20 WordPress Plugins For Better Image Handling
Tom Walker
Images and photos are an integral part of almost every successful blog these days. If your text isn’t accompanied by images, few people are going to be interested in what you’ve got to say- it’s sad, but true. The problem is, with so many people uploading images to their blogs in interesting and unique ways, it’s hard to make your blog stand out unless you’re doing the same.
WordPress doesn’t make it easy for you to engage your readers with images. You’re going to have to look beyond core to the hundreds of image/photo based plugins available to make your blog highly visual. Below, you’ll find a score of solutions to all your image/photo problems in the form of the best plugins around. There are lazy loaders, gallery creators, slideshow generators, photoblog initiators and much, much more. You’ll soon realize that there’s more to WordPress than a few lousy thumbnails!
1. jQuery Image Lazy Loader WP
Lazy Loader is the perfect plugin for those who want to upload lots of images to their blog, but maintain a snappy site. Rather than loading all of the images on a page at once, which can take a considerable amount of time, Lazy Loader loads the images at the top of each page first and continues to load images further down as the user scrolls downwards.
2. Frontpage-Slideshow
This plugin does exactly what its name suggests: it lets you create a professional slideshow on the front page of your WordPress blog. Each picture is clickable, leading you to its related post, and information about four different slides can be displayed at a time. Transitions between slides are faded to look extra sleek.
3. NextGEN Gallery
NextGEN is without question the best WordPress gallery plugin available and you should certainly try it out if you haven’t already. It’s comprehensive, with an easily understandable back-end. The only problem is that everyone’s using it. It does pretty much everything you’d want from a gallery plugin, looks professional and comes with a Flash slideshow option.
4. WP Photo Album
Unlike most of the plugins in this list, which focus more on user experience, WP Photo Album is made specifically for the blogger him- or herself. It makes creating and managing your photo albums easy, letting you move images between albums and adjust the sizes of thumbnails and full view pictures.
5. Flickr Photo Album
If you regularly upload photos to Flickr before transferring them to your WordPress blog, this plugin’s going to make your life a whole lot easier. You simply select Flickr photosets and display them on your blog as galleries, which you can customize to suit the look and feel of your site. It comes with a great widget which lets you display your latest Flickr photos in your blog’s sidebar.
6. FlippingBook
Use FlippingBook to add an extra element of interactivity to your blog and fully engage your visitors. Rather than displaying images in the standard way (a la NextGEN), FlippingBook displays them in Flash books, which can be flipped through with ease and great enjoyment. You can create these “books” in the administrator panel.
7. Cincopa: Post Videos and Photo Galleries
When it comes to displaying images, Cincopa does it all, creating polished image galleries and slideshows, not to mention videos, playlists and podcasts. It gives you access to 44 different skins to be sure that all Cincopa blogs retain a degree of individuality.
8. Lightbox2
Lightbox2 is simple, but devastatingly effective. Like all lightbox-type plugins, it lets you enlarge and overlay images on the current page, while dimming what’s left in the background. Unique to Lightbox2 is the ability to group related images and use numerous visual effects.
9. WordPress Content Slide
Use WordPress Content Slide to create jQuery slideshows anywhere within your WordPress blog. These slideshows fade in and out to add a touch of class to your site. Content Slide is fully customizable, even letting you link to another website if you like, to use the slideshow as an advertising banner.
10. Yet Another Photoblog
Far more interesting than its name suggests, Yet Another Photoblog (YAPB) is perfect for those who upload more images than text. It’s not a gallery plugin; it only lets you upload one image per post with a description. Using the YAPB Bulk Uploader plugin, you can mass upload images to your YAPB blog in an instant.
11. Lazyest Gallery
Lazyest Gallery is a powerful plugin with lots of great features. It rotates random images from your gallery, fading each one in and out. It’s fully customizable from the back end, letting you select the number of random images shown, portrait/landscape or both and various fading settings. It also allows comments on images and folders.
12. Shadowbox JS
Shadowbox is not only a great way to display images on your WordPress blog, it’s ideal for sharing videos too. Never again will you have to guide visitors away from your blog for them to view media as all images, audio files and videos, including YouTube videos will play directly on your site.
13. Sidebar Photoblog
14. Thumbnail For Excerpts
With this simple plugin, you can add thumbnail images to any excerpts you might have on your site, making it instantly more attractive and easier to navigate, improving usability and visitor experience.
15. Flickr Gallery
There are several plugins available which make uploading your photos from Flickr to WordPress easy, but this is one of the best. It lets you quickly create galleries of your most recent and most popular Flickr photos, view photos in gallery mode without leaving the page, display small images automatically in lightbox mode and embed Flickr’s Flash movie player.
16. Featured Content Gallery
Featured Content Gallery can transform your humble blog into a professional looking portfolio site. Besides other things, it creates a rotating image gallery of your posts or pages, which you can place anywhere on your blog. Each image can be overlaid with an extract from the text too.
17. Freebie Images
If stock images play a significant part in your professional (or personal) life, Freebie Images comes highly recommended. Search through a directory of thousands of regularly updated, free stock images which you can drag and drop into your posts.
