Photo Gallery, Sliders, Proofing and Themes – NextGEN Gallery vs SimpLy Gallery

WordPress Gallery Plugin NextGEN Gallery has been the industry’s standard WordPress gallery plugin since 2007 and continues to receive over 1.5 million new downloads per year. It’s easy to use for simple photo galleries, but powerful enough for the most demanding photographers, visual artists, and imaging professionals who need a comprehensive photo gallery solution. NextGEN Gallery offers complete WordPress gallery management with the ability to batch upload photos, import metadata, easily add, delete, rearrange photos and create an unlimited number of galleries. You can even simply provide a zip file or choose a folder to upload photos. But our photo gallery plugin doesn’t stop there! NextGEN Pro This plugin is the lite version of the NextGEN Gallery plugin, which offers all the gallery features you’ll need like photo albums, lightboxes, backups, search, sharing, filtering, print fulfillment, eCommerce, animations, and tons more. Click here to purchase the best photo gallery plugin for WordPress now! The free version of NextGEN gallery provides three main gallery styles (slideshow, thumbnail, and imagebrowser galleries) and two album styles (compact and extended), all of which come with a wide array of options for controlling size, style, timing, transitions, controls, lightbox effects, and more. Learn more about NextGEN WordPress Gallery Plugin features. The best gets better with full support for the Gutenberg block editor. Now you can add a photo gallery or album anywhere on your site, with a page builder type feel directly in the WordPress editor. We truly make creating, building, and editing galleries easy. Feature List We’ve built NextGEN Gallery to be extremely powerful and full of features. Albums Organize multiple photo galleries into albums for easy sorting and viewing Tags Group multiple images together with tags, with easy-to-update renaming and management eCommerce Sell images from your photo gallery, or sell entire galleries with our built in payment processing. Works with Stripe and PayPal. Slideshows Make your galleries automatically rotate through a series of images Themes Access 84+ different types of themes to showcase your galleries Animations Create visual interest with 25+ different types of animations for each gallery Watermarks Protect your work with image and text-based watermarks. Capabilities Customize who can read, edit, and publish galleries with refined permsisions controls Image Proofing Let your customers choose which photos to purchase and improve your workflow. Print Fulfillment Sell your photos and ship prints directly to customers with automated print lab fulfillment and zero commissions Auto Tax calculations Automatically calculate sales tax when required for your customers. Coupons Offer discounts and incentives to increase your gallery sales Lightroom Integration Automatically sync and create photo galleries from Adobe Lightroom into NextGEN Gallery without any need to update your website. Social Sharing Create viral social media opportunities when your images are optimized for Open Graph and X Image Commenting * Add deep engagement to your images within the lightbox to increase gallery engagement Deep Linking Link directly to a specific image from one of your galleries Frontend Search * Add powerful filtering for your gallery based on tags Hover Captions * Add social sharing, tiles, and descriptions for each image Digital Downloads Offer digital downloads of your images for free, or chage for them with our eCommerce gallery plugin Right Click Disable prevent images in your galleries from being downloaded with easy right click and drag/drop protection. Customization * We’ve built in lots of individual customizations for each of our features so that you can make NextGEN Gallery perfect for you As you can see, we’ve built a photo gallery plugin that is suitable for everyone! Want a specific or missing feature? Just let us know. NEXTGEN GALLERY DEMOS *Basic Thumbnail Gallery *Basic Slideshow Gallery *Basic Imagebrowser Gallery *Basic Compact Album *Basic List Album NEXTGEN PRO DEMOS *Photo Print Sales *Photo Proofing *Digital Downloads *Pro Mosaic Gallery *Pro Masonry Gallery *Pro Tile Gallery *Pro Filmstrip Gallery *Pro Lightbox About Imagely NextGEN Gallery is a WordPress gallery plugin maintained by Imagely. We’re the WordPress photography experts. In addition to NextGEN Gallery, NextGEN Plus, and NextGEN Pro, we also make WordPress themes for photographers, providing beautiful turnkey websites for photographers. Learn more or connect with us: *Imagely Website *WordPress Themes for Photographers *Turnkey Photography Sites *NextGEN Gallery Documentation Credits Copyright: Imagely 2016-2024 Shortcodes NextGEN Gallery offers an easy-to-use Insert Gallery Window, which means you never need to work with shortcodes again when inserting and manageing galleries – if you would prefer not too. If you do want to work with shortcodes, there is a powerful shortcode system as you’d expect of a popular WordPress gallery plugin. Learn About NextGEN Gallery Shortcodes. For more information, feel free to visit the official website for the NextGEN Gallery WordPress Gallery Plugin.

