NextGen Gallery

[singlepic id=3 w=200  mode=web20 float=right]I have been envying Lafayette College’s NextGen Gallery goodness in their WPMu Pilot, and after finally setting aside some time I installed the plugin and played with it (you can find it  here).  It worked pretty much out-of-the-box, the only issue I ran into was that I had to disable the flash uploader in the Image Upload page (it’s the button right next to upload image). It is annoying that the flash uploader is still causing issues since it was introduced in WP/WPMu 2.6, looks like we’ll have to disable it entirely until we figure it out.

Other than that, it’s up and running, and I have to say this is one of those plugins that seems more like an application than a simple extension. Alex Rabe (the mastermind behind WordTube) is the developer of this one—and once again he designed a tremendous amount of functionality and usability right into the backend of WP and WPMu—fine, fine work! And while this obviously doesn’t replace the social beauty that is Flickr, it does provide an easy and immediate way to upload, manage, and present photos in some sophisticated ways on UMW Blogs.

Moreover, I particularly like the ability to view your images in PicLens and Cooliris right from the post, click on the PicLens link to see this in action (could make for some pretty impressive presentations right from a WordPress post or page). In fact, seems to me the PicLens slideshow feature works better than the one built into NextGen Gallery, I can’t seem to get the native slideshow to fit my images cleanly into space provided and then scale them up accordingly in fullscreen.

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6 Responses to NextGen Gallery

  1. Joss Winn says:

    You’ve just saved me several hours of testing all this for a class project. Thanks 🙂 By the way, can you optionally use a Flickr account for image sources?

  2. Reverend says:

    I was wondering that same thing Joss. And as far as I can tell there is no Flickr integration that I can see, which is a shame. But I may be simply missing it, I’ll check around and see if anyone is integrating this will Flickr albums and galleries, it sure would be cool if you could just pull your existing albums in.

  3. Joss Winn says:

    Yes, Flickr would be nice. I’m trying to encourage people to use third-party services for media. It reaches a wider audience and they benefit from all the functionality of the third-party site.

  4. Reverend says:

    Yeah, it’s the only way to go, and the issue that arises when you exclusively use something like NExtGen is how do they get the images out? It may seem simple with the WordPress exporter, but I have had issues with this when archiving recently, and the whole URL mess is another story. But, I guess having the functionality there could have some benefits as well, no right way to build an online environment wrongly 🙂

  5. Reverend says:

    Joss,

    This plugin has been around for almost two years and no Flickr integration, which gets to the point you made about plugins, fattening up the system, and splj….damn you!

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