.
Below those options is a dropdown menu of Actions. If you need to make changes to several or all the images at once, this will save you time:
No Action: the default
Set Watermark: Allows you to embed text onto the image to mark it as yours.
Create New Thumbnails: This is what you need to use if you have changed your Thumbnails settings under Options (see below).
Re-size Images: You may need to re-size images to fit your site’s style.
Delete Images: Allows you to perform a batch delete on selected images.
Import Metadata: Allows you to import metadata (e.g. EXIF, IPTC, or XMP data) from images and set it in the alternate title text field. (Thanks Dave!)
Rotate Images Clockwise/Counter-Clockwise: Fairly self-explanatory.
Copy To: Lets you copy the selected images to a different gallery.
Move To: Lets you move the images from one gallery to another.
Add/Delete/Overwrite Tags: Allows you to batch-edit tags-keywords associated with the images that can enable the images to be selected by keyword-based searches.
If you have selected one of these actions, just click on Apply to put the changes in effect. You can also choose to Sort the Gallery which takes you to a page where you can re-arrange your images. To return to the Gallery editing window, just click Return to Previous Page on the far right. Also, if you did change anything, make sure you click “Save Changes” to put all your edits into effect.
The bottom of the Manage Gallery page contains a list of all that Gallery’s images. If you just need to edit one image, or, if each image needs individual editing, you can do that here.
4. Album
If you need to sort your Galleries into categories, then you need to create Albums. The analogy at work here is that you can have a family album entitled “Vacations” and perhaps another entitled “Weddings” and into those albums you would put collections of photos (or galleries) called “Disneyworld09″ and “Phyllis & Mike”.
Click and drag an album from the right window to place it in the left window for editing.
Once you have selected which album you want to edit, just drag it over to the far left window to add galleries via the drag and drop method.
Click Update to place the Galleries into the Album selected.
5. Tags
This allows you to edit existing tags, re-name tags, delete tags and also edit the tags’ slug (the way it will be written into the page’s URL). For example: if you had tagged an image as “Family Vacations”, the slug could be specified as family-vacations. Choosing your slugs wisely makes you site more “search friendly”.
This makes the image likely to show up in a search for the terms "home" AND "interior".
6. Options:
This is where you go to control the following settings:
General: set the gallery path, delete image files (check to remove the images from the database when you remove a gallery, activate permalinks, select a graphic library, activate an rss feed for your images and activate some Javascript effects for your galleries to create certain displays of images. Another feature you can edit here is how your images can be attached to posts that shares certain search terms, either by categories or tags.
Thumbnails: Here you can set the dimensions and the quality of your galleries’ thumbnails. Just be sure to go to Manage Galleries > Select a gallery > Actions and select “Create New Thumbnails” after you do this.
Images: Here you can edit your images’ size, quality, enable caching of images when someone browses a gallery and also clear the cache folder in case you change certain image settings.
Gallery: You can set a large array of options for your galleries here. Deactivate a gallery page’s link, set the number of images per page, set the number of image columns, integrate Slideshow settings, choose to show either a slideshow or a list of thumbnails, simply show the imagebrowser, add hidden images, enable Ajax pagination and choose Sort options.
Effects: This is where you can set the way images will be displayed once their thumbnails in a Gallery are clicked. Note: the only two options that will work automatically are Thick Box (which displays the image with a thick white border over a sheer gray background) and Shutter (similar display but with no border). Highslide and Lightbox effects can only be generated when certain javascript is inserted into your content folder. For an example of the Highslide effect, click here and then click one of the images under Galleries.
To see what the Lightbox effect is go here and select one of the images.
Watermark: Here you can edit your settings for displaying watermarks such as whether yo want to use an image or text to protect your images from theft.
Slideshow: Set your slideshows’ appearance. Note: you will need to download an auxiliary plugin named JW Image Rotator to get the slideshows to function.
7. Style:
Style allows you to choose from 7 different stylesheets for your Album and Gallery displays as well as customize the CSS to suit your site’s look and layout. The available readymade styles aren’t radically different from each other, but here is a series of screenshots with the various choices in effect.
Gallery displaying the default style
Black Minimalism Theme
DKret 3 Theme
Hovereffect Styles
K2 Theme
Shadow Effect
Shadow Effect with Description Text
Not stunningly different in appearance I know, but, look at things this way. You can select a style, customize it any way you like via CSS and then, if things get hairy, you can always select another style to revert your design to something similar to its original state.
8. Set Up:
This page gets a little lost in translation for me. One would expect it to contain info about folders and ports and such but this is actually where you go to fully remove any images/galleries/album info from your database. That first line you see:
“You don’t like NextGEN Gallery ?” always reminds me that awkward moment when you have to tell your mother-in-law “No thanks” when offered a helping of her special “Spam ‘n Cheezwiz Surprise”. I wish this section was called “Uninstall” instead.
