Visual appearance of website plays a great role in the conversion rate and finally at the bottom line of online business, so all our intention is to make the site as attractive as possible by employing the best gallery feature. Even though WordPress comes with a default built in gallery feature but it lacks that really desired artistic appeal and the needed functionality and this is where gallery plugins comes into great help. Markets are loaded with plenty of options but the best WordPress gallery plugin are listed here.
Before listing down the best WordPress gallery plugins, some factors to be considered when it comes to choosing the best options which are mentioned here.
How to Choose the Best WordPress Gallery Plugin
- Feature: A feature rich gallery plugin is always desired by the users but at the same time it is to be remembered that too many of unnecessary features actually can interfere with the speed. However, some important and basic features such as lightboxes, pagination, image navigation, album etc. are really needed to make the display of images eye catching.
- Speed: Next come the speed. Speed is highly crucial for a website that affects the user experience while the SEO is also linked with that. So, the chosen gallery plugin should be such that do not affect the speed and for this what is actually needed the perfect optimization of images.
- Ease of use: Ease of use is another factor to be considered before choosing a gallery plugin. Installing a gallery plugin is not that simple as uploading images in the post. And if the installation and setting up of a gallery plugin is too complex, the novice will be overwhelming while it will also kill enough of your time. So, easy to install, activate and use gallery plugin is to be chosen for the best reason.
So, keep these above points in mind and it will definitely help you in getting the best WordPress gallery plugin.
Best WordPress gallery plugin
Envira Gallery
This is one of the best options to choose for your WordPress site which is responsive and very user friendly that the beginners too will find it highly suitable. The interface of this plugin is such that it will blend well with the WordPress admin area. It loads the galleries so quickly that you will be really impressed with the speed. Using the plugin is very easy that adds an option ‘Envira gallery’ in the dashboard and adding a gallery is just a matter of second. What you need to do is add a name in the gallery and start uploading images there. That’s it. Features like animation, margin sizing, gutter, column, thumbnail size etc. are available to make your images highly appealing. Also a button next to the media upload button is visible in the visual editor through which easily an image or gallery can be added to any page or post.
The free and premium both the version are available while the best option is to go for the silver license that includes all the addon features.
NextGEN gallery
This is another best WordPress gallery plugin that is being liked by most of the WordPress users for its useful features. The novice might be bit confused in the starting but with uses and time, things become much easier. A button in the visual editor let users easily add galleries in the page or post after which you can adjust how the gallery will be displayed such as tag cloud, image browser, slider or thumbnails. The albums can be displayed in two ways, either basic compact or basic extended. Also there is option to edit a gallery right from the visual editor.
The interface is really insightful where the photo gallery itself brings its own interface, separate folders for storing images and database tables.
Foo Gallery
One more very easy to use gallery plugin that comes packed with a very simple user interface to make job easier for novice as well. A Foogalllery option is added in the dashboard where choosing the add gallery option will let you add galleries and then choose add images to add images in the gallery. Again gallery can be created with ease by using the top button located at the visual editor. The gallery in this plugin is displayed in various formats and you can choose the suitable one for your site.
Also, it comes with various gallery templates and responsive gallery template is one option to choose from. The gallery templates also allow you option to specify the image link option, thumbnail size and other important settings. However, if you need lightbox option, the free Foobox lightbox is to be installed separately. The free version is available while the premium version allows you to unlock more features.
WP Canvas
Another useful plugin to include in the list that is pretty simple to use and set up in your WordPress directory. This plugin will not add any extra items on the WordPress dashboard but you will notice an additional option at the right side while adding gallery in any post or pages. The gallery can be displayed in three formats such as Masonry, carousel or slider. So you can choose the format you want. The galley setting of WordPress is automatically expanded after installation of WP Canvas plugin so that you can include more display, caption and size option.
Even though this plugin makes use of built in gallery feature of WordPress, but you will be left with varieties of options with the installation of this plugin.
Gmedia gallery
If you want to enjoy as many as options with a free gallery plugin, this is the one to go for. Gmedia gallery plugin is accessible through a button at the top of visual editor. The plugin comes packed with a video player and music player by default that can be used for various purpose while there are loads of options on how to display the gallery. And the display options are referred to as module in this plugin. 7 modules are installed initially by default whereas users can go for more options in order to have a mosaic look, 3D sphere, 3D cube, sliders, photoblog and more. But ensure to place the images in an album or in the GP media library before setting gallery with this plugin.
