Last Updated on August 9, 2019 by Sunny Staff
When you think about content, don’t limit it to words. They’re important, of course, but so are images. Images also boost SEO and get more shares on social media.
WordPress developers have done a great job creating superb photo gallery plugins, including a lot that are free. Here are four of our favorite free WordPress photo gallery plugin tools to boost your content.
1. Envira Gallery: The Standard for a Free WordPress Image Gallery Plugin
Envira is probably the benchmark for WordPress photo galleries. It’s had well over a million downloads and boasts a solid five-star rating from users. Envira was an early adopter of the drag-and-drop feature that makes it so easy to pull together images and photos, rearrange them, and arrange into albums. It will instantly import images from Instagram, Dropbox, and Adobe Lightroom. You can even build a gallery from a zip file. Customizable templates let you put your personal mark on each photo and album. Use the slideshow option to quickly capture visitors’ attention, watermark your original images to protect copyrights and ensure your business is identified with them, and add tags to maximize SEO. Share them on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.
Envira instantly adapts to mobile devices, and its Supersize feature does the resizing for you. Import your photos directly from Dropbox and Instagram
2. GMedia Photo Gallery Handles More Than Photos
GMedia manages all kinds of media: photos/images, audio, and video; it lets you organize into slideshows and galleries, making it a true media library that further boosts the user experience on your website while boosting SEO. It’s also mobile friendly both ways: users can now add GMedia to iPhone for on-the-go management.
GMedia is the ultimate display customizing tool and offers a variety of gallery tools to display images, video thumbnails, and audio clips. The free version comes with seven free modules that support image displays and audio and video tools as well as the Cubik Lite social sharing tool. There are also 11 premium tools for purchase including Mosaic, WaveSurfer, and PhotoBox.
3. Photo Gallery by Supsystic: Loads of Galleries
If your media are still images and photos, you must take a look at Supsystic’s Photo Gallery which has a nearly endless list of gallery types including carousels, feed, masonry, and fixed. It also supports video, by the way. Gallery styles can be customized with shadow and overlay effects, several border styles, or captions and icons. It’s mobile-friendly and includes tools like LazyLoad and LoadMore to ensure downloading keep up with user activity. Or use Pagination to create a two-sided photo and caption experience. Add watermarks to protect your images and social share buttons, to send your images to virtually any social media site. You can even share social media images back to any of your galleries.
4. NextGEN Gallery for Dedicated Photographers
NextGEN was created by WordPress photography fans for professionals and serious hobbyists. It’s an excellent choice for anyone who makes a living through visual arts. For that reason, it’s worth taking the effort to learn some of its more in-depth tools to get maximum benefits. But to start off, NextGEN’s free WordPress gallery plugin (it has an exquisite pro version as well) offers slideshow and thumbnail galleries that each offer a nice mix of styles, transitions, controls, and lightbox effects. Each gallery can be grouped into albums that can be further tagged and categorized.
Once you’ve tried the free version, you may want to try one of the two premium versions. Altogether, there have been more than 23 million downloads of NextGEN’s free and premium versions. Curious to find out more? Visit our blog, today!
