How you present your visual content is key to the success of your website or online store. When visual content is done beautifully, it encourages visitors to stay longer on your website. It also improves your SEO ranking and makes your website easier to find in search results.
However, creating a beautiful gallery for your images and videos takes a lot of work. That's where a professional WordPress gallery plugin comes in: A gallery plugin makes it easy to present your visual content in an engaging and attractive way.
On CodeCanyon there are hundreds of WordPress gallery plugins to help you add striking visual content to your website or online store.
Why Use a WordPress Gallery Plugin?
A gallery plugin is a great presentation tool. It arranges your images and media in a way that is beautiful and engaging, with attractive layouts and styling and streamlined interaction. This creates an easy browsing experience for visitors to your website.
Always keep in mind that a professional gallery has efficient code and uses new web technologies to allow your page to load faster.
Features of the Built-in WordPress Gallery
WordPress comes with a gallery feature that allows you to create a basic gallery. You can add photos in rows and columns, with captions for the images, alt text, and descriptions.
However, because the core WordPress gallery feature is very basic and its capabilities limited, you will experience the following shortcomings:
- The gallery you create using the core feature is not extendable or expandable.
- To add a new gallery, you’ll have to start from scratch.
- It has limited storage for images and media.
- You can’t organize your images into categories.
- Images are not clickable. You can’t open them in a different tab.
If you want an advanced, professional-looking gallery with a wide range of features, you will need a gallery plugin.
What Is a WordPress Gallery Plugin?
A gallery plugin is a piece of software—built specifically for WordPress—that allows you to beautifully display photographs, illustrations, videos and other visual content on your WordPress website.
What Does a Gallery Plugin Do?
A gallery plugin helps arrange, frame, and caption your images, videos, and other visual content.
A gallery plugin also provides tools for managing your media. You can categorize items according to theme, size, and more. You can also add, delete, arrange, and sort items in the media library.
Gallery plugins are also interactive, meaning users can click on images and open them in separate pages.
The best gallery plugins make it easy to upload images with a batch upload feature that allows you to add many images quickly. They have tons of storage as well.
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Things to Consider When Choosing a Gallery Plugin
- Speed: Having lots of images can slow down your website. You want a lightweight plugin that won’t slow down your website, even when you upload more photos.
- Features: Does the gallery plugin upload audio and video? What about storage? Does it integrate social networks, email marketing platforms, and payment gateways?
- Responsiveness and mobile-friendliness: More than 70% of traffic to websites comes from mobile devices. Does your gallery plugin work on mobile websites?
- Ease of Use: A gallery plugin should be easy to use and customize even for those with no coding knowledge.
- Regular Updates: Choose a plugin with a track record of updates and maintenance. Regular updates solve security vulnerabilities.
- Cost: Compare the prices of other plugins and see what fits your budget.
- Ratings and reviews: What other users are saying is a good indicator of the quality of the plugin and the trustworthiness of the provider.
- Downloads: The number of downloads is proof that the plugin is popular among users. It shows they trust the provider.
- Support: You may run into some issues. Make sure that the seller offers support. See what other users say about the quality of support from the provider.
Gallery Plugins Available on CodeCanyon
You will find many popular and best-selling WordPress gallery plugins on CodeCanyon. To help with your selection, I’ve classified them according to the categories below.
Social Streaming Galleries
These galleries allow you to build beautiful galleries by importing—streaming—image and video content from online sources like social media feeds: Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, 500px albums, RSS feeds, and so on.
- Justified Social Gallery
- Global Gallery
- Flow Flow
- AX Social Stream
- WordPress YouTube Gallery
- The Grid
- Essential Grid Gallery
WordPress Grid Galleries
A grid allows you to organize and display a lot of images on one page in a way that looks neat and gets them noticed easily. The following plugins will help you do just that.
Video and Multimedia Galleries
WordPress doesn’t have a video gallery feature. So if you need to create video galleries, you won’t go wrong with the following WordPress video gallery plugins.
- Essential Grid Gallery WordPress Plugin
- Justified Image Grid: WordPress Premium Gallery
- Media Grid WordPress Responsive Portfolio
- Video Gallery WordPress Plugin
- The Grid: Responsive WordPress Gallery Plugin
- Smart Grid Gallery
Sliders and Carousels
Sliders are a great way to show images full-size in your gallery. Not only do they look great, but they also add engagement to your site with eye-catching animation. If you’re looking for dynamic ways to display visual media on your website or online store, the following plugins will exceed your expectations:
- Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Plugin
- RoyalSlider: Touch Content Slider for WordPress
- Global Gallery
- Logo Showcase
- Progress Map
- Master Slider: WordPress Responsive Touch Slider
Flipbook
Digital flipbooks look and feel like printed publications. Their pages can be flipped and turned. They’re a perfect way to show reports, presentations, magazines, catalogs, brochures, books, photo essays, and portfolios. They offer a great interactive experience. Try the following plugins and find out for yourself.
- WordPress Flipbook
- Real3D Flipbook
- Diamond Flipbook
- Responsive Flipbook Plugin
- iPages Flipbook
- PDF to Flipbook Extension
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How to Create a Travel Gallery Flipbook With the Real3D WordPress Plugin
7 Best jQuery Flipbook Plugins Compared (Free and Paid)
Portfolio Plugins
Designers and photographers can leave a lasting impression by using the following plugins to show their work.
- Go Portfolio WordPress Responsive Portfolio
- Ultra Portfolio
- WP Media Boxes Portfolio
- Portfolio Designer: WordPress Portfolio Plugin
- FAT Portfolio: Advanced Portfolio for WordPress
- Portfolio Manager Pro
Lightbox Plugins
Lightboxes highlight your images and videos by showing them full size and dimming out the rest of the web page.
Most galleries come with a lightbox mode, but if for some reason you need it separately, the following plugins will be your best choice.
- Popup Press
- Smart Product Viewer—360 Animation Plugin
- Image Hover Effects
- Popping Sidebars and Widgets
- Quick View: Lightbox for WordPress
Team Showcase Plugins
Team showcase plugins are for the presentation of your team members or employees on your WordPress website.
Conclusion
This article is an overview of the WordPress gallery plugins available on CodeCanyon.
If you want to learn about other plugins that will create engagement on your website, here are some more roundups for you:
