Today’s topic we will be discussing the use of images and galleries in WordPress. There are many plugins and prebuilt solutions to help with these, we’ll be exploring a few of them from the 1000ft level and then digging deeper into our favorites.
Tips for working with imaged and galleries in WordPress
When used correctly (as in do not upload all images or even all files from your computer onto your WordPress site) the new and improved Media Library and its ability to attach and put galleries directly into your post without needing any plugin is pretty amazing.
Make sure you properly name your images so they’ll be searchable.
Plugins for managing images consistency and size:
WP Smush.it which is supported by WP Engine. It has a way of being able to smush down those images, remove the excess metadata and reduce the file size.
Auto Image Resizer: This Plugin reduces all uploaded images to the maximal used image dimensions of your WordPress website.
Imsanity: automatically resizes huge image uploads down to a size that is more reasonable for display in browser, yet still more than large enough for typical website use.
Simple Image Sizes: This plugin allow create custom image sizes for your site. Override your theme sizes directly on the media option page. You can regenerate all the sizes you have just created and choose which one you wanted to regenerate.
Typically if you’re going to use a gallery, especially with a lightbox, what happens is it’ll give you thumbnails with the right size. But the links inside of those actually link to the original full size source file. So if someone has uploaded a 3000×4000 image, that’s what’s going to pop up when they click on the gallery.
Plugins for managing a gallery:
NextGEN Gallery: It provides a powerful engine for uploading and managing galleries of images, with the ability to batch upload, import meta data, add/delete/rearrange/sort images, edit thumbnails, group galleries into albums, and more.
Soliloquy: This plugin is technically a slider and it has an addon called (see next)
Soliloquy Thumbnails Addon: and what that does is it puts an image on top which is the slider and puts the thumbnails of the rest of the pictures below it which is the gallery. These plugins are responsive.
Other Mentions:
- ACF Advanced Custom Fields
- Foobox
- Picturefill: A javascript file that allows you to serve up responsive images.
- WP Engine
- Colorbox
- Simple Lightbox
- Jetpack Carousel
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