Well folks, here’s our first guest post of the year. This is written by James Adams. If you would like to write for theapptimes, check out our Guest blogging guidelines. If you host a WordPress site, you already know that it is a great content management system and can be adapted to fit any need. If you are a photographer or need to manage a large number of photos, you’ll quickly realize that a photo management plug-in will really come in handy. Plug-ins will be the perfect addition to your site, as they offer easy access and an organized template to demonstrate your photos. The extensions listed below are some of the most recommended WordPress photo management plugins available to help get you started.
15 Best WordPress Photo Management Plugins
1. NextGEN Gallery
This is a very popular WordPress plug-in that allows you to customize and manage your photos with an easy to use administrative back end. It also includes custom flash templates to show off your images with your blog theme. Some other features include a watermark function, album organizer, transition effects for photo viewing and an optional sidebar widget.
2. Lazyest Gallery
This gallery offers a multitude of options for your WordPress blog by featuring a smart back end management site. You can sort photos through folders and add captions, comments and descriptions with minimal effort. If you are tired of uploading photos through the WordPress server, this plug-in will make it a breeze with their FTP auto-indexing integration.
3. DM Albums
The DM plug-in is great for those who need to display several images on one page in the blog. When images are uploaded through DM Albums, thumbnails pictures will be created, minimizing the size and disk space needed for viewing. When a viewer clicks the thumbnail, they will then be able to view the full size and resolution image in a separate window. UPDATE: Currently unavailable.
4. Featured Content Gallery
This is another great gallery that offers a simple and fast installation. The add-on produces a customizable image gallery that rotates and displays your photos. The settings let you change details of the carousel gallery such as color, size and theme. This is a fairly simple plug-in, yet it can add a lot of style to your site in no time.
5. GRAND Flash Album Gallery
As the name implies, this tool will add an administrative back end to WordPress that has a grand set of features. This plug-in covers everything from a variety of Flash skins or restricted access settings to thumbnail generators and full screen slideshows.
6. Flickr Gallery
If you own a Flickr account and want to share photos directly from your blog, then check out the Flickr Image Gallery. This innovative plug-in will integrate your photos from photosets or albums on your account and display them right on your blog page.
7. WordPress Content Slide
The content slide here allows you to place a banner-like slideshow of photos on your site to feature main content in your page. As always the slideshow settings are customizable and will give a professional look to your blog. Furthermore, the dynamic slideshow adds a fade effect to images when browsing through your collection.
8. WP PicLens
With WP PicLens, viewers will be allowed to browse through the slideshow and expand images to a full-screen if they wish. You can also add a miniature widget display of your slideshow around your blog.
9. WP Photo Album Plus
A good photo management plug-in that will help you display your images and organize your collection.
10. Page Flip Image Gallery
This gallery’s main feature is that is creates, you guessed it, a page flipping effect to your photos. Although it is not ideal for managing and archiving, it has a fast set up and looks great for presentations.
11. Frontpage-Slideshow
You may recognize the style on this slideshow plug-in, as it is very popular among major retailer websites. This is great for displaying featured products, promotions or exclusive content on your website. It has a professional look and quality that can suit any business or personal need.
12. Shadowbox JS
Shadowbox is meant to allow maximum functionality for your visitors. It supports most major browsers and is designed to keep viewers from having to navigate from your page by opening your images in a stylish window.
13. FancyBox for WordPress
This plug-in sets itself apart by allowing zoom functions, animation types, borders and overlay options.
14. Yet Another Photoblog
The name is by no means misleading, but it is a great template for a fully functional photo blog. This extension is ideal for managing personal, group and family albums.
15. Lightview Plus
If you are looking for a no non-sense and sleek photo management plug-in, take a look at Lightview Plus. It offers great functionality, custom features and a sharp looking photo viewer.
With a such wide variety of options for managing photos on WordPress, there is no doubt that you will find the right fit for your site from these recommended plug-ins. WordPress offers open source plug-ins that allow you to customize your blog in an infinite number of ways. The plug-ins listed above are some of the best that are currently available to WordPress users, with many more to be developed.
About the author
This guest post was contributed by James Adams at Cartridge Save. James spends much of his time thoroughly reviewing products such as the range of Kodak supplies, but he also enjoys posting about advertising and media.
Thank you for you mentioning of Lazyest Gallery.
I couldn’t have said it better mysef.
Would you mind if I quote this as the new description for the plugin?
I’ve been using NextGen for a few years and at this point have a couple dozen galleries with 5-15 pages of photos in each one. I find it really cumbersome to add photos to the galleries, then go find them one at a time to insert them into the posts.
I don’t need slideshows or widgets. Just an easy way to organize and insert photos.
Any suggestions?
Have you tried using WP Photo Album or WP Photo Album Plus. The latter has some pretty good features which might be what you’re looking for.