wordpress plugin nextgen gallery review

we written wordpress plugin nextgen gallery review. NextGEN Gallery most downloaded gallery plugin which makes us to organize your images and galleries.

NextGEN Gallery is a most downloaded wordpress gallery plugin which makes us to manage and organize your images and galleries. There are many wordpress gallery and sideshow plugins but nextgen gallery is most used and popular in wordpress world. In every second website we need to show the gallery or sideshow. For showing gallery or sideshow, Nextgen gallery is quickest and simple solution. Every wp designers and developers first choice for gallery or sideshow is Nextgen gallery plugin.

wordpress plugin nextgen gallery review

NextGEN Gallery

wordpress plugin nextgen gallery review  by purabtech.in
wordpress plugin nextgen gallery review

NextGEN Gallery is the most popular WordPress gallery plugin, and one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time, with over 7.5 million downloads.

It provides a powerful engine for uploading and managing galleries of images, with the ability to batch upload, import meta data, add/delete/rearrange/sort images, edit thumbnails, group galleries into albums, and more. It also provides two front-end display styles (sideshows and thumbnail galleries), both of which come with a wide array of options for controlling size, style, timing, transitions, controls, lightbox effects, and more.

Review:

Pros:

  • Very easy to install in wordpress and using Nextgen gallery is simple.
  • Simple and easy gallery management tools – It has simple image upload and gallery creation interface.
  • It works with custom post type very smoothly
  • Support of short codes so you can easily integrate anywhere in wp site
  • Easily create sideshow through NextGen gallery
  • Many types of effects and JS support using multiple plugins
  • There are many wordpress plugins which can adds effects to gallery or sideshow.
  • If you are wordpress developer then you can easily customize the plugin and add the new effect.
  • We can use Lightbox Plus, FancyBox and Lightbox-type wordpress plugins for gallery and sideshow.

Drawbacks:

  • We cannot include videos in gallery or youtube video in gallery
  • After upgrade of Nextgen gallery you must need to take backup of whole system because many times it will broke your website.
  • WordPress new version release issue – After new wordpress release, there is no guarantee to it will work in Nextgen gallery.
  • It consumes too much processor and so many database queries are fired on server.
  • Poor logic programming, poor user interface, slow user interface, lot’s of queries are just some of the many bugs and bad design of application
  • Performance is low it there are too many requests
  • No caching support.
  • No SEO support

Comments:

If you have high traffic website then do not use the nextgen gallery plugin. If you have low traffic or any organization website then you should go for Nextgen gallery plugin.

There are so many supported plugins for Nextgen gallery, so you can add multiple effects using this plugin.

I used Next Gen gallery plugin for many of my sites. But there is always issue with up-gradation.

But SEO wise this plugin is not so nice.

most used wordpress functions in theme

In wordpress theming is very important. Developers know the importance of functions.php file. Here we given most used wordpress functions in theme which will be useful for wordpress developer. I always written some very nice code snippets in functions.php file.

most used wordpress functions in theme

I found very useful codes which is very helpful for very wordpress designer and developers.

Here is very useful code snippets.
Enable Hidden Admin Feature displaying ALL Site Settings

// CUSTOM ADMIN MENU LINK FOR ALL SETTINGS
   function all_settings_link() {
    add_options_page(__('All Settings'), __('All Settings'), 'administrator', 'options.php');
   }
   add_action('admin_menu', 'all_settings_link');

Remove Update Notification for all users except ADMIN User

// REMOVE THE WORDPRESS UPDATE NOTIFICATION FOR ALL USERS EXCEPT SYSADMIN
       global $user_login;
       get_currentuserinfo();
       if (!current_user_can('update_plugins')) { // checks to see if current user can update plugins
        add_action( 'init', create_function( '$a', "remove_action( 'init', 'wp_version_check' );" ), 2 );
        add_filter( 'pre_option_update_core', create_function( '$a', "return null;" ) );
       }

Include custom post types in the search results.

// MAKE CUSTOM POST TYPES SEARCHABLE
function searchAll( $query ) {
 if ( $query->is_search ) { $query->set( 'post_type', array( 'site','plugin', 'theme','person' )); }
 return $query;
}
add_filter( 'the_search_query', 'searchAll' );

Add your custom post types to your sites main RSS feed by default.

// ADD CUSTOM POST TYPES TO THE DEFAULT RSS FEED
function custom_feed_request( $vars ) {
 if (isset($vars['feed']) && !isset($vars['post_type']))
  $vars['post_type'] = array( 'post', 'site', 'plugin', 'theme', 'person' );
 return $vars;
}
add_filter( 'request', 'custom_feed_request' );

Modify the Login Logo & Image URL Link

add_filter( 'login_headerurl', 'namespace_login_headerurl' );
/**
 * Replaces the login header logo URL
 *
 * @param $url
 */
function namespace_login_headerurl( $url ) {
    $url = home_url( '/' );
    return $url;
}

add_filter( 'login_headertitle', 'namespace_login_headertitle' );
/**
 * Replaces the login header logo title
 *
 * @param $title
 */
function namespace_login_headertitle( $title ) {
    $title = get_bloginfo( 'name' );
    return $title;
}

add_action( 'login_head', 'namespace_login_style' );
/**
 * Replaces the login header logo
 */
function namespace_login_style() {
    echo '<style>.login h1 a { background-image: url( ' . get_template_directory_uri() . '/images/logo.png ) !important; }</style>';
}

