Envira Gallery | The Blog Pros

February 20, 2024

9 Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins (Expert Pick for 2024)

Are you looking for a WordPress content protection plugin for your website?

These plugins can safeguard your website’s content against unauthorized copying, misuse, or distribution. This ensures that your content remains unique and original to your site, which can also boost your SEO rankings.

In this article, we will share our list of the best content protection WordPress plugins.

Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins

Why Do You Need a Content Protection WordPress Plugin?

As a website owner, you may come across someone who is stealing your content, including blog posts, images, or videos, and using them on their own website. This can damage your reputation, hurt your search engine optimization (SEO), and reduce website traffic.

Content protection plugins come with a variety of features that help you protect your WordPress site’s content from misuse or theft.

These plugins can disable text selection and copying, add no right-click for images, password-protect your site, prevent blog scraping, and help you build members-only content exclusive to your paying users and subscribers.

For example, if you have a photography website, then you might use a content protection plugin to prevent image theft by disabling right-click, adding watermarks, or making your content exclusive. This allows you to protect your intellectual property while maintaining a great user experience.

Having said that, let’s take a look at our list of the best WordPress content protection plugins that can prevent content theft.

1. MemberPress (Members-Only Content)

MemberPress is the best WordPress content protection plugin on the market. It is super easy to set up and gives you complete control over restricting any content on your website, including posts, pages, categories, or tags, to specific users and paying members.

It allows you to create a comprehensive membership website and doesn’t have any limitations for membership levels, making it the best membership plugin for WordPress.

Additionally, MemberPress can protect your media files from unauthorized downloads, extend protection to custom post types, restrict widget visibility, protect individual URLs, and more.

It even lets you restrict content to registered users only and create a paywall in WordPress.

Pros

MemberPress comes with a content-dripping feature that lets you show restricted content to members after a certain time. It can come in handy if you are selling online courses.
It allows you to set a content expiration date that forces users to renew their subscription to access the content.
It redirects users who try to access restricted content.
The plugin lets you determine the amount of content visible to each membership level.
It can integrate with powerful tools, including Constant Contact, Uncanny Automator, Amazon Web Services, and more.

Cons

MemberPress has a free plan, but it does not include most of the features you will need to restrict content.

Why we recommend MemberPress: Overall, MemberPress is the best WordPress content protection plugin. It gives you complete freedom over content access control, lets you create exclusive content for members only, enables you to add a paywall, and more.

For more information, you can see our complete MemberPress review.

2. OptinMonster (Email List Subscriber Content)

OptinMonster is the best lead generation and conversion optimization tool on the market that comes with a content-locking feature.

This setting prevents users from viewing your page or blog post content by showing a content-locking inline campaign. Users will then only be able to unlock your content once they subscribe to your newsletter, which, in turn, helps you build an email list.

The tool also allows you to configure when and where the popup will appear using the display rules provided by the plugin. For instance, you can set the popup to appear once the user scrolls down to the third paragraph of each post.

This way, users will already be invested in the content when the popup appears and will be more likely to join your email list to unlock the content.

For more detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to add content locking in WordPress.

Pros

OptinMonster allows you to create banners, sliders, gamified popups, and more.
It comes with a drag-and-drop builder and premade templates for different campaigns.
It has built-in analytics and reports features and smart display triggers like exit intent technology, scroll depth targeting, page targeting, and more.

Cons

OptinMonster is paid software, but its connecting plugin is free.

Why we recommend OptinMonster: It is the ideal plugin if you want to create exclusive content for your subscribers. It allows you to make a popup to prevent users from viewing your content, which they can only unlock upon joining your email list.

For more information, you can read our complete OptinMonster review.

3. Envira Gallery (Anti Image Theft)

Envira Gallery is the best WordPress gallery plugin on the market that can easily protect your images from theft.

The plugin comes with a protection addon that disables right-clicking for images and shows an alert popup to users when they try to copy or save your images.

Other than that, it has a watermarking addon that lets you watermark your images to protect them from copyright infringement.

Pros

Envira has a drag-and-drop builder and premade templates to help you build visually appealing galleries.
It comes with a lightbox feature to better display your images and prevent their theft.
The plugin lets you password-protect your galleries.
Some of its additional features include adding videos to the gallery, importing images as zip files, creating slideshows, using the zoom feature, and more.

Cons

Envira Gallery has a free plan, but you will need the pro version of the plugin to unlock the image protection addons.
The plugin cannot protect any written content on your website.

Why we recommend Envira Gallery: If you are a photographer or building a visual portfolio, then you can use Envira to protect your images from theft, misuse, and unauthorized distribution.

For more information, you can see our Envira Gallery review.

4. PPWP (Password Protect Pages)

PPWP is one of the best free password protection WordPress plugins that allows you to lock your content by creating unique passwords for each page and post.

The plugin allows you to set different passwords for various user roles. This means that a subscriber’s password may get them access to certain pages while keeping them locked out of the rest.

PPWP can also add passwords to protect specific categories, partial sections of your posts, or your entire WordPress website.

Pros

It prevents password abuse and spam using Google reCAPTCHA v2 or v3.
PPWP uses AJAX to unlock protected content without having to reload the page.
The plugin integrates with popular page builders like Divi, Elementor, and Beaver Builder.

Cons

Adding passwords to each page or post can hurt the user experience.
The plugin relies on the strength of the passwords that you choose for content protection.

Why we recommend PPWP: It is a free and easy-to-use plugin that password-protects your posts and pages.

5. MemberMouse (Members-Only Content)

MemberMouse is another powerful membership plugin that allows you to protect your content by granting access to it based on different membership levels.

It lets you protect posts, pages, categories, taxonomies, and even individual sections within your content using smart tags and has drip content scheduling.

This means that you can gradually grant access to your content to different members over time.

Pros

Other than protection, you can also use smart tags to create dynamic and personalized content.
MemberMouse shows excerpts of protected content to users, encouraging them to subscribe to a membership.
It lets you create a dedicated space on your website that is only accessible to members.
The plugin has custom login and password reset pages and limits login attempts to prevent unauthorized access.

Cons

MemberMouse can integrate with a limited number of gateways and does not offer as many integrations as some of the other plugins on this list.
It does not have a free plan.

Why we recommend MemberMouse: If you want to create a membership site that unlocks different content based on membership levels, then MemberMouse is a great choice.

For more details, you can see our complete MemberMouse review.

6. WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click (Blog Content Protection)

WP Content Protection & No Right Click is a popular and free WordPress plugin that can help protect your blog content.

