NextGen Gallery is arguably the best WordPress gallery plugin at the moment, but has so many settings that one might be confused at first glance.

First thing after downloading is to create an album and gallery and try uploading some images. In the NextGen hierarchy an album contains one or more galleries. Note that NextGen gallery has the wp-admin path hard coded in its code so if you have changed the name of your admin section to something other than wp-admin you’re going to have to edit some files and change the path manually, else you won’t be able to upload any pictures.

If you want to use a slideshow, it is best to download the JW Image Rotatator from here. NextGen will give you a warning in the Options screen until you download and install this image rotator. Once you upload the file (only imagerotator.swf is needed) to the uploads folder as instructed, go to NextGen gallery Options page and under the ‘Slideshow’ tab click on the Search now button so that NextGen will detect the newly uploaded file.

Then set the gallery path and also which image library you want to use (I use GD).

Next under the ‘Thumbnails’ tab set the dimensions you want for your thumbnails. I set quality at 90%.

Under the ‘Images’ tab enable the option to Automatically resize images on upload. I set them to 800×600 with a quality of 95%. Always click save on each page to save your options.

Once you have your images uploaded you can included them in your post/page using the following shortcodes:

To show a gallery use the shortcode
[ nggallery id=x ]

An album, either extended or compact view:
[ album id=x template=extend] OR [ album id=x template=compact ]

To show a single picture use the tag : [ singlepic id=x ]. It resizes and modify the picture on the fly (with no manipulation at the orginal picture) .

Tag explanation :
[ singlepic id=x w=width h=height mode=web20|watermark float=left|right ]
(without the spaces after/before the brakes)

And a look on the watermark function :

[ singlepic id=1 w=320 h=240 mode=watermark ]
(without the spaces after/before the brakes)

To only embed the slideshow without any links to the thumbnail gallery then use the slideshow command. The width and height can be set using the w and h attributes. Example :
[ slideshow id=x w=width h=height ]
(without the spaces after/before the brakes)

Don’t forget the type of JavaScript effect you want to implement, this can be found under the ‘Effects’ tab. Only Thickbox and Shutterbox are supported out of the box by deafult, for the others you will have to add some extra code.

You can also integrate the Monoslideshow plugin. You can download this addon plugin here.

[ monoslideshow id=1 w=450 h=350 ]

A good and simple tutorial video covering the introductory steps to working with NextGen gallery.

Gallery Titles

To show the title of the gallery when it is displayed:

1. Open ‘view/gallery.php’
2. Add


   < ?php echo $gallery->title; ?>

   
above  

SEO Permalinks

To use pretty optimised permalinks you can download the mod found here:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-nextgen-gallery-seo-permalinks-patch

Some Nextgen Add-Ons which I Recommend:

NextGEN TinyMce Description

NextGEN TinyMce Description simply integrate tinymce wysiwyg to the description of the picture in a NextGEN gallery.

JJ NextGen List

The ‘JJ NextGen List’ allows you to create an image list as a widget or as a shortcode.

JJ NextGen JQuery Carousel

The ‘JJ NextGen JQuery Carousel’ allows you to create a ‘JCarousel’ (http://sorgalla.com/projects/jcarousel/) as a widget or as a shortcode.

JJ NextGen JQuery Cycle

The ‘JJ NextGen JQuery Cycle’ allows you to create a ‘Cycle Lite’ (http://jquery.malsup.com/cycle/lite/) as a widget or as a shortcode.

JJ NextGen JQuery Slider

The ‘JJ NextGen JQuery Slider’ allows you to create a ‘Nivo slider’ (http://nivo.dev7studios.com/) as a widget or as a shortcode.

NextGen Public Uploader

The NextGEN Public Uploader plugin for WordPress allows users to upload images from the frontend of your blog to a specified gallery. Upon upload the submitted image is marked as “excluded” and an email notification will be sent letting you know an image is waiting to be reviewed.