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”!

1: Logging into your WP site
All WP sites have the same login procedure. Go to your browser and in the address bar type in a URL in the following format:

(of course, you’d want to substitute your own site’s name for “jennmearswebdesign.com”)

After that, you will see a screen that looks like this:

You’ll need to enter your User Name and Password here. Tip: Click the box that says “Remember Me” so that your browser can automatically re-insert your password when you visit again. If it doesn’t seem to remember the password and your user name is automatically entered next time you visit, try deleting the last few characters of the user name and re-typing them. That usually triggers the automatic entry of the password.

2: Welcome to the Dashboard

After you have successfully logged in, you should be looking at the WP dashboard. This is your starting point to any task you need to get accomplished for updating your site. Here’s a quick tour:

From the top:
You’ll see your site’s name at the top left corner with a little link that says “Visit Site”. This is handy when you are making changes to the layout and want to see how those changes look. This link will always take you to your site’s home page.
In the top right corner, you will see a “New Post” and a dropdown menu. This is great when you are in a hurry and WP has inserted quick links to the most common tasks for WP users. Next to that you will see “Howdy! and your user name, then a link to “Turbo” which can be installed for faster blogging. Next to Turbo is the Log Out button for when you are done with your session.

Left Dashboard:

The top link, labeled “Dashboard” will return you to the Dashboard home from wherever you are in the admin section. Next down is the area where you can control the basic components of a WP site: Posts, Media, Links, Pages and Comments:

From there, you have your toolbar for editing your site’s look and layout (note, this is only accessible to users with Administrator access):

Themes are the basic templates that your WP site has stored online. This is where you would go if you wanted to choose a new theme for your site.

Widgets are the components that make up the features of your sidebar. When a theme says “Widget-enabled” it means that the theme’s author has coded the ability for the theme to display widgets properly. Widgets are a great way to handle a lot of your site’s functionality.
Tip: If you choose a widget for your sidebar(s), just be aware that it will create a sidebar that only displays widgets. If you have sidebar elements that have been handcoded in the file “sidebar.php”, then you will need to make sure that those can be installed as a widget as well.

Editor is where you can work with the files that make up your site’s theme. For example, if I wanted to change the font on my site’s Posts to a different one than the font on the Pages, I would go to Editor>Style.css and then change the style declaration for posts to display a different font.

The next panel is for Plugin administration. Plugins are applications created to meet various needs site owners may have. Much of the time, a developer realizes that there is a demand for a particular tool, such as a dynamic calendar, or a way to insert custom meta-tags in a site’s headers so they create a package of code to accomplish this and make it available for download often for free or minimal cost. You can explore more about Plugins here.

Users is where you can control who has access to your Dashboard and how much access they can have. If you have a site with a lot of contributors, this is where you will go to control who can go where.

Under Tools, you have 4 selections: Tools, where you can enable Turbo and Press This (also found in the Turbo link in the top right), Import, where you can import content from other blogs, Export, where you can bundle your current blog’s contents, and Upgrade where you can install the latest version of WordPress. (You’ll need to back everything up before doing so).

Settings is a pretty big topic but suffice to say it’s where you can work with features such as your site’s url structure, blog title and description, which Page on your site is the “Home” page and so on. It’s very useful to explore the Settings panel and get used to the wide variety of options available. And, speaking of Options, some versions of WP use the term “options” instead of “settings” which is good to know when you are searching for help online for a WP issue.

So that’s the basic left side toolbar of the dashboard. Underneath Settings is usually where any Plugins that you’ve enabled outside of the standard ones included in WP will show up and you can utilize them from there.

3. Create Some Content

Now that you’re familiar with the dashboard, you can begin creating content for your new site. Since the method for creating Posts and Pages is roughly similar, I’m going to discuss creating a Post and it should help with creating Pages too. What’s the difference you ask? There are a few analogies I like to use but here I’ll just say that Posts are like press releases or newsletters about your company and Pages are like brochures. So, here’s how to create a Post:

Step 1: Log In to the Dashboard
Once you’ve signed in, you’ll notice a window in the top right of the dashboard called “QuickPress”. This is very handy when you want to simply write a post and get it up on the site without a lot of formatting.

Step 2: Creating the Content
If you need more control over the layout and look of the Post, then simply go to the Posts section in the left toolbar and click “Add New”. (You may need to click the arrow to the right of Posts to open the menu.)

Now the full size edit window will open up and you can add the Post’s title and begin creating the content.

Oftentimes people find that they can simply copy and paste text from another format into WP and it works just fine. However you get it in there, once it’s there, you probably want to play with the formatting a little and WP makes this fairly easy in several ways.