With this tool, you can disable text selection and copying, add no right-click for images, and prevent users from saving your images on their computers.

Other than that, WP Content Protection & No Right Click allows you to enable/disable protection for administrators and lets you select the pages where you want to protect content.

Pros

The plugin disables shortcut keys on your website like Ctrl+A (select all), Ctrl+X (cut), and Ctrl+V (paste).
It displays custom messages to users when they try to copy or save your content, reminding them of copyright protection.
It adds a lightbox feature to images to prevent users from downloading them.
It is free and has an easy-to-use control panel.

Cons

The plugin does not let you create exclusive content for members only.
It disables right-click and text selection, which can frustrate some users who want to highlight text for better readability or save instructions to use later.

Why we recommend WP Content Protection & No Right Click: We recommend this plugin if you have a simple WordPress blog and are looking for a free solution to protect your blog posts and images from theft.

7. Passster (Password Protect Pages)

Passster is all in one password-protection plugin that protects your website’s pages, posts, and custom post types.

It restricts access to content by adding password protection and creates password-protected sections within pages using shortcodes and blocks. The plugin can also be used to lock your entire website.

Passster comes with a user-friendly interface and completely customizable password fields. Plus, the tool is AJAX-powered and has cookie-based authentication for a better user experience.

Pros

It lets you set multiple passwords for different areas of your website.
The plugin is completely free.
Passster creates a list of passwords that can be used to unlock content and sets passwords to expire after a certain number of uses, time intervals, or dates.
The plugin generates unique links that unlock protected content for specific users and even lets you monitor how often a password is used to log in.

Cons

Search engines might not be able to crawl and index password-protected content, negatively affecting your SEO rankings.
Passster offers limited control over user role permissions and heavily depends on password management.

Why we recommend Passster: It is a great free plugin if you want to password-protect your content. The plugin even comes with a WooCommerce integration that restricts access to specific products, categories, or your whole store.

8. Wishlist Member (Members-Only Content)

WishList Member is another popular content protection WordPress plugin that lets you create members-only content.

It allows you to lock pages, posts, taxonomies, and individual sections within content using shortcodes. Users can then unlock this content once they purchase different membership levels.

Plus, the plugin displays custom messages to the non-members on your site, encouraging them to join in to unlock more content.

Pros

WishList Member offers drip scheduling, content excerpts for non-members, and time limits for content access.
It allows members to access protected content in their RSS feed readers.
The plugin creates protected folders to store downloadable files for specific membership levels.

Cons

It offers a huge amount of features, which can be overwhelming for beginners.
It does not have a free plan.

Why we recommend WishList Member: If you want to set up more complex members-only content, then WishList Member is a good choice because of its drip scheduling, page locks, restricted access in feed readers, and more.

9. WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design (Protect Blog Posts and Images)

WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design is a free content protection plugin that disables right-clicking and text selection on your website.

It adds an alert window with a custom warning for users who are trying to copy or save your content. You can easily customize this message to match your website’s theme and design.

Additionally, WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design can protect specific pages or posts and disable keyboard shortcut keys.

Pros

It prevents drag-and-drop image copying on your site.
The plugin extends protection to the print preview page (CTRL+P), preventing users from printing your content directly.
It can exclude logged-in users like administrators or editors from protection measures.

Cons

Disabling right-click, text selection, and keyboard shortcuts can negatively impact the user experience.
The plugin cannot prevent users from capturing content using screenshots.

Why we recommend WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design: If you have just started a small business and are on a shoestring budget, then you can use this plugin to provide plenty of protection for your content, including blog posts and images.

Which Is the Best Content Protection WordPress Plugin?

In our expert opinion, MemberPress is the best WordPress content protection plugin on the market. It gives you complete freedom to restrict any content on your website to members only, prevent unauthorized downloads of your media files, restrict widget visibility, protect individual URLs, and much more.

However, if you are a photographer and just want to protect the images on your site, then you can opt for Envira Gallery instead. It password-protects your images, adds watermarks, offers a lightbox feature, and prevents anyone from saving your images.

Alternatively, if you want to generate leads by unlocking content for users who are subscribing to your email list, then you can use OptinMonster. It lets you build a content-locking campaign where users can only view your content upon signing up for your newsletter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some questions frequently asked by our readers about content protection WordPress plugins.

How do I lock content in WordPress for free?

You can easily lock content in WordPress by using the Passster plugin.

It is completely free and lets you add password protection to any page or post on your WordPress site. It even lets you protect specific areas of your pages that can be unlocked with a password.

Which is the best security plugin for WordPress?

In our expert opinion, Sucuri is the best WordPress security plugin that protects your site from DDOS attacks, adds a firewall, comes with malware scanning, and a Content Delivery Network to improve site performance.

For more information, see our complete Sucuri review.

What are the potential downsides of using a content protection plugin?

There can be some downsides to using a content protection plugin. For example, these plugins can hurt the user experience by creating too many restrictions.

Similarly, passwords, logins, or paywalls can add extra steps for users to navigate, potentially leading to abandonment. Other than that, some plugins can even hurt your SEO rankings.

That being said, content plugins are still essential if you want to protect content scraping on your site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 9 Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins (Expert Pick for 2024) first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 6, 2024

How to Switch From NextGEN to Envira Gallery in WordPress

Do you want to switch from NextGEN Gallery to Envira Gallery?

From our experience, both NextGEN and Envira are powerful WordPress gallery plugins. But some of our readers asked us how to switch from NextGen to Envira because the second plugin is better suited to their needs.

In this article, we will show you how to easily switch from NextGEN Gallery to Envira Gallery in WordPress.

How to Switch From NextGEN to Envira Gallery in WordPress

Why Switch From NextGEN Gallery to Envira Gallery?

NextGEN Gallery and Envira Gallery are both drag-and-drop gallery plugins that are easy to use. But when we compared them in our best WordPress gallery plugin article, we found that each one caters to different types of WordPress users:

Envira Gallery – An excellent all-around gallery plugin, with plans starting at $39.50 per year. You can get addons for various use cases, like video galleries, WooCommerce, and deep linking for SEO. It also performs the fastest out of all the top gallery plugins.
NextGEN Gallery – With a starting price of $69.50 per year, this plugin is better for pro photographers. It comes with multiple gallery templates, watermarking, and eCommerce tools to sell photos.

All in all, if you need a premium plugin for displaying multiple images in a user-friendly way, then Envira is an excellent option. The NextGEN Gallery plugin is also great, but it’s more for professional use, especially considering its price tag.

You can learn more about the two plugins in our NextGEN review and Envira review.