SimpLy Gallery Blocks is a powerful WordPress gallery plugin for building responsive photo galleries, image galleries, video galleries, albums, sliders, and lightbox experiences directly in the WordPress block editor. Unlike a basic image gallery plugin, SimpLy Gallery Blocks is built for mixed media. You can combine images, self-hosted HTML5 video, audio, YouTube, Vimeo, and VideoPress items in the same gallery workflow. The core plugin includes 8 dedicated WordPress gallery blocks, saved galleries, reusable shortcodes, album pages, and a built-in lightbox for both SimpLy galleries and native WordPress gallery content. It is designed for creators, photographers, agencies, educators, publishers, WooCommerce stores, and media-heavy websites that need more than a simple photo grid. Key strengths Mixed media in one gallery: images, HTML5 video, audio, YouTube, Vimeo, and VideoPress. Block editor-first editing with 8 included gallery blocks and visual controls. Multiple responsive layouts for different presentation styles. Lightweight YouTube and Vimeo galleries with one active video embed at a time. Static gallery content by default, similar to native WordPress gallery blocks. Albums for grouping real saved galleries under one visitor-friendly entry point. Page-level lightbox manager for Image blocks, Gallery blocks, linked images, and SimpLy galleries. Saved galleries and shortcodes for reuse across pages, posts, and theme areas. SimpLy Media Assistant for organizing, finding, uploading, and reusing WordPress media with SimpLy folders and tags. Quick static gallery creation from SimpLy folders and tags with Import Media from SimpLy Folders/Tags. SEO-friendly media visibility with static fallback HTML output. Uses standard WordPress media sizes without creating extra image copies. Albums, Album Navigator, and Tags Filter available in the core gallery workflow. Items Manager with bulk selection for faster tag management. Admin-controlled random gallery order without adding extra controls for visitors. Optional Media Library and media picker integration, so site owners can choose how deeply SimpLy Assistant appears in their admin workflow. PRO dynamic gallery sources for larger media libraries, folder-based galleries, and video workflows. Mobile-friendly output with responsive controls for desktop and smaller screens. Ready out of the box The core plugin includes the main gallery workflow: 8 WordPress gallery blocks, Albums, Album Navigator, Saved SimpLy Gallery, Tags Filter, mixed media support, video poster generation, lightweight YouTube / Vimeo playback, SEO-friendly media output, SimpLy Media Assistant, and SimpLy Lightbox for both SimpLy galleries and native WordPress Image / Gallery blocks. PLUS is focused on more layouts and visual customization. PRO includes PLUS features and adds dynamic gallery sources for building galleries and collections from SimpLy folders, YouTube, Vimeo, WooCommerce, FileBird, Media Library Assistant, and other supported sources. Who it is for Photographers and visual artists who need portfolio-style galleries. Video creators and educators publishing YouTube, Vimeo, or self-hosted video collections. Agencies and site builders who need reusable gallery blocks and presets. Publishers, bloggers, and WooCommerce stores with media-rich content. WordPress users who want gallery blocks, albums, and lightbox behavior in one plugin. Common use cases SimpLy Gallery Blocks can be used for many common WordPress media workflows: Photography portfolios, client galleries, event albums, and project galleries. Mixed media galleries with images, self-hosted video, audio, YouTube, Vimeo, and VideoPress items. Blog posts and long-form articles where separate Image blocks and native Gallery blocks should open in one lightbox story. Product galleries, lookbooks, catalog previews, and WooCommerce media collections. Course pages, tutorials, documentation, and educational content with many video items. Reusable gallery sections for landing pages, portfolio pages, sidebars, templates, and Elementor layouts. Organizing large WordPress Media Libraries with SimpLy folders and tags before creating galleries. Quickly creating static galleries from existing SimpLy folders or tags without manually selecting every attachment again. Create and reuse galleries anywhere You can create galleries directly inside posts and pages, or save them as reusable SimpLy galleries. Saved galleries can be published as their own public gallery pages, inserted with shortcodes, embedded with the Saved SimpLy Gallery block, displayed through the Elementor widget, or grouped into Albums and Album Navigator layouts. This makes it possible to design a gallery once and reuse it in different places while keeping the same media collection and presentation style. SimpLy Media Assistant SimpLy Media Assistant is an admin workflow for organizing and reusing WordPress media more efficiently. It is available from Media > SimpLy Assistant. The Assistant helps you browse media, filter by SimpLy folders and tags, upload files, assign media to folders or tags, and prepare media collections before publishing them in galleries. All users can use SimpLy