9. Roles:
This is a nice touch. If you run a site that has several administrators/editors/contributors (the basic WordPress roles), this is where you can assign different levels of access to the NextGen galleries for different people.
10. About:
Here’s where the credits roll. If you are burning with desire to see who contributed to this plugin’s development and/or economic survival, then this is the section for you. And, if you find NextGen so fabulous that you want to throw some cash their way, there’s a “Make a Donation” button right under the heading “How to Support?”.
Related Links:
Hungry for more? Here’s a list of links to other NextGen-related articles that I have gathered in the course of working with the NextGen plugin:
Vuthy.com: Guide to Using NextGen’s Albums and Galleries
Scotproof’s: Inserting a NextGen gallery or slideshow in a custom field
Narasopa Media’s: Adding Title and Description to NextGen Gallery Thumbnails
And stay tuned for the next article in my NextGen series: “Customizing Your Gallery”!
Thanks! — I have a few questions still.
— In WP 2.9 what is the difference between ‘page link to’ under Gallery settings and ‘page link to’ under Album settings?
Hi Mindy,
That’s a good question. I’ve played around with these options and it seems that the gallery’s “page link to” function allows you to link a gallery displayed as part of an album to the page that the gallery has been placed in. I have tried linking an album to it’s own page, but the album itself did not link, just the gallery thumbnail displayed as part of the album and that would only link to the page selected for the gallery, not the page I selected for the album. There is probably a configuration of albums and galleries where this would come in handy though I haven’t come across it yet.
This is a helpful guide. I have activated and de-activated NextGen Gallery. I love the plugin’s utility but I ended up deactivating it one time in search of a plugin that was killing my theme. I don’t think NextGen was it, but I never re-activated it even though I really thought it was cool. (Btw, the few galleries I had made in NextGen were still available even after deactivation.)
I happened up on your post because I was thinking about giving NextGen another try. It seems like such a beloved plugin, do you know if its features are going to be incorporated into WP 3.0?
Hi Melanie,
I visited the plugin’s page on WordPress and they’ve given it the “green light” saying that it does work with 3.0. Yay! I also have come across a plugin called wp-popeye that can do things like embed a quick “scroll-through” gallery in a page. Not a bad alternative if you need a photo gallery option that is a little more user friendly for non-geek clients.
thank you!
Very helpful! Thanks for sharing…
Melanie,
Thanks goodness for your Manual. I look forward to going through it and learning to use this fabulous looking plugin. However, I can’t get to first base.
First, I have installed the plugin in WordPress, but I doesn’t show up in the Plugins on the left of the Dashboard.
I downloaded Cyberduck because I read that I have to get JW Image Rotator and I have to have ftp to install it in NextGen. However, I can’t get it to connect. Is that why NextGen won’t work for me?
I am frustrated, baffled and looking for any help I can get. I am bookmarking your site so that eventually I might be able to get this thing going.
Thanks for your clear instructions.
Well, I went to the Plugins>NextGen Gallery, clicked “Overview” and suddenly I have something here I can work with and a “Gallery” section on the left of the Dashboard at the bottom. Now I will read the rest of your manual. I even loaded 16 images into my site. I am on my way!!
Mardi
very helpful! Thanks!
I am running WordPress.com (not .org) and do not have plugins showing menu on the dashboard after installing (unzip) NextGen as mentioned in the C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\nextgen-gallery. How do you activate nggallery?
Hi Bernard,
if it’s a wordpress.com site, then unfortunately, it doesn’t allow for plugins to be installed.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
I should add, too, that I haven’t had the opportunity to use NGallery for a while. I use the Portfolio Slideshow plugin by Raygun, more now because it enables clients to simply go to a page that they want a gallery on and upload from there. It’s a little easier to deal with the styling and such too.
I am using this plugin for the first time. I have seen in the video on their page that when we click on an image the image opens up in the same page, but alas that is not the case for me. When I click on the image it opens on a new page. Is there a setting where I can change this??
Thanks in advance
Hi Vivek-have you tried under the Nextgen settings Options > Gallery?
I have recently downloaded this plugin and love it! I have a question that i haven’t seemed to be able to find an answer for as of yet. When using Shutter, I would like to be able to click on an image and have it continue to the next image instead of closing the window. Is this possible?
Hi Amber,
You may want to check these two sites for info as well:
http://wphelpcenter.com/plugins/nextgen-gallery/
http://www.laptoptips.ca/projects/wp-shutter-reloaded/
Good post! Thanks for the links as well.
Very useful post! Especially for amateur like me. This is what I have been trying to find. NextGEN is a very good plugins but really lack of documentation.
Thanks for the hardwork
I have recently downloaded this plugin but i I could not understand
How do I use this plugin on a single post?
I need that the transition would be between posts (each post is a single image) and not between images….
