Photo Gallery, Sliders, Proofing and Themes – NextGEN Gallery vs Snap Carousel

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.

Most WordPress carousel plugins load heavy libraries (Slick, Swiper, jQuery) and fail basic accessibility checks. Screen readers can’t navigate them, keyboard users are stuck, and WCAG audits flag them every time. Snap Carousel takes a different approach: CSS scroll-snap does the scrolling, proper ARIA attributes do the rest. No JavaScript library, no configuration panel, no learning curve — just a block style to apply in one click. Built by WeAre[WP], a WordPress agency specializing in accessible websites and RGAA audits. This plugin exists because we needed a carousel that actually passes our own audits. Supported blocks Apply any of the 4 carousel styles to: Group block (core/group) — any child blocks become slides Query Loop block (core/query) — posts scroll as carousel slides Gallery block (core/gallery) — images scroll as carousel slides Variants Carousel (3 items) — 3 visible items + peek Carousel (1 item) — full-width slideshow Carousel (2 items) — 2 visible items + peek Carousel (4 items) — 4 visible items + peek Features 100% CSS scroll-snap — no Slick, no Swiper, no jQuery Prev/next navigation buttons Keyboard navigation (Arrow keys, Home, End) Full ARIA attributes (role=”region”, aria-roledescription, aria-live) Peek effect: partial visibility of the next item, signaling scrollable content Responsive (auto tablet/mobile adaptation) Respects prefers-reduced-motion Works with Group, Query Loop, and Gallery blocks Works with any child block (images, columns, groups, WooCommerce…) Lightweight: ~2 KB CSS + ~2 KB JS, zero external dependency Full RTL (right-to-left) language support Fully internationalized (i18n ready, French translation included) Easy to customize via CSS custom properties or overrides Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA) role="region" + aria-roledescription="carousel" on the container role="group" + aria-roledescription="slide" on each item aria-label="X of Y" for position context tabindex="0" for keyboard focus aria-live="polite" to announce changes Buttons with aria-label and aria-controls Touch targets 44×44px minimum Visible focus indicator Usage With a Group block In the editor, create a Group block Set the group layout to Row Add child blocks (images, groups, columns…) In the sidebar panel → Styles → choose Carousel (3 items) (or another variant) Publish With a Query Loop block Insert a Query Loop block Configure the query (post type, filters, number of items…) In the sidebar panel → Styles → choose a Carousel variant Publish — posts scroll horizontally as carousel slides With a Gallery block Insert a Gallery block and add images In the sidebar panel → Styles → choose a Carousel variant Publish — images scroll horizontally as carousel slides Navigation buttons and accessibility attributes are automatically injected on the front-end. Customization The carousel is designed to work out of the box, but you can easily override styles in your theme’s style.css or via the WordPress Customizer > Additional CSS. Disable the peek effect By default, items are slightly narrower than the visible area so the next item “peeks” in — signaling there is more content to scroll. To disable this and show full-width items: /* Disable peek — 3 items variant */ .is-style-snap-carousel > * { flex-basis: calc(33.333% - 1rem) !important; } /* Disable peek — 1 item variant */ .is-style-snap-carousel-single > * { flex-basis: 100% !important; } /* Disable peek — 2 items variant */ .is-style-snap-carousel-duo > * { flex-basis: calc(50% - 0.75rem) !important; } /* Disable peek — 4 items variant */ .is-style-snap-carousel-quad > * { flex-basis: calc(25% - 1.125rem) !important; } Customize navigation arrows /* Arrow color and background */ .snap-carousel-prev, .snap-carousel-next { background: #0073aa; color: #ffffff; border-color: #0073aa; } /* Arrow hover state */ .snap-carousel-prev:hover, .snap-carousel-next:hover { background: #005177; color: #ffffff; } /* Arrow size (default: 44px — WCAG minimum touch target) */ .snap-carousel-prev, .snap-carousel-next { width: 48px; height: 48px; } /* Square arrows instead of round */ .snap-carousel-prev, .snap-carousel-next { border-radius: 8px; } Customize spacing /* Gap between items */ [class*="is-style-snap-carousel"] { gap: 2rem; } /* Space above carousel (room for navigation) */ .snap-carousel-wrapper { padding-top: 4rem; } Customize focus indicator /* Custom focus color for keyboard navigation */ [class*="is-style-snap-carousel"]:focus-visible { outline-color: #ff6600; outline-width: 3px; } .snap-carousel-prev:focus-visible, .snap-carousel-next:focus-visible { outline-color: #ff6600; } Use with WordPress theme.json design tokens The carousel already uses --wp--preset--color--base, --wp--preset--color--contrast and --wp--preset--color--primary tokens. You can override these per-block in theme.json or via CSS: /* Example: dark themed carousel */ .snap-carousel-wrapper { --wp--preset--color--base: #1a1a2e; --wp--preset--color--contrast: #e0e0e0; --wp--preset--color--primary: #e94560; } Technical Notes – CSS overrides flex-wrap: nowrap on the Row container to force horizontal scrolling – Items use a slightly reduced flex-basis to create a peek effect (next item partially visible) – Navigation buttons are positioned absolute at the top right (adjust top value for your theme) – JS uses a 150ms debounce on scroll for button state updates and 300ms for screen reader announcements – Compatible with WooCommerce blocks (products, etc.) About Snap Carousel is built and maintained by WeAre[WP], a French WordPress agency specializing in accessible websites and RGAA compliance audits. This plugin was built to solve a real problem: every carousel plugin we audited failed basic accessibility requirements. So we built one that passes our own audits. Need help with your WordPress project? Get in touch.