Step 3: Formatting the Content
There are two different modes of editing, Visual and HTML. Visual is good when you are working with text and images. HTML mode is handy when you want to paste in things such as an embedded map or video. It’s also possible to create divs and markup for precision styling via your style.css file. Let’s start with a tour of the Visual mode:

These are the buttons for formatting your content. To use them, simply highlight the text you want to change and click one of the buttons. From left to right they are:
Bold
Italics
Strike-Through (when you want to show that some text has been changed)
Unordered List (will format a list with bullet points according to whichever style your theme’s author has designated)
Ordered List (a numbered list)
Block Quote
Align Left
Align Center
Align Right
Insert/Edit a Link
Unlink the text
More (for when you only want to display the beginning of a post on the blog’s home page)
Spellcheck (with various European languages included)
Toggle for Full Screen Mode
Show/Hide “Kitchen Sink” mode (see below)
+ any plugins you have enabled such as CFormsII or NextGen Gallery

Kitchen Sink Mode Buttons:
Paragraph Styles
Underline
Align Full
Text Color
Paste as Plain Text
Paste from Word
Remove Formatting
Insert/Edit Embedded Media
Insert Custom Character
Outdent
Indent
Un-Do
Re-Do
Help (opens a pop-up window)

Editing in HTML Mode

HTML mode is handy when you want to include some markup into your content, but don’t want to deal with hand-coding. You can highlight your text and then apply the various tags like so:
(from left to right)
b=Bold text
i=Italicized
link=A hypertext link
b-quote=block quotet
del=delete
ins=labels text considered inserted into a post. Most browsers display as underlined text. (Assigns datetime attribute with offset from GMT (UTC))
img=this creates a tag for inserting an image into your post. If you have an image stored in your uploads folder, or, on an online album such as Photobucket, you can paste a link into the dropdown window and the image will be displayed on your site.
ul=un-ordered list
ol=ordered list
li=list item on a list
code=Creates preformatted styling of text. Generally sets text in a monospaced font, such as Courier
more=a way for you to contain the beginning of a post on a page and then include a “read the rest of this article” teaser linking to the full post.
lookup=Opens a JavaScript dialogue box that prompts for a word to search for through the online dictionary at answers.com. You can use this to check spelling on individual words.
close tags=closes any open HTML tags in your post.

Step 4: Inserting Media

Once you are satisfied with the text, you can add some media to your post. Click on where you would like an image to appear and then select one of the choices in the Add Media: menu in the top right corner of the edit window. The choices from left to right are: image, video, audio and add media.

Depending on the version of WordPress you are using, the upload window may behave in various ways. Sometimes you can upload images or media just fine, but WP doesn’t want to actually insert them into the post. A little frustrating, but luckily there’s a way around this. In HTML mode, click on the “ins” button and in the dropdown window that appears, enter the image’s url like so:

http://www.yoursitesname.com/wp-content/uploads/year/mo/day/nameofimage.jpg

Tip: if you want an easy way to copy and paste your image’s url, click on add media, then select either “Gallery” for images you’ve just uploaded, or “Media” for everything in your uploads folder. Click on the media you wish to add, and then look for the Link URL listed in the window. Then you can copy and paste that if needed.

Also, I’ve noticed that adding Flash movies is a little tricky. You can circumvent this by installing the Kimili Flash embed plugin. (you’ll need a way to FTP files for installing plugins)

Step 5. Tags, Categories, Author and Advanced Options

Now that the content of the Post (or Page) is all set. You can either save it as a draft, or Publish it. It’s a good idea at this point to assign the Post to a Category and add Tags. These are how your posts are cataloged in your WordPress database so that your readers can find them. I like to think of this as like a library’s way of organizing non-fiction. Categories are like broad topics such as Music, Art and Science, and then Tags are helpful for breaking down categories further such as Rock and Roll, Opera, Painting, Renaissance, Zoology and Particle Physics.

If your blog has multiple authors, always scroll down to check the Authors selection to make sure the right Author is chosen for the post.

WordPress sites can be modified to show only an excerpt of the content to draw readers in for more. If you have this feature, then you can place an excerpt into the Excerpt window.

Trackbacks are for when you have linked to another blog in your post. If they have enabled Pingbacks, they will be notified that you have done this.

Custom Fields, according to WP’s Codex;

offer a way to add information to your site. In conjunction with extra code in your template files or plugins, Custom Fields can modify the way a post is displayed. These are primarily used by plugins, but you can manually edit that information in this section.

You can read more about custom fields here.

Comments and Pings are enabled by default and I’ve never seen a reason to dis-able them. If you didn’t want people to comment on your Post or be notified if someone links back to it, then you could do that here.

Password Protect is used when you want only certain people to see the Posts content. You can set a password here for people to use when they are allowed to read this Post.

Step 6. Publish!
Once you are satisfied with your Post’s content and settings, it’s time to publish. This will place your post at the top of your archives and allow others to read it. Tip: If you want to change the order in which a Post will show up in the Archives(arranged chronologically), click Edit next to Publis and choose a date that will place it where you want in your Archives.

What about Pages???

Pages, (brochure-like info remember?) use the same editing tools as Posts. Pages, however, don’t have Categories or Tags, but they do have hierarchy and templates. If you would like for one page to be a sub-page, or “child” of another, you can choose that from the Parent Page dropdown menu on the right. Page Template is where you can choose a Template that may have been created to give certain Pages on your site a particular layout or “look” via CSS styling. Pages are otherwise set to display the “Default” template.

And that is pretty much it as far as getting your content into your WordPress site. If you have further questions, feel free to send ‘em my way!