With that in mind, let’s see how you can switch from NextGEN to Envira to display images on your WordPress.org website. You can use the quick links below to navigate through the steps:

Step 1: Install and Set up the Envira Gallery Plugin
Step 2: Choose Which NextGEN Photo Galleries to Import
Step 3: Edit Your WordPress Envira Image Galleries
Step 4: Display Your Imported Photo Galleries
Ultimate Guides to Improve Your Envira Photo Galleries

Step 1: Install and Set up the Envira Gallery Plugin

The first step to switching from NextGEN to Envira is to install and activate the Envira Gallery plugin.

While Envira has a free version, you will need one of the Premium plans to access the NextGEN Importer Addon. This is what you will use to transfer your NextGEN galleries later.

For guidance, you can read our article on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is active, you can go to Envira Gallery » Addons from the WordPress dashboard. After that, find the NextGEN Importer Addon and click ‘Install.’

Installing the NextGEN Importer addon in Envira Gallery

Now, you should see the status change to ‘Inactive’, and the button text will say ‘Activate.’

Just click on the button to turn on the addon.

Activating the NextGEN Importer addon in Envira Gallery

Step 2: Choose Which NextGEN Photo Galleries to Import

At this point, you can go ahead and refresh your WordPress admin area. Then, go to Envira Gallery » NextGEN Import. You should now see a list of NextGEN galleries to import.

Tick the boxes next to the galleries that you’d like to transfer to Envira and click ‘Import Galleries.’

Selecting a NextGEN gallery to import to Envira

Wait for a few minutes for the addon to finish importing.

If the photo gallery plugin successfully imported your files, then you should see a message like this:

The success message that appears when the NextGEN gallery has been imported to Envira

Step 3: Edit Your WordPress Envira Image Galleries

Now that your image gallery has been imported, you can edit it further.

What you need to do is go to Envira Gallery » Envira Gallery and hover over the title of the newly imported gallery. Then, click ‘Edit.’

Editing the imported NextGEN gallery in Envira

There are many things you can do here.

At the top section of the user interface, you can add new images from the media library, desktop, or other sources like your Instagram account.

If you scroll down, you will find more customization options to configure your new gallery.

In the ‘Gallery’ tab, you can manage the images, delete them, or sort them as you like.

Switching to the ‘Configuration’ tab, you can change many different elements of your gallery.

One is the Gallery Layout. You can choose Automatic (the layout will adjust automatically based on your image amount and size), Mason, Grid, Square, Blogroll, or BnB.

Moving down the page, you’ll find more gallery display options. Here, we recommend enabling the lazy loading feature to speed up your WordPress site performance.

The rest of the settings, like the titles or captions and the crop position for the thumbnails, can be adjusted to your needs. Depending on your gallery layout, you may find more settings to configure here.

Enabling the lazy loading feature in Envira Gallery

Let’s go ahead and switch to the ‘Lightbox’ tab. Lightbox is basically a feature that displays your images in a fullscreen pop-up window when a user clicks on them.

We go into more detail on configuring the Lightbox settings in our article on how to add a WordPress gallery with a Lightbox effect.

Next is the ‘Mobile’ tab.

The settings here can make your gallery more responsive and look good when viewed on a mobile device.

If you tick the ‘Create Mobile Gallery Images?’ setting, then that means you can enable or disable specific images for mobile devices to save some screen space.

Configuring the Envira Gallery's mobile gallery settings

The ‘Standalone’ tab lets you create a dedicated page for your galleries and use a custom page template for it.

However, if your WordPress theme doesn’t have a custom page template, then you can skip this tab and move on to ‘Misc.’

In this tab, you can edit the gallery’s slug, add custom CSS classes, import or export galleries from or to your computer, copy images to another existing gallery, and enable the right-to-left language function.

Once you are happy with the settings, scroll up to the ‘Publish’ section.

Then, simply click ‘Update’ to make the changes official.

Step 4: Display Your Imported Photo Galleries

With your gallery edited and looking good, let’s start adding it to your pages, posts, and other parts of your site where your NextGEN gallery used to be.

The Envira image gallery plugin offers three ways to insert galleries in WordPress: using the Gutenberg block, shortcodes, or template tag. Let’s explore each method.

Adding the Envira Gallery Gutenberg Block

First, go to the page or post where your NextGEN gallery is. After that, you can click the ‘+ Add Block’ button to find the Envira Gallery block.

Adding the Envira Gallery block in the WordPress block editor

Simply drag and drop the block to wherever looks best on the screen.

Then, type in the name of the gallery you just imported and edited earlier.

Choosing a gallery to insert in the Envira Gallery block

Once that’s done, you can use the Block settings sidebar to configure the block further. The editing options here are similar to the ones available in the previous step.

Alternatively, you can add new images to the gallery from your desktop or media library.

Editing the Envira Gallery block in the WordPress block editor

At this stage, you can just remove the NextGEN Gallery block or shortcode that you had on this page.

All you need to do is click the three-dot menu in the block toolbar and select ‘Delete.’

Removing the old NextGEN Gallery block in WordPress

Now, simply click the ‘Update’ button in the top right corner of the page to make your changes.

Adding the Envira Gallery to WordPress With Shortcode

Another method is to use the shortcodes provided by Envira and insert them using the Shortcode block. This option is recommended if the Gutenberg block doesn’t work.

To find the gallery’s shortcode, you can go to Envira Gallery » Envira Gallery and copy the code in the ‘Shortcode’ column.

Alternatively, you can open your gallery and navigate to the ‘Envira Code’ section.

The two shortcodes at the top (the one with the ID and the one with the slug) basically work the same way. When added, the shortcode will display the gallery like normal.

Meanwhile, the special shortcode below is if you want to add a link that directs users to the gallery.

The Envira shortcodes in the Envira Gallery editor

You can add these shortcodes to your pages, posts, or any other widget-ready area. For step-by-step guidance, head over to our how to add shortcodes in WordPress article.

Adding the Envira Template Tag in a Theme File

The last option is to display the Envira image gallery by inserting its template tag into a theme file. You can find these tags below the shortcode list in the gallery editor.

Envira's gallery template tags in the gallery editor

This method is recommended if you want to display the gallery in the header or footer of your website. Or maybe you want to show the gallery on all of your pages and posts at once.

Since inserting custom code can potentially break your website, we recommend using WPCode. This code snippet plugin makes it easy and safe to add code to WordPress without directly interacting with your core files.

First, install the plugin on your WordPress website. Then, go to Code Snippets » + Add Snippet. Once you do that, just select ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ and click the ‘Use snippet’ button.