Media Assistant and SimpLy folders/tags organization tools. The free plugin also includes the Import Media from SimpLy Folders/Tags workflow in SimpLy gallery blocks, so you can quickly create a normal static gallery from media already organized in a SimpLy folder or tag. SimpLy Assistant integration is flexible. Site owners can choose whether to show SimpLy folders in the WordPress Media Library, add the Assistant to native WordPress media pickers, or use the SimpLy Media Picker as the main picker for SimpLy gallery blocks. This is useful when SimpLy Gallery is the main media organization tool on a site, but it also keeps the plugin friendly to sites that already use another Media Library organizer. You can decide how much of the Assistant appears in your admin workflow from the plugin settings. PRO users can also build dynamic galleries from selected SimpLy folders, including folder-based sources that can update automatically instead of becoming a one-time static gallery snapshot. Gallery blocks and layouts SimpLy Gallery Blocks includes 8 WordPress gallery blocks for common presentation needs: Masonry Gallery Block Justified Gallery Block Grid Gallery Block Slider / Carousel Gallery Block Viewer Gallery Block Albums Block Album Navigator Block Saved SimpLy Gallery Block PLUS adds more gallery layouts and visual customization options, including Portfolio, Showcase, TagsBox, List, Split Carousel, Horizon, Accordion, and Diamond blocks. PRO includes PLUS features and adds dynamic gallery sources for building galleries and collections from external or structured content. Mixed media support Galleries can combine different media types in one place. You can build galleries with WordPress media library images, self-hosted MP4 video, MP3 audio, YouTube, Vimeo, and VideoPress content. For self-hosted video, the plugin includes a poster generator so you can select a video frame and use it as the featured image for the video item. Video poster generator For self-hosted video items, SimpLy Gallery includes a poster generator directly inside the Items Manager. Open the video item menu, choose Add Poster, and either select an image from the WordPress Media Library or capture a frame from the video itself. When you use a video frame, SimpLy Gallery creates a new WordPress media attachment from that frame and uses it as the poster image for the video item. A good poster image is important for native HTML5 video. It gives visitors a clear preview before playback, avoids relying on the browser to load the first video frame, and can improve compatibility on mobile devices and older browsers where first-frame previews may be inconsistent. Lightweight YouTube and Vimeo galleries SimpLy Gallery can display large YouTube and Vimeo video collections without loading every video player at once. Video galleries are thumbnail-first: the actual embedded player is created only when a visitor opens a video. When another video is selected, the previous player is stopped and removed from the page, and the new video player is embedded on demand. This keeps pages lighter even when a gallery contains many video items. This one-active-embed behavior works for manually added YouTube and Vimeo videos in the free plugin, across gallery layouts and in the lightbox. PRO adds dynamic video sources such as YouTube Feed and Vimeo collections. Static by default, dynamic when needed Standard SimpLy galleries are static by default, similar to native WordPress gallery blocks. Gallery content is saved with the post as block attributes and updates when you edit the gallery in the WordPress admin. This keeps the basic gallery workflow predictable and lightweight because the media list does not need to be rebuilt on every page load. When you need automatic updates, PRO dynamic gallery modes can rebuild gallery content from supported sources and cache the result for a custom number of hours per block. WordPress media sizes, no extra image copies SimpLy Gallery Blocks does not create additional image copies in the WordPress Media Library. For normal gallery display, the plugin uses standard WordPress image sizes, mainly Medium size for thumbnails and Large size for lightbox viewing. If the Medium size image is too small for a specific frontend layout, SimpLy Gallery can use the Large size image for the thumbnail area when needed. This happens on the frontend with JavaScript and does not create new files in the Media Library. If you want higher quality thumbnails or larger lightbox images, adjust your WordPress media settings in Settings > Media before uploading images. Existing uploads may need thumbnail regeneration after changing these settings. PLUS / PRO options can also display the original image size when maximum image quality is needed. SEO-friendly media visibility Media Indexing is enabled by default. SimpLy Gallery can expose gallery media to search engines using static fallback HTML for images, video, and audio. The recommended fallback mode renders media HTML inside a noscript tag, so visitors with JavaScript enabled keep the interactive gallery experience while search engines and no-JavaScript contexts can still detect gallery media. An inline HTML