Thanks for this guide! Maybe this should be obvious, but… how do you *choose* which style the gallery will display in?
Hi.
I’m having a problem with the webpage that I’m working in. When people click a thumbnail I would like to have the picture shown in a lightbox (and not in a new window), but this only seems to be working with a few of the pictures that I’ve uploaded. I understand that I can change the settings for this under options in Nextgen gallery, but here is my problem:
- In the Nextgen menu I can only see the following – overview, add gallery/images, manage gallery, album, tags and about.
Why is this?? Where is “options”??
Hope someone can help!
[...] Mears has taken on the task of creating the missing manual for Nextgen Gallery. It’s a few years old at this point, but it covers a lot of the basics which still apply to [...]
Has anyone ever done a more updated guide like this one?
Hi Alex, I wish I had the time to go through the NextGen plugin again, but right now things are really busy. I have been using the Photospace gallery plugin most of the time recently. I found that it displays the thumbnails in an easy-to-format grid and the image is displayed on the same page without the Lightbox popping up, which clients tend to like more.
Thanks for the heads up on photospace and i’ve just had a look a that definitely looks more like what i’m after than nextgen. Is there a similar guide for photospace? Thanks for the great article by the way.
Thank you for this very informative and helpful manual! I was just about to write and ask if anyone had issues with the album section not displaying one of the 3 columns. But, we just found the fix! How excited are you if you’re having this problem right now?! If it is not a plugin conflict (check by deactivating other plugins to see if that corrects the issue) we deactivated the theme we were using, activated the 2011 standard theme and it appeared! Once we re-activated our premium theme it was there and everything seems to be running fine now. Good luck Nextgen users!
Very useful, thank you.
A supplementary question that you might like to answer: can I use sql to update the tags. I can’t see where they are stored on the database. Am I being myopic ?
Hello, I just installed the plugin, uploaded my first album, worked great, went to upload my second album and the “upload image” button does nothing. Even if I disable flash, or try to upload a zip, nothing. Any ideas?
Hi Krissy, did you try to upload the images one at a time? Are the images sized so they won’t “break” the layout or bandwidth allotment? I have found that 800px by 600px is a good size for most galleries.
Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back to your
website? My blog is in the very same area of interest as
yours and my users would genuinely benefit from some of the information
you provide here. Please let me know if this alright with you.
Many thanks!
Hi Kris, no problem and thank you for posting a link back!
Thanks for this nice and amazing tutorial.
Love it.
This is a pretty good elementary overview but needs updating, as some things described here have been changed in the current release of NextGEN Gallery. Also, note that Vuthy.com is an invalid address, so that guide has apparently been moved or is no longer available. That link needs to disappear or be replaced.
I still have a lot of questions about this plug-in. One of the big ones is that I created a media library with images and captions, then installed the plug-in, and find that that library is completely unavailable to NextGEN Gallery. I can upload, but not drag-and-drop from the media library. It looks like I will have to create a second media library from my computer using the same images I already uploaded.
NextGEN is not badly documented; it is not documented at all. I have found several guides like this, and all of them fall short of actually providing a step-by-step guide to actually using it.
Hi Paul, Thanks for your feedback. This is an older tutorial and I’m sure others have answered the need for documentation on how to use NextGen properly by now. When I was first using NextGen, Photospace Gallery and Slideshow Gallery were not available and I have since come to use those two more than NextGen for the exact reason that you mentioned. They work with the native WordPress gallery function and also create pretty nice looking galleries.
Thanks for the speedy response. I’ll look into those items.
What’s ironic is that after trying for days to get WP’s gallery and NextGEN Gallery to create the exact look I wanted for a static thumbnail page, it took me just 15 minutes to code a page directly in HTML and CSS, load it, and test it. The client likes the look, and since I’ve come up blank on how to create it in WP, I’m going to redesign his entire site in Dreamweaver and bypass WP altogether. From a coder’s perspective, it actually offers less than the rather simple look I needed. The test page, so far minus the WP header (easy enough to recreate directly, just haven’t done it yet), is at http://csedl.csedl.org/Gallery.html, if anyone is interested. As I remarked to the person who touted WP so highly, the WP front end actually seems to have reduced the functionality that a simple static-page site needs. It’s great for blogs, but most of my clients don’t want that (yet; I dread the day they do and I have to find some way to port my code into WP). I figured that some would want me to bang up a site and turn it over to them, and WP is okay for that…as long as the design is easily implemented.
Hi Paul, If it’s not to late, why not give Photospace or Portfolio Slideshow gallery a go? It’s a way of working with the native WP media library and it’s easy to control the thumbnail size as well. I just wrote up another tutorial for that here.
Thanks, Jean. I’m looking over your tutorial now, and will give Photospace a shot. I have another response to the resizing issue, which I’ll post there.