The 6 Best Gallery Plugins for WordPress

Galleries are resources widely used to organize images on websites. But for this to be done in WordPress, you may need a plugin

Two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven… This is the number of plugins that a simple search for the term “ gallery ” displays in the WordPress.org extensions repository . This makes sense – almost all websites use images, and WordPress image gallery plugins make it easy to display them in an attractive way.

But with so many options to choose from, it can be difficult to search anywhere and find the extension that offers the right mix of features, aesthetics, and ease of use.

To help you find that extension, we’ve rounded up 6 of the best WordPress photo gallery extensions, evaluated the features, and made a comprehensive list to help you choose.

I imagine you already know what galleries are, so let’s go straight to the extensions!

The 6 Best WordPress Image Gallery Plugins

1- Modulate

Modula is an extremely simple plugin, developed by Macho Themes. With it you can quickly create image and video galleries. Additionally, it offers a variety of options for customizing the gallery.

With Modula’s custom grid feature, you can freely resize images in the gallery, controlling the height, width, and size of each image. All you need to do is select the “custom grid” mode and start changing the dimensions of your images by clicking and dragging.

If you decide to give Modula a try, you’ll quickly notice that the extension is designed to meet the needs of WordPress users, regardless of their experience.

2- Jetpack

If you don’t already know it, Jetpack is one of the most popular gallery plugins for WordPress, developed by Automattic and which adds a series of functions to WordPress.com.

One of the features of this extension is that it is an improved version of the basic gallery function of WordPress itself. Compared to other plugins, Jetpack galleries can be seen as quite simple, but it is an excellent free option, especially if you already have the plugin installed on your site.

3- FooGallery

FooGallery is a free extension from Fooextensions, which helps you create responsive galleries using several different layouts.

All galleries created with Foo are Retina ready by default. And the free version also has a built-in album support, so you can easily group together several different galleries.

Other useful features you can get in the free version or premium plugin include:

• Support for videos in galleries
• More gallery templates
• Image scrolling effects
• Infinite scrolling
• Lazy loading to optimize image performance
• Image loading effects
• Simple pagination

4- Photonic

Photonic is a gallery and lightbox plugin that can be used to display content from other sites like Flickr, SmugMug, Google Photos, Zenfolio, and Instagram . In fact, this feature is widely used by photographers!

Photonic is different from other plugins on this list because it doesn’t run a gallery in a traditional way. In other words, it doesn’t add media to your library, nor does it define new content structures (like albums) to associate with photos.

Instead, it allows you to use the structures defined by photo sources, allowing you to update your photos at the source level only while automatically updating them on your website.

5- NextGEN

According to the numbers, NextGEN Gallery is the most popular gallery extension on WordPress.org. It continues to have over 1.5 million new downloads per year, as well as excellent overall reviews. It is developed by Imagely, photography experts who know the sector well.

The free version of NextGEN offers two main gallery styles (slideshows and thumbnail galleries) and two album styles (compact and extended), all accompanied by a wide range of options to control size, style, timing, transitions, controls , viewer effects and more.

In addition to several different types of galleries, the paid versions also add more advanced features such as:

• Electronic store function to sell images
• Image protection (hotlink protection, watermark, etc.)
• Image deep linking for gallery visitors

6- Photo Gallery by WD

After number 5, this is the second most used gallery plugin on WordPress . Likewise, Photo Gallery by WD also has a free version and paid functions.

The extension allows you to create multiple galleries as well as an unlimited number of albums. A particularly cool feature of Photo Gallery is that you can also create galleries from embedded videos, including an option to mix galleries with images and videos.

Other useful resources available are:

• Image watermark and right-click protection
• Social sharing buttons
• Option to view Facebook albums
• Many different template gallery options
• E-commerce modules to sell digital material from your website