fallback mode is also available for all users when maximum compatibility is needed. Albums Albums let you combine multiple saved galleries into one collection with a dedicated splash page. This is useful for events, portfolios, projects, travel collections, courses, product collections, or any site where related galleries should be presented together. Each saved gallery can keep its own design and can also be published separately as a public gallery page, inserted with a shortcode, embedded with the Saved SimpLy Gallery block, or displayed with the Elementor widget. Album content can load saved gallery content on demand via AJAX and open it in a modal view, helping large gallery collections stay lighter on the initial page load. Albums and Album Navigator are available in the free plugin. PLUS adds more visual customization options, and PRO allows Album Navigator to use dynamic galleries from supported sources. Tags Filter Tags are managed directly inside the gallery block. In the Items Manager, each gallery item has a Tag menu where you can type tags separated by commas or choose from previously used SimpLy Tags. Items Manager also includes a multi-select mode, so you can select a group of gallery items and add or remove tags for all selected items at once. When Tags Filter is enabled for the block, those tags appear above the gallery so visitors can filter gallery items on the frontend. The basic Tags Filter is available for gallery blocks in the free plugin. PLUS / PRO plans add more control over which tags appear in a specific gallery or block, along with advanced options such as deep linking. Gallery ordering Gallery order is controlled by the site owner in the WordPress admin. In addition to manual ordering, galleries can use random ordering so the frontend displays a randomized set or order of items. Random ordering is intentionally an admin setting, not a visitor-facing frontend button. This keeps the public gallery interface clean while still giving site owners control over how gallery content is presented. Page-level lightbox for WordPress content SimpLy Lightbox is more than a lightbox for SimpLy galleries. It can also work with regular WordPress content, including Image blocks, Gallery blocks, linked images, and Classic Editor gallery content. When WordPress Image or Gallery blocks use the “Link images to media files” option, SimpLy Lightbox can open those images in a lightbox and group images from the same post or page into a browsable lightbox set. This means visitors can open one image and use next / previous navigation to browse other images from the page. Separate Image blocks and native Gallery blocks can also be grouped together, so a post can behave like one photo story instead of many isolated images. Global lightbox defaults are managed from SimpLy Gallery > Lightbox for native WordPress Gallery. Each post or page can also have its own lightbox settings through the SimpLy Lightbox editor sidebar, opened from the lightbox icon in the editor toolbar. Lightbox features include touch gestures, keyboard navigation, mouse wheel controls, zoom, thumbnails, fullscreen mode, slideshow, captions, and social sharing. YouTube Feed and dynamic galleries The YouTube Feed module turns YouTube playlists into a curated gallery workflow inside WordPress. You can build internal playlists, publish them with Quick Gallery Link, or use Dynamic Gallery Builder in the PRO plan for full design control. PRO dynamic gallery sources include: SimpLy folders YouTube playlists Vimeo showcases, albums, user uploads, channels, and categories WooCommerce products, categories, and tags FileBird media folders Media Library Assistant attachment categories and tags SimpLy tags Free, PLUS, and PRO The core gallery blocks, mixed media workflow, albums, and lightbox features are available in the free plugin. PLUS adds more layouts and visual customization options. PRO includes PLUS features and adds dynamic gallery sources for building galleries and collections from supported data sources. Privacy and data collection SimpLy Gallery Blocks does not require cookies for the gallery and lightbox features to work, and the plugin does not collect visitor data. Gallery content is managed inside WordPress using standard posts, media attachments, block attributes, plugin settings, and saved gallery data. External media services such as YouTube or Vimeo may apply their own privacy behavior when their embedded players are loaded. Main demos Gallery blocks demo YouTube Feed Albums Block demo Album Navigator Block demo SimpLy Lightbox and WordPress Native Gallery demo YouTube and Vimeo Gallery demo More layout demos Viewer Gallery Block Slider / Carousel Gallery Tags Filter Advanced Tags Filter Showcase Gallery Block – PLUS layout Diamond Gallery Block – PLUS layout Horizon Gallery Block – PLUS layout Split Carousel Block – PLUS layout TagsBox Gallery Block – PLUS layout Portfolio Gallery Block – PLUS layout Short demo This video shows how to create a photo gallery with a SimpLy Gallery block: You can transform the same gallery content between Masonry, Justified, Grid, and WordPress image gallery layouts without rebuilding the gallery from scratch.