This blog can help all people who own WordPress-based websites that feature different visual content like pictures, gifs, and videos. In many cases, the WordPress theme’s pre-built functions cannot be sufficient to create a gallery of your dreams. To get the design grid with effects, you need to find some smart third-party plugin that will do the trick.
When we are talking about the best gallery plugins for WordPress, we imply that each of them has broad functional features that go far beyond original grids and color schemes. A handy gallery plugin can give you many new tools to promote your website, either – add instant social media links to each picture, protect your content from copying, add automated watermarks, edit pictures in your back office, or add some impressive effects. All these cool features and even more are what you can get if you decide to equip your website with the right plugin. So, let’s see what we have.
1. Modula
This one is an excellent plugin for a beginner or an experienced user looking for an easy, user-friendly solution. Modula is capable of shaping your galleries into neat grids, ranging them by size. You can also adjust it to create a new grid every time the user views the gallery. Modula also has several effects to animate your gallery and allows you to add some mouse-triggered animation. Naturally, Modula enables you to add any text or metadata to your images and highlight social media links every time a user points at the picture. It is an excellent tool for people who want their blog or portfolio to look better in almost no time. Modula has a free version that features most of the functions and a paid version, which will cost you starting from $18 a year.
2. NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN has been created mostly for people who require some advanced functions from their gallery editor. NextGEN is one of the most popular plugins of this type. It is widely used by photographers and other people who earn money by selling images and visual content in general. NextGEN provides you with comprehensive editing functions, automated protection and watermark systems, advanced comment and meta-data sections, and, of course, social media links. The other great feature of NextGEN is that it is integrated with the NextGEN marketplace, which gives you additional opportunities to generate profit from your content. You can download a free version or buy a year-long subscription for $63.
3. Envira Gallery
Envira Gallery is pretty much something in between if we compare it to the previous plugins. It is not that sophisticated as NextGet; however, it gives users a big choice of design and editing options as well as a user-friendly and usable interface. Envira Gallery allows users to integrate the website with social media and share images in your Instagram account or any other account you like. It is also convenient for displaying videos and has pre-built integration with WooCommerce.