Then, go ahead and insert the title of your snippet. This is just to make it easy to identify. It can be something like ‘Envira Gallery Snippet.’

After that, change the Code Type to ‘PHP Snippet.’

Now, copy and paste one of Envira’s template tags into the Code Preview box. While they look different, they actually work the same way. Their difference is one uses the gallery’s ID, while the other uses its slug.

Inserting the Envira Gallery template tag in WPCode

At this stage, you can scroll down to the Insertion section. You can keep the Insert Method as ‘Auto Insert.’

As for the Location, you can choose the one that suits your needs best.

For example, if you want to display the gallery in the header area, then select ‘Site Wide Header.’ If you want the gallery to appear before the blog post title, then choose ‘Insert Before Post.’

After that, make the code active and click ‘Save Snippet.’

Configuring WPCode's Insert Method and Location

Now, just make sure to visit your website to see if the code works.

Here’s what our test site looked like when we used the ‘Insert Before Post’ location:

An example of what the Envira Gallery looks like when inserted before the blog post

Ultimate Guides to Improve Your Envira Photo Galleries

Congratulations! You have officially switched from NextGEN to Envira in WordPress. If you need more inspiration to improve your Envira image galleries, we have some great tutorials that you can check out:

We hope this article helped you learn how to switch from NextGEN to Envira Gallery in WordPress. You may also want to check out our list of the best WordPress plugins for photographers and must-have WordPress plugins to grow your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Switch From NextGEN to Envira Gallery in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

January 1, 2024

Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2023 on WPBeginner

As we say goodbye to 2023, it marks the end of yet another year filled with opportunities for reflection on our achievements and aspirations.

This past year, due to slow economic activity, layoffs, and inflation, we witnessed many individuals starting new businesses online. So many of them took advantage of WPBeginner’s free resources to kickstart their online ventures.

We are grateful for the continued support of our amazing WPBeginner community. You give us the inspiration and energy to keep producing top-notch WordPress tutorials.

In keeping with tradition, this article will reveal our team’s selection of this year’s top-notch WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner.

Additionally, our CEO will provide a comprehensive overview of 2023, offering insights to gain some perspective about the progress we made.

WPBeginner Recap 2023 by Syed Balkhi

2023 has been an outstanding year full of new experiences, accomplishments, and lessons learned.

This year unlocked a new level of challenges and opportunities for me. I’m grateful for both of them as they helped me gain more clarity, self-awareness, and new perspectives that will greatly influence my decisions as I go into 2024.

I turned 33 years old, visited 8 countries including two bucket list experiences (Egypt and Maldives), passed the milestone of 25 million websites using our software, completed 12 business acquisitions + 4 growth fund investments, and overall I’m ending the year stronger than ever.

None of this would be possible without the support of my wife, Amanda, and my family.

This year, WPBeginner turned 14 years old, and I’m really proud of the amazing work our team is doing.

Our software products passed the milestone of 25 million active installs. We celebrated it with a NASDAQ billboard in Time Square with photos of our team members.

We passed a BIG milestone!

Now over 25 million websites are using our software 🚀

I'm super proud of our team @awesomemotive and the amazing work we're doing to help shape the web for billions worldwide.

Here's our team featured on NASDAQ Times Square. pic.twitter.com/v9QJF6gu5R
— Syed Balkhi (@syedbalkhi) April 3, 2023

It’s pretty incredible to see the small blog that I started at age 19 has become a movement for making the web a better place.

Our team has done some great work this year.

We have launched 6 new free business tools to help you do more with WordPress.

Keyword Generator Tool: It makes keyword research easy by helping you generate 300+ keyword ideas in a click.
Blog Post Idea Generator: It helps you come up with a year’s worth of content ideas in a second.
Smart Headline Analyzer: It lets you write irresistible headlines that your users can’t help but click.
Website SEO Analyzer: It finds critical errors on your site and generates a free SEO report to fix them.
Keyword Density Checker: It enables you to find the primary keywords on any content to fix over-optimization. Also great for competitor research.
Email Signature Generator: It helps you design beautiful email signature within minutes.

Aside from these tools, we created hundreds of new tutorials as well as updated over 2000 WordPress tutorials this past year.

WPBeginner – Fun Fact:

Our team has now grown to over 320+ people across 50 different countries. We’re hiring for full-time remote positions. If you’re interested, check out our Careers page.

Our growth is a direct result of the incredible growth of WordPress and the support of our amazing WPBeginner community.

One of the questions I often get from new readers is how does WPBeginner make money? Well, it’s through our suite of premium plugins and SaaS software that we create. I did a brief overview of WPBeginner income, but here’s a quick recap of our various products.

WPForms

WPForms is the fastest growing online form builder for WordPress with over 6 million active installs. It’s the #7 most popular plugin in the WordPress.org plugin directory. Here’s a link to the WPForms free version.

This year, we added several powerful features including ability to accept credit card payments for everyone including free users. This was previously a Pro only feature. Aside from that, we also created a new payments dashboard, added coupons feature, and more.

A lot of our users asked for the ability to create Calculators, so we created a brand new Calculations addon in WPForms. Now, you can create advanced lead generation calculators using WPForms. Furthermore, you can use the calculations feature to create more powerful online order forms too.

Aside from that, we added many more powerful features including 1300+ pre-made form templates, lead forms addon, form styles for block editor & elementor, customizable email templates, ConvertKit addon, WPCode integration, and much more.

I truly believe that WPForms is a MUST HAVE plugin for all website owners, and I’m really proud of our team for continuing to raise the bar.

The WPForms team also did their own 2023 Year in Review post which is far more interactive and super cool.

AIOSEO

All in One SEO (aka AIOSEO) is one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins used by over 3 million websites. This year my team worked really hard to make it by far the best SEO toolkit in the market.

I have been told by many users that they’re switching from Yoast and RankMath to AIOSEO because of the features we’re adding. See the top reasons why users are switching from Yoast to AIOSEO.

This year, we added a powerful Search Statistics feature inside your WordPress dashboard that shows you how your website is performing in Google search. It lets you do keyword rank tracking, see which keywords are winning / losing, and more.

We also added a Content Rankings report that shows you which of your content have started to drop in SEO rankings, so you can quickly update them and re-gain your rankings.

How to identify content decay in WordPress

Aside from that, we added the much-requested SEO revisions feature that allows you to keep track of your SEO progress inside WordPress. This also allows you to undo changes with a single click.

The best part is that our team added the integration with Google algorithm updates, so you can see whether your changes are having a positive or negative impact.

