wordpress: photo galleries

One way of improving the look of your galleries with a minimum of fuss is to add the NextGen Smooth Gallery plugin. It uses short codes similar to Nextgen. Once it's installed create a new post, give it a title and save. Then enter the [smooth=id:1;] short code in the HTML view. It will create a gallery that looks like this:

Adjusting the settings is much easier than in Nextgen. Installing a plugin creates a new settings tab called Gallery (Smooth) in the left sidebar. Let's take a look.

General Options

Width and Height: Sets the slideshow size.

Timed: Check to make the slides auto play. Delay is in milliseconds so the default of 5000 is actually five seconds.

Show Arrows: Places arrows on the left and right sides of the image so the user can click through.

Show Info Pane: Displays the Title and Description fields at the bottom of the image.

Show Carousel: Turn on/off the scrolling thumbnail images.

Carousel Options - Text: Changes the text in the tab below the thumbnails. Feel free to change it to something like SCROLL IMAGES.

Carousel Options - Text: Unchecking hides the thumbnails when the slideshow first loads but leaves a tab showing as seen here:

Embed Links: Allows  link in a Title or Description field to open in the same page. If you have iFrame checked, the page will replace the slideshow in the iFrame.

iFrames: This helps Smooth Gallery play nice with other JavaScript libraries. Make sure this is checked if you do not plan on using links in your captions. 

Specific Options

Below General Options in the side bar there is another button labeled Specific options. This lets you have individual galleries that are different from your defaults.

All the settings are the same but when you click the Generate Code button you get detailed short code that you can copy and paste into a post. 

More features are planned in upcoming versions so be sure to read the latest documentation on the WordPreass plugin page. 

Next, let's add some user interaction with our photos.