18. Dynamic Content Gallery
Dynamic Content Gallery generates an image gallery with a shot for each of your latest or featured posts and pages (although default images can be added too.) What makes this plugin stand out from the rest is the slick look of the gallery itself.
19. SlideZoom
SlideZoom prides itself on its simplicity and quite rightly so. It’s particularly lightweight and straightforward. It lets you bulk or zip upload images to your blog, generating a HighSlide JS gallery that you can embed in WordPress or anywhere else you like, such as on another blog, eBay or a forum.
20. DM Albums
DM albums presents your photos in a really distinctive way, enlarging all images to perfectly fit the size of your blog, rather than showing them in a window half the size of your screen. You can add captions to individual photos and albums from within the WordPress Editor.
Let us know if we forgot some great plugin. We would love to hear your thoughts.
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Home Design Ideas
Posted 271 days ago 59Freebie Images sounds fantastic. I am activating this plugin ASAP! Thanks for this great list, bookmarked!
JaggiB
Posted 273 days ago 58Nice article. Very helpful
David
Posted 281 days ago 57Dude this is simply good one… Check this one too…. http://www.apptha.com/category/extension/Wordpress/Mac-Photo-Gallery
Nevis1
Posted 285 days ago 56Thanks for this post. I have a villa rental site where this will come in very handy. Now I don’t have to manually change the featured villas all the time. Now all villas can have equal time.
Cheers.
Seth Ridley
Posted 287 days ago 55We’ve just today released a new free sidebar plugin – the Kino Gallery. It enables users to create a simple sidebar thumbnail gallery which then opens up a larger image into the main column. It’s stylish, easy to use, and simple to customise.
Anyway, if you’re interested please check it out at http://www.kinocreative.co.uk/plugins. There is also a new support forum at http://www.support.kinocreative.co.uk.
Let us know what you think.
korean fashions
Posted 292 days ago 54I am finding this post long since! At last I have found it! Greatly descrive!
Rainbow Luna
Posted 295 days ago 53Wow. Thank you I will definitely use many of these on my blog about natural alternatives to health and beauty – Rainbowluna.com
Rok Meglič
Posted 305 days ago 52Maybe you could add our new module, add images from Google Image Search in posts. It’s super easy to create imagefull post within seconds.
Shop: http://shop.spletnisistemi.si/wordpress-google-images-plugin.html?___store=english
Cost: 5€
Zeth
Posted 308 days ago 51This is pretty cool. I’m just looking for a plugin that makes it reeeeeally easy to add images to blog-posts. I mean, easier that WordPress’ default way of doing it. I need everyone in the world, to be able to insert an image – even my grandma… Anyone know if any such thing exists?
Michael
Posted 312 days ago 50Another amazing flickr plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flickr-photo-post/
The Flickr WordPress Plugin allows you to add flickr images to your wordpress posts.
fajreensatar
Posted 316 days ago 49thank you very much for this usefull info…salam :D
Software Companies in India
Posted 319 days ago 48Thnak you very much. this post useful for me
Rahul
Posted 321 days ago 47Great Collection
I think we can find all slider wp image plugins here
Thanks for sharing us
Dave @ How To
Posted 328 days ago 46Great List.
Trying to pick one out of the many. Any favourite sliders of yours?
Roundpeg
Posted 346 days ago 45Great post about WordPress plugins. We’ll be doing a podcast covering the latest and greatest plugins for WordPress on Wednesday, June 15th. For more information, click here.
zeninho
Posted 347 days ago 44great list, thnx!!!
Candy
Posted 350 days ago 43I think “Netgen Gallery” is good for newbie, it have many beautiful effect. I like Netgen Plugin !
Best WordPress Plugins
Posted 358 days ago 41A killer list of plugins, i especially like Flippingbook! Cheers!
Wammo
Posted 351 days ago 42vSlider 4.0 beats em all!! You should include it at the very top.
http://www.vibethemes.com/vslider-4-0-now-available-for-download/
mark
Posted 360 days ago 40Great list. I will recommend http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-gallery-plugin/ great plugin created using Jquery Nivo Slider.
Louis
Posted 362 days ago 39“WordPress Flash Uploader” also good plugin to upload ! I use this plugin and it’s working perfect !
gsalerts
Posted 364 days ago 38Useful resources for WordPress blogs. Thanks for sharing
Single Soldiers Rights
Posted 380 days ago 35FlippingBook sounds very interesting. I am looking for something to keep my design fresh and up to date. FlippingBook seems like it will really make the user experience worth while. Thank you for sharing.
Gia ca phe
Posted 381 days ago 34Can anyone recommend an plugin for scheduling events?
Murray
Posted 379 days ago 36Are you wanting an events calendar? If so try ‘The Events Calendar’ plugin
Genny Mare
Posted 397 days ago 33Thanks for helping me for the plagin. They are needed so much whereas if should solve the trouble. I am experiencing the meant. Now mine has run well. Once more: thanks so much.
Abhay Singh
Posted 424 days ago 32I need some plugin that open images in post in some kinda style may be like Light Box, duh I’m struggling from past 1hour to get such a plugin ! LOL