At AIOSEO, we’re adding features that other WordPress SEO plugin simply don’t have. That’s because we’re practitioners, and we understand what publishers & eCommerce websites need to grow their SEO rankings.

I highly recommend that you check out AIOSEO if you want to grow your site’s rankings. There’s a free version available as well.

We also created a free SEO Chrome extension to help you do on-page SEO analysis faster.

Last but not least, our AIOSEO team has launched a new SEO trends section where we’re sharing the behind-the-scenes case studies of the fastest growing websites.

Other Notable Product Highlights

WPCode passed over 2 million active installs. It’s truly one of the most powerful and underrated WordPress plugins. We added conversion pixel tracking, access control, new testing mode, and much more. Give the free version a try, and you’ll see why it’s one of the fastest growing WordPress plugin right now.
Smash Balloon is the most popular social media feeds plugin for WordPress. This year, our team launched the much-requested TikTok feeds plugin which is also part of our all-access bundle.
SeedProd is a popular drag & drop WordPress page builder. This year our team added 300+ pre-made website kits & templates. Aside from that, we added deep integrations with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads, so you can create custom eCommerce websites with no-code. See the full 2023 review by our team.

All our product teams have been doing great work, and it’s nearly impossible for me to summarize everything here, so I highly recommend that you check out our WordPress plugins. Your support means a lot to us, and this is what keeps us going.

Acquisitions and Investments

This year, we did some really great acquisitions and investments. Here are the new products that joined WPBeginner family.

Duplicator is a leading WordPress backup and migration plugin. We have been recommending the free version on WPBeginner for years, so when the opportunity presented itself, I jumped on it right away. Our team has added tons of new features too. I highly recommend you to check it out.

Thrive Themes offers a suite of WordPress marketing plugins including landing pages, A/B testing, lead generation, quizzes, online courses, and more. A lot of marketing agencies absolutely love our products (see the full story).

Envira Gallery is popular WordPress gallery plugin that I helped create in 2014. I’m glad to welcome it back to the Awesome Motive family. If you’re a photographer, you’d love Envira (see the full story).

HeroThemes is the maker of the best WordPress customer support plugins including Heroic knowledge base and Heroic Inbox plugin. HeroicKB is something that I have recommended on WPBeginner for a long time, and I’m glad to welcome it to the WPBeginner growth fund (see full story).

Seahawk Media is a premier WordPress services company that offer a wide range of WordPress services, like WordPress development, design, maintenance, migration, support, and white-label services. I invested in Seahawk Media as part of the WPBeginner growth fund because a lot of WPBeginner community members have been asking us for this. I shared the full background story here.

Aside from the above, we also acquired WP101, WC Vendors, Imagely, MemberMouse, Wishlist Member, and several more that I am not yet ready to share.

Want us to acquire or invest in your business? Learn more about the WPBeginner Growth fund where I invest in WordPress and SaaS companies.

With that said, let’s look at 2023’s best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner.

January

SEO Title vs H1 Post Title in WordPress: What’s the Difference? – In this beginner’s guide, we explained the difference between the SEO Title tag and the H1 heading in a post or page title. We also showed examples of how to use them effectively to maximize SEO and improve the user experience.

How to Prevent Fraud and Fake Orders in WooCommerce – Fraudulent and fake orders can cause severe losses for online stores. This tutorial showed how to prevent spam and block fake orders in WooCommerce effectively.

9 Best Google Optimize Alternatives (Free and Paid) – Google retired their Google Optimize tool that allowed website owners to run experiments like A/B testing. In this article, we showcased 9 Google Optimize alternatives that you can use.

How to Write Content Using AI Content Generator in WordPress – As AI technologies like ChatGPT and DALL-E made news, many users wanted to know how to use them to write articles. In this guide, we showed how to use AI content generators to produce content.

How to Create a WordPress Form with Payment Options (Easy Way) – Many users only need to sell a handful of products or services, and using a shopping cart like WooCommerce is overkill for that purpose. In this tutorial, we taught how to create a WordPress form with payment options and accept online payments without a shopping cart.

February

34 Unique Things You Didn’t Know About All in One SEO (Pro Tips) – All in One SEO is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit for WordPress. In this article, we highlighted some powerful, unique features of the plugin that many beginners may not be using yet.

How to Stop WordPress From Overwriting .htaccess File – WordPress core and some plugins may occasionally need to edit and add their settings to the .htaccess file. However, this becomes problematic if you have custom settings and don’t want them to disappear. In this tutorial, we showed how to prevent WordPress from overwriting the .htaccess file for your website.

13 Common WordPress Block Editor Problems and How to Fix Them – Many WordPress users spend a lot of time creating content using the block editor. In this article, we discuss common issues with the block editor and share easy ways to fix them.

Research: The Truth Behind Make Money Online Videos on YouTube and TikTok – Our research team analyzed 344 videos from YouTube and TikTok influencers posting about making money online. Read the complete report to find out the real truth behind those make money online videos.

How to Add Multilingual Search in WordPress (2 Ways) – If you run a multilingual website or eCommerce store, then adding multilingual search can boost user engagement on your website. In this tutorial, we showed two ways to add multilingual search to WordPress.

March

Ultimate WordPress Migration Guide for Beginners (Step by Step) – Many small businesses and bloggers may want to switch from a closed platform to WordPress or from one WordPress host to another. We put together the ultimate WordPress migration guide, which walks you through WordPress migrations without losing your data.

54 Best ChatGPT Prompts for Bloggers, Marketers, and Social Media – ChatGPT and other AI tools are only as useful as your prompts (instructions). To show how to write better prompts for AI, we compiled a comprehensive list of the most useful ChatGPT prompts for bloggers, marketers, and social media experts.

Nextiva vs. RingCentral vs. Ooma: Which is Better? (Compared) – Wondering which business phone service to choose? We compared the top business phone companies, Nextiva, RingCentral, and Ooma, to help you find the right solution for your business.

Internal Linking for SEO: The Ultimate Guide of Best Practices – Internal linking is crucial for good search rankings. In this guide, we shared the best practices and practical tips to create and maintain internal links across your website.

Should You Start a Blog or a YouTube Channel? (Beginner’s Guide) – Starting a blog or a YouTube channel are both great ways to publish content online, but which one should you choose? In this guide, we compared both platforms and shared our practical tips to use them to your advantage.

April

Why Is WordPress So Hard (And How to Make It Easier) – One of the common complaints about WordPress is that it is complicated for beginners. In this article, we explained why it feels difficult and how you can quickly make it easier.