Loading jQuery from the Google CDN

// even more smart jquery inclusion :)
add_action( 'init', 'jquery_register' );

// register from google and for footer
function jquery_register() {

if ( !is_admin() ) {

    wp_deregister_script( 'jquery' );
    wp_register_script( 'jquery', ( 'https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js' ), false, null, true );
    wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery' );
}
}

Remove the WordPress Version Info for Security

// remove version info from head and feeds
function complete_version_removal() {
    return '';
}
add_filter('the_generator', 'complete_version_removal');

Add Spam & Delete Links to Comments on Front End

// spam & delete links for all versions of wordpress
function delete_comment_link($id) {
    if (current_user_can('edit_post')) {
        echo '| <a href="'.get_bloginfo('wpurl').'/wp-admin/comment.php?action=cdc&c='.$id.'">del</a> ';
        echo '| <a href="'.get_bloginfo('wpurl').'/wp-admin/comment.php?action=cdc&dt=spam&c='.$id.'">spam</a>';
    }
}

Remove Default WordPress Meta Boxes

// REMOVE META BOXES FROM DEFAULT POSTS SCREEN
   function remove_default_post_screen_metaboxes() {
 remove_meta_box( 'postcustom','post','normal' ); // Custom Fields Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'postexcerpt','post','normal' ); // Excerpt Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'commentstatusdiv','post','normal' ); // Comments Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'trackbacksdiv','post','normal' ); // Talkback Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'slugdiv','post','normal' ); // Slug Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'authordiv','post','normal' ); // Author Metabox
 }
   add_action('admin_menu','remove_default_post_screen_metaboxes');

// REMOVE META BOXES FROM DEFAULT PAGES SCREEN
   function remove_default_page_screen_metaboxes() {
 remove_meta_box( 'postcustom','page','normal' ); // Custom Fields Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'postexcerpt','page','normal' ); // Excerpt Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'commentstatusdiv','page','normal' ); // Comments Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'trackbacksdiv','page','normal' ); // Talkback Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'slugdiv','page','normal' ); // Slug Metabox
 remove_meta_box( 'authordiv','page','normal' ); // Author Metabox
 }
   add_action('admin_menu','remove_default_page_screen_metaboxes');

Add Custom User Profile Fields

// CUSTOM USER PROFILE FIELDS
   function my_custom_userfields( $contactmethods ) {

    // ADD CONTACT CUSTOM FIELDS
    $contactmethods['contact_phone_office']     = 'Office Phone';
    $contactmethods['contact_phone_mobile']     = 'Mobile Phone';
    $contactmethods['contact_office_fax']       = 'Office Fax';

    // ADD ADDRESS CUSTOM FIELDS
    $contactmethods['address_line_1']       = 'Address Line 1';
    $contactmethods['address_line_2']       = 'Address Line 2 (optional)';
    $contactmethods['address_city']         = 'City';
    $contactmethods['address_state']        = 'State';
    $contactmethods['address_zipcode']      = 'Zipcode';
    return $contactmethods;
   }
   add_filter('user_contactmethods','my_custom_userfields',10,1);

Add an excerpt box for pages

if ( function_exists('add_post_type_support') )
{
    add_action('init', 'add_page_excerpts');
    function add_page_excerpts()
    {
        add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' );
    }
}

Function to change the length of Exerpt

function new_excerpt_length($length) {
    return 100;
}

add_filter('excerpt_length', 'new_excerpt_length');

Auto Extract the First Image from the Post Content

/ AUTOMATICALLY EXTRACT THE FIRST IMAGE FROM THE POST
function getImage($num) {
    global $more;
    $more = 1;
    $link = get_permalink();
    $content = get_the_content();
    $count = substr_count($content, '<img');
    $start = 0;
    for($i=1;$i<=$count;$i++) {
        $imgBeg = strpos($content, '<img', $start);
        $post = substr($content, $imgBeg);
        $imgEnd = strpos($post, '>');
        $postOutput = substr($post, 0, $imgEnd+1);
        $postOutput = preg_replace('/width="([0-9]*)" height="([0-9]*)"/', '',$postOutput);;
        $image[$i] = $postOutput;
        $start=$imgEnd+1;
    }
    if(stristr($image[$num],'<img')) { echo '<a href="'.$link.'">'.$image[$num]."</a>"; }
    $more = 0;
}

Unregister WP Default Widgets

// unregister all default WP Widgets
function unregister_default_wp_widgets() {
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Pages');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Calendar');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Archives');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Links');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Meta');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Search');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Text');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Categories');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Recent_Posts');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Recent_Comments');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_RSS');
    unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Tag_Cloud');
}
add_action('widgets_init', 'unregister_default_wp_widgets', 1);

Enable GZIP output compression

if(extension_loaded("zlib") && (ini_get("output_handler") != "ob_gzhandler"))
   add_action('wp', create_function('', '@ob_end_clean();@ini_set("zlib.output_compression", 1);'));

Enable shortcodes in widgets

// shortcode in widgets
if ( !is_admin() ){
    add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode', 11);
}

If you have any interesting code snippets then please suggest me.

most used wordpress functions in theme
most used wordpress functions in theme