However, selecting an image is bit different in this plugin that requires you to enter the ID of image rather than simply selecting the image. Also there are lots of options to customize the gallery.
Photospace gallery
Another useful gallery that can be used with ease even though you are a novice in this field. The default setting of WordPress is being extended by the installation of this plugin. Once you install it, the gallery will be viewed in the left hand side as thumbnail version while the selected images in that will be displayed in the preview area. Also you will notice a menu item of this plugin under the settings. This setting let you do a lot more while you are allowed to specify the controls such as whether or not to use the paging feature, if you want to add caption or description in the gallery title, the size of the preview image and more.
Other options such as download link for every selected image, link of their previous and next image and option to start slideshow is also included here. The gallery can be shown in different format, so, you can go ahead to choose the required format as per your need.
Portfolio Gallery
If you are a very professional person and want to maintain professionalism everywhere even in your gallery in the WordPress, this plugn is just for you. Yes, by Huge-It, this gallery plugin provides a very professional look of the gallery and the developers prefer to call it as portfolio rather than gallery. Adding gallery or portfolio in the WordPress is very simple that is done through a button at the top of visual editor while there is also option for using a shortcode to add the gallery.
You can make the gallery to look as per your wish that come packed with lots of options such as thumbnail view, masontry, lightbox, slider and more. Adding images to the gallery is just a matter of second and is done with ease while you can also edit descriptions, captions and add links for every image. It is fully responsive and is available at free, so what can be better than this?
Photo Gallery
Another useful gallery plugin for WordPress that is available at free but comes wrapped with so many exciting features and functionality to blow your mind. From Web Dorado this plugin is too easy to use and upon installation a photo gallery option is added to the WordPress dashboard. You can add gallery just as the way you add a post. The gallery in this plugin is being showed as the standard thumbnail and as the mouse is hovered over them, the images are being enlarged a bit and upon clicking on an image, the larger version of the image is shown in lightbox.
Images can be embedded in the gallery from various source such as Instagram, flickr etc. with this plugin and by default all the images are uploaded to the designated directory. Also, importing images from media library is possible through the options under settings of this plugin. Again there is option to add image or text watermarks in the images while the gallery can be made to look as you want using the options it comes packed with.
Fancy Gallery
One of the best WordPress gallery plugin that you can consider using in your WordPress site which is loaded with hover effect variations like scale, slides, fades, layouts and offer you the best way to customize the gallery. Creating image gallery is as simple as that which is done in a very user friendly AJAX driven admin system or else you can also do it hassle free in its drag and drop interface. By default the galleries are shown in thumbnail while creating numerous galleries are possible to display them in the post, page or widget area. Several images can be uploaded in the gallery at once while multiple navigation and theme color options offer great opportunity to do lot with this plugin.
Justified image grid
If you are wishing to have a sleek looking gallery that is developed very cleverly at the same time, justified image grid is the one to consider in that case. This plugin make the gallery to look very eye-catching while the scattered images all through the web such as in Flickr, Instagram, DevianART, Pinterest etc. is being pulled and collected in the gallery in a very attractive way. Even videos from various sources like YouTube too can be added in the gallery.
Other features like easy set-up process, plenty of options for customization without any coding skill, button filtering, tag cloud, pagination, scrolling effect, automatic alignment makes the plugin really a must have one. But this plugin is not free and you are required some reasonable amount in order to get it in your WordPress site.
SharePrints
The last gallery plugin to mention in our list that is fully responsive and comes wrapped with all the needed features and functionality thus makes worth considering it. This gallery plugin is too simple to use and any prior technical experience is not required so novice too can start employing it without any hassle. The gallery can be made to look of various styles such as masonry and slider layouts, filmstrip or else the popular blog style of gallery. But this is not free rather you need to spend some penny to get it in the WordPress website.
So, if you are not satisfied with the core gallery functionality available in WordPress then always you can look for the options such as plugins to extend the functionality. Most of the above mentioned plugins are free while few of them are premium. So, if you are not interested to spend anything to get extra functionality in gallery, then go for the free ones.