Introducing Broken Link Checker – Never Have Dead Links On Your WordPress Site Again – In April, we announced the release of a new broken link checker plugin. It enables website owners to easily track and fix broken links on their website.

How to Start a Successful YouTube Channel for Your Business – Starting a YouTube channel is a popular online business idea. We made a step-by-step walkthrough for beginners to easily start a successful YouTube channel for their businesses.

13-Point WordPress SEO Checklist for Beginners – Many of our users asked us if we can highlight the most important SEO steps that they should take. In this tutorial, we shared our tried and tested WordPress SEO checklist that any user can apply to their website.

WPForms vs. Gravity Forms vs. Formidable Forms: Which is Best? – In this article, we compared WPForms, Gravity Forms, and Formidable Forms. We analyzed their ease of use, customization options, add-ons, and integrations so that you can choose the best WordPress form builder for your website.

May

In May, we launched three free tools for WPBeginner users:

WPBeginner SEO Analyzer – A free SEO audit tool to boost rankings
WPBeginner’s Blog Post Idea Generator – Create your yearly content calendar quickly.
WPBeginner Headline Analyzer – Helps you easily create captivating SEO-friendly headlines for your articles.

The following are some of the best articles from the same month:

How to Choose a Target Audience for Blogs (+ Examples) – Picking a target audience allows you to create better content that resonates with your users. This helps you get more conversions and sales. In this article, we showed you how to choose your target audience with practical examples.

How to Fix WordPress Redirecting to Old Domain After Migration – This is a common redirection issue users face when migrating to a new domain name. In this tutorial, we explained what causes it and how to fix WordPress redirecting to the old domain after migrating your website.

How to Create a Digital Product Marketplace in WordPress – Want to create a marketplace where other digital creators can sell their products? In this step-by-step guide, we showed how to make a digital product marketplace in WordPress.

June

In June, we launched these free tools for WPBeginner users:

Keyword Density Checker – Helps you find the most optimized keywords on any content to fix over-optimization and boost rankings.
Keyword Generator Tool – Makes keyword research easy by showing you 300+ keyword ideas people are searching for about your topic in Google.
Email Signature Generator – Create your professional-looking email signature in a few minutes by choosing a template with your details and style.

What is Content Decay? (And How to Fix It) – Content decay is the decline in organic traffic and search rankings over time. Unless you update your content, you will continue to lose rankings and traffic. In this article, we explained content decay and how to monitor and fix it.

How to Edit WooCommerce Pages (No Coding Required) – WooCommerce creates several pages to display storefront, product pages, cart, and checkout. Small improvements to these pages can result in higher sales and less cart abandonment for your store. In this article, we showed how to edit WooCommerce pages without any coding skills.

How to Backup Your WordPress Site (4 Easy Ways) – Creating a backup is compulsory to protect your website data against security threats and human errors. You can easily restore a saved site version in case anything goes wrong. In this tutorial, we showed four ways to back up your WordPress site easily.

How to Write a Great Blog Post (Structure + Examples) – You can write a compelling and helpful blog post, but without the right structure, only a few people may read it. In this article, we explained how to write a great blog post with proper structure and examples.

July

How to Sell Videos Online With WordPress (Step by Step) – Selling videos with WordPress is easy and gives you more control over your content and earnings. You’ll be able to sell the same video files countless times. In this tutorial, we showed you how to sell videos online with WordPress easily.

How to Do a UX Audit of Your WordPress Site – User experience (UX) is an important factor in the success of a website. A good user experience can lead to more conversions and sales, while a poor UX costs money. In this guide, we showed how to do a proper UX audit of your WordPress site.

12 Best ChatGPT Alternatives for Bloggers / Marketers – AI-powered tools like ChatGPT can give you a competitive advantage by boosting productivity, generating ideas, and automating workflows. In this article, we shared the best ChatGPT alternatives to help you use more artificial intelligence in your daily tasks.

5 Best Monthly Web Hosting Plans (Starts at $4.95/mo.) – Some of our users asked us to recommend the best hosting plans where they can pay month-to-month instead of annually. In this article, we shared our top picks of the best monthly web hosting plans.

August

7 Best Yoast SEO Alternatives for WordPress – Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress SEO plugins, but there are newer solutions that are innovating faster and are up-to-date with the latest SEO trends. In this article, we showcased the best Yoast SEO alternatives for WordPress that you can try.

How to Understand WordPress Website Visitors Intent – Understanding user intent helps you create more helpful content and a better user experience. In this article, we shared tips to understand WordPress website visitors’ intent.

Is WordPress Dying? The State of WordPress – Have you seen claims and rumors that WordPress is dying or about to be replaced by a newer website builder or software? In this article, we shared the state of WordPress to show you that there’s absolutely no truth to the rumors that WordPress is dying.

How to Use AI for SEO in WordPress (12 Tools) – Wondering how artificial intelligence can help you with SEO? In this article, we shared the best tools that let you use AI for WordPress SEO.

Introducing a New Chrome Extension by All in One SEO – Have you ever wished for an easy way to quickly get a full SEO audit of any page? All in One SEO’s free Google Chrome extension helps you do just that. In this article, we showed how to use All in One SEO’s Chrome Extension to quickly perform an SEO audit of any page in your browser.

September

How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress (Step by Step) – Broken links create a bad user experience, a loss in search rankings, and can cost you money. In this article, we showed how to easily track and fix broken links in WordPress easily.

The Future of WordPress: What to Expect (Our Predictions) – Over the years, WordPress has continued to grow and evolve to meet the changing needs of website owners. But what can we expect in the future? In this article, we talked about the future of WordPress and what you can expect.

How to Optimize the Customer Journey for WooCommerce Store – By optimizing the WooCommerce customer journey, you can increase conversion rates, improve customer satisfaction, and boost profits. In this article, we shared how to optimize the customer journey for your WooCommerce store from beginning to end.

WordPress Career Options – How to Make a Living With WordPress – Want to make a living using WordPress? In this article, we shared several career options that let you make a living using WordPress.

Creator Economy Statistics That Will Blow You Away – From full-time content creators to hobbyists, the creator economy industry has grown a lot over the years. Our research team compiled creator economy statistics that will surprise you.

October

How to Do a SEO Content Gap Analysis (Beginner’s Guide) – If you are struggling to find good topics to blog about or want to boost your existing posts to the top, then a content gap analysis is a surefire way to steal competitor traffic. In this article, we outlined the steps to perform an SEO content gap analysis so you can gain an edge over your competitors’ sites.

What Is Google Knowledge Panel + How to Claim It With WordPress – Google often displays informational panels called Knowledge Panels about people, organizations, and products. In this article, we explained Google Knowledge Panels and how you can claim one with WordPress.

How to Determine the Ideal Size of a Web Server for Your Website – The size of a web server depends on different components and resources. More popular websites will need a larger web server, but lower-traffic websites can get by with a smaller one. In this article, we showed how to determine the size of a web server best suited to your website.

How Much Is My Website Worth? (REAL Value) – Buying and selling websites is a massive industry. Knowing your website’s value can help you feel good about its progress and stay motivated to keep growing it. In this article, we talked about how to calculate your website’s worth.

How to Quickly Generate 100+ Blog Post Ideas (3 Methods) – Many bloggers struggle to find blog post ideas to keep their audience engaged. In this guide, we shared quick and easy ways to generate 100+ blog post ideas.

November

60+ Affiliate Marketing Statistics You Need to Know – The affiliate marketing industry is how many content creators make their living. For this article, our research team compiled affiliate marketing statistics that may surprise you.

A Complete Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Full Site Editing – Full Site Editing has changed how users can build their websites using WordPress. In this article, we showed how to use the WordPress Full Site Editor.

How to Stress Test a WordPress Website – Stress testing a WordPress website will show how your website will perform in different situations. This way, you can ensure fast performance and resolve any issues. In this article, we showed how to stress test a WordPress website easily.

Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Email Marketing Automation – Email marketing automation allows you to save time by automating tasks, creating drip emails, and using tools to grow your email list. In this beginner’s guide, we walked you through WordPress email marketing automation with tips, tricks, and tools that you can use.

How to Monitor Google Algorithm Updates in WordPress – Google algorithm updates are changes made by Google to its search engine ranking algorithm. These updates can significantly impact your website’s visibility in search engines and its organic traffic. In this article, we explained how to monitor Google algorithm updates in WordPress.

December

9 Best Credit Card Processing Plugins for WordPress (Compared) – Credit card processing plugins are the best way to accept online payments on your WordPress site. In this article, we compared the best credit card processing plugins and show you how to pick the right one for your business.

How to Grow Pricing Page Conversions by 30% Today (9 Ways) – In this guest post, Thomas Griffin, co-founder of OptinMonster, shared his no-nonsense list of the best tips for how to grow your pricing page conversions by at least 30%.

How to Create a Wholesale Order Form in WordPress (3 Ways) – A wholesale form lets buyers purchase in bulk and customize the products to fit their needs. In this article, we discussed how to create a wholesale order form in WordPress so customers can buy your products in bulk faster.

How to Get Website Design Feedback in WordPress (Step by Step) – Website design feedback is vital for improving the user experience for your visitors. In this guide, we shared how to get feedback on your WordPress website design using a survey widget.

These were some of the best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner in 2023. We hope that you found them helpful.

We want to thank all WPBeginner users who visited our website, offered feedback, left comments, and shared our content with others. We truly appreciate you.

We look forward to adding even more helpful WordPress tutorials in 2024. Have a Happy New Year.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2023 on WPBeginner first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 2, 2023

How to Create a WooCommerce Product Image Gallery (Step by Step)

Do you want to create WooCommerce product galleries to add to blog posts or pages?

WooCommerce product galleries are an easy way to display your products outside your shop pages. It helps attract more customers and boosts conversions.

In this article, we will show you how to easily create a WooCommerce product image gallery (step by step).

How to create a WooCommerce product image gallery

Why Should You Create WooCommerce Product Galleries?

WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin in the market. It allows you to sell products by creating an online store.

Most WordPress themes for WooCommerce come with default templates for shop and shop category pages. These pages simply list your products using the theme’s style.

What if you wanted to create a product gallery and display it inside a blog post or another page on your site? By displaying your products in your popular blog posts and pages, you can increase your sales and conversions.

Let’s take a look at how to easily create WooCommerce product image galleries with Envira Gallery.

Creating WooCommerce Product Galleries with Envira

The best way to create a WooCommerce product gallery in WordPress is by using Envira Gallery. It is the best WordPress photo gallery plugin and makes it very easy to show products anywhere on your site.

The first thing you need to do is to install and activate the Envira Gallery plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to go to the Envira Gallery » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the Envira Gallery website.

Once the license key is verified, you can go to Envira Gallery » Addons to install and activate the ‘Featured Content’ addon.

This addon will allow you to display your WooCommerce products in the Envira galleries. Go ahead and click the ‘Install’ button under the Featured Content Addon.

Next, you need to go to the Envira Gallery » Add New page to create your new product gallery.

From here, you can start by adding a title for the new gallery.

After the title, you need to switch to the ‘External Gallery’ tab and click the ‘Featured Content’ option.

Next, scroll down to the ‘Images’ tab. In the ‘Select Your Post Type(s)’ field, you need to select the ‘Product’ option, which is the custom post type for WooCommerce products.

If you have hundreds of products, then you may want to create multiple galleries.

You can narrow down the gallery listings by selecting taxonomy terms for specific product tags or categories.

Simply repeat this process with different product tags and categories each time you create a new product gallery. The post type will always be ‘Product’ in all your WooCommerce product galleries.

You can also choose a taxonomy term relation to select and display specific products in your galleries.

For more details, you should check out our guide on how to create an image gallery in WordPress.

Once you are done, you can publish your product gallery which will make it available to be added anywhere on your WordPress site.

Adding WooCommerce Product Gallery in WordPress

Next, you can add a new post or page or edit an existing one to display your WooCommerce product gallery.

Once you’re in the content editor, simply click the ‘+’ button and add the Envira Gallery block.

After that, you can select your product image gallery in the Envira Gallery block.

Simply click the dropdown menu and choose the gallery you created earlier.

Select your product gallery from the dropdown menu

You’ll now see a preview of your gallery in the block editor. If it doesn’t load, then don’t worry, you can simply preview your blog post or page to see if it’s working properly.

Next, you can save and publish your post. After that, visit your website to see the product gallery in action.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create a WooCommerce product image gallery. You may also want to check out our guide on the must have WordPress plugins for business websites and how to choose the best design software.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a WooCommerce Product Image Gallery (Step by Step) first appeared on WPBeginner.

January 7, 2022

17 Best WordPress Plugins for Photographers

Are you a photographer using WordPress and wondering what are some of the best WordPress plugins for photographers?

WordPress plugins help you improve your workflow, automate different tasks, optimize your website for search engines, and provide a better user experience to your visitors.

In this article, we will show you the best WordPress plugins for photographers.

Why Use a WordPress Photography Plugin?

