WordPress gallery
After reading Sarah’s posts on the WordPress gallery I thought I would have a go at using it on a site.
The gallery that is built in is OK but not my favourite gallery for WordPress. I am not sure if they just threw it in as there us hardly any documentation, i was very glad to read Sarah’s post else I would of had to of worked it all out on my own.
There are some draw backs with using the new built in gallery, it doesn’t have a Light box effect built in but there are some plugins that can be used, although so far I’ve not found one that will work with ie6. You also can’t easily upload new images to a gallery or edit the gallery as easily as it should be.
I think some users will find it quite hard to use at first.
One thing i find a little odd is the fact there is no way of turning off the built in gallery.
What if you want to use another gallery plugin?
The inbuilt next a previous links are not text links as Sarah explains in her post so you have to get another plugin to change the default thumbnail images to use text.
Then there is the gallery homepage which i am sure many will want. A gallery homepage as i call it is a page with the site’s gallery listed with an image from the gallery and some text to describe the gallery. This can be achived but only with some of your own coding. I am currently making a page template so i can use pages in my (not this one) and then have a page to show all the galleries.
Once i have it working maybe if anyone would like the page template i could make it a download here.
My conclusion so far is that i am a bit confused why the gallery was released before it was ready. I don’t feel it is ready yet as i would have thought they would of added many more features like the Next gen gallery has.
Hope fully they will or others will help to upgradde it soon.
The next gen gallery looks pretty good. Some of the examples listed here are pretty good.
I also think that Flickr is a good option. I’m developing a website/blog for my friends football team (local amateur side) and at the moment I think that using a Flickr plugin to display images down the side is the best idea. Something to consider
The next gen gallery is good but the admin for it is a bit complicated. I’ve had users get very confused with galleries within albums.
I love the flash stuff they have integrated with it and the extra sidebar widgets are briliant but all that is no good if no one can use it.
Flickr plugin is ok if you just want to show off a few photos but no good for an actual gallery.
I am hopeing that more will be deveoped onto the wordpress gallery soon.
The thing with the WP gallery is that isn’t not meant to be overly sophisticated. Just something basic for those who don’t want to add a bloated plugin to show a few photos.
I’m currently finishing off my photo blog using the inbuilt gallery and, whilst I’ve had to do a bit of custom coding on, but that’s only to strip out the additional CSS code and markup it adds, however otherwise everything is built by tags. I’ll drop you a link once it’s finished
great ye send me link when you finished
The built in gallery is good i’ve been fiddling with it as you know 
i just wish it had a few extra bells i guess.There are some annoying things like adding an extra image to a gallery, you have to go to the page the gallery is on to edit you can’t just go to manage library.