WordPress comes standard with its own media and gallery options, but it’s a good idea to use a WordPress Gallery Plugin nonetheless.
The WordPress Gallery option
When loading posts or pages to your site, WordPress gives you the option to add media. You can add images, giving each a caption, title, alt text and description, much like a gallery plugin will do. You’ll also be able to fiddle with settings like alignment and image size.
In the same way, you can create a gallery on WordPress without using a plugin. The gallery will open on a new page, or you can enable a carousel module, which opens the gallery on the same page.
But with both of these, your settings and features are limited. So if you’re looking to give your images and galleries a more unique feel, it’s better to use a WordPress gallery plugin.
The WordPress Gallery Plugin option
Using a gallery plugin comes with a host of benefits. Not least of these is the increased versatility a plugin provides. You’ll have more features, allowing you to adjust your settings to create a truly unique gallery to suit your needs.
Images used in a gallery plugin will generally appear as thumbnails on your post, but when you click on these, they’ll open in a lightbox (like FooBox) on the same page. With a WordPress Gallery Plugin like FooGallery, you’ll be able to customise the settings for both the thumbnails and the lightbox.
FooGallery comes with all sorts of features. FooGallery Free has settings for your thumbnail appearance and hover effects. Drag and Drop Reordering makes it easy to organise your photos. Plus, with the FooVideo extension you can add video to your gallery.
FooGallery Pro lets you choose from preset hover effects. Or add one of the Pagination options to your longer galleries. You also have more choice of templates. The choices are many and varied.
So what does this all mean for you and your site? You’ll be able to do the basics without a plugin. But to get the full benefit of using images, you need to be using a gallery plugin. FooGallery is the ideal choice. Have a look at the demos for yourself, or get started by downloading it today.