Thousands of photographers use WordPress to share their work with the world. That’s because WordPress is the easiest way to build a photography website.

With the right photography theme, you can create a completely unique look for your website. However, the real power of WordPress comes from plugins that allow you to add new features and automate multiple tasks to improve your workflows.

For instance, you can use an SEO plugin to optimize your images and website for search engines and improve your keyword rankings. Similarly, there are plugins for displaying your photographs in galleries and image sliders, making them elegant and prominent on your site.

Aside from that, you’d also want to promote your work and get traffic more traffic to your website. This is where you can use social media WordPress plugins to grow your followers.

That said, let’s look at some of the best WordPress plugins for photographers.

1. Smash Balloon

Smash Balloon is the best social media WordPress plugin. It’s an extremely useful plugin for photographers because it helps you display photos, videos, and other content from social media platforms on your WordPress website.

You can create a custom Twitter feed, Facebook feed, YouTube feed, and Instagram feed using Smash Balloon. It also helps create a social wall, where you can combine content from multiple social channels and show them in a single feed.

This can save you a lot of time, since any photos you post on your social media accounts will automatically be added to your professional website, too.

The plugin is very easy to use and offers lots of design options, so you can customize your social feeds to match your brand. Smash Balloon is SEO-friendly and helps leverage social proof to boost engagement, increase followers, and grow your business.

2. Envira Gallery

Envira is the best responsive WordPress gallery plugin on the market. It allows you to effortlessly create mobile-friendly and fully responsive image galleries in WordPress that look equally awesome on all devices and screen sizes.

Image galleries created with Envira Gallery load much faster, which makes it super fun and easy for your users to browse the galleries. You can also enable watermarks to prevent image theft.

Envira Gallery is also the most search engine-friendly gallery plugin. It allows you to add metadata for your images and galleries easily. It works great with other SEO plugins as well.

3. Soliloquy

Soliloquy is the best WordPress slider plugin. It allows you to quickly and easily create fully responsive slideshows within minutes. You can add those sliders to any page, post, or even your homepage.

It’s a great plugin to showcase your photographs on your WordPress website. Users can easily browse through different pictures using the slider.

Soliloquy is highly optimized for speed, which means your pages will load faster. Visual effects, customizations, and SEO-friendly slides are just some of the features of this easy-to-use tool.

4. Uncanny Automator

Uncanny Automator is the best automation plugin for WordPress. You can use it on your website to create automated workflows without editing code.

As a photographer, you can save time by automating repetitive tasks like processing data from contact forms, offering support, sharing your pictures on social media, and more.

With Uncanny Automator, you can use existing plugins and software to talk to each other. It supports over 70 of the most popular WordPress plugins and offers over 700 triggers and actions.

For example, Uncanny Automator lets you automatically Tweet new posts, connect any WordPress form with Google Sheets to save data, send SMS notifications for WooCommerce purchases, and much more.

5. WPForms

WPForms is the most beginner-friendly contact form plugin for WordPress. It helps your clients to stay in touch with you by using a contact form. You can also accept quotations and proposals for new projects using WPForms.

Its drag and drop online form builder allows you to easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, order forms, payment forms, and other types of online forms with just a few clicks.

WPForms comes with pre-built templates, spam protection, and each form is responsive for any device. It also lets you collect files and documents through form submissions and accept online payments.

The plugin is compatible with other popular WordPress plugins, email marketing services, and payment providers.

6. All in One SEO

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and is a complete website optimization solution. It helps you to get more traffic from search engines.

Using AIOSEO, you can optimize your site for featured snippets, create sitemaps, perform a competitor analysis to beat your competition, and more.

For photographers, WordPress SEO allows you to optimize your pages and use open graph metadata. Open Graph is used by Facebook and many other social websites to display your pages properly when shared.

It also includes image SEO options so you can optimize your photographs to appear more often in search results and get more traffic to your website.

We have a complete tutorial on how to install and set up the AIOSEO plugin for more details.

7. BirchPress

BirchPress is a complete online appointment and booking system for WordPress sites.

It allows users to place their booking on your website and even pay for it using PayPal. For professional photographers, this enables you to get more paid work.

The plugin easily syncs with your calendar and you can set email notifications and reminders when an appointment is booked, rescheduled, or canceled. Other than that, you can also create your own booking form using BirchPress.

Basically, any good appointment and booking plugin would work. You may also want to take a look at our list of the 5 best WordPress appointment and booking plugins.

8. WP Portfolio

WP Portfolio is the best portfolio plugin for WordPress that helps you showcase your work to your visitors. You can use it to easily create a gallery to display your photographs.

The plugin offers ready-to-use website templates for your photography portfolio. Simply add the pictures to the portfolio and display them anywhere on your website using a shortcode.

WP Portfolio also offers different options to customize your image portfolio without the need to write code or add custom CSS. You can also use the plugin to showcase a website portfolio and a video portfolio in WordPress.

9. Regenerate Thumbnails

Regenerate Thumbnails is a free WordPress plugin for photographers and is super easy to use. It helps you regenerate all thumbnails sizes for any image you’ve uploaded in the Media Library.

When you upload an image in WordPress, it automatically saves your images into multiple sizes. Your WordPress theme can also add additional image sizes. However, when new sizes are added to WordPress, the old photos are not available in those new sizes.

Regenerate Thumbnails solves this issue, and it is a must-have tool for all WordPress photography sites. You can quickly turn any image into a thumbnail and in any size using the plugin.

10. Image Widget

Image Widget is a handy plugin that lets you display images in the widgets area like the sidebar on your website.

WordPress comes with an image widget that you can add to your sidebar, but the options are limited. The Image Widget plugin solves this problem by adding a more customizable image widget to your WordPress site. It’s also responsive so it will look good on any size screen.

Simply drag and drop the widget to any sidebar or add a widget block. Next, select an image or upload one from your computer. You can also add multiple image widgets in a sidebar.

11. EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer is another popular WordPress plugin that you can use on your photography website to optimize your images. It helps improve your website speed by compressing oversized images.

As a photographer, you will have many images in high resolution which will be large in size. These images can slow down your website and increase your site’s bounce rate.

With EWWW Image Optimizer, you can automatically compress these images to reduce their size and scale them to fit different device sizes. This way your users won’t have to wait for your photographs to load.

There is also an option to lazy load images and improve page load time. Lazy load allows your website to only load images when a user scrolls down to the specific picture.

12. Easy Watermark

Easy Watermark plugin allows you to add watermarks to image uploads in WordPress automatically. As a photographer, you may want to add watermarks to your photographs to protect them from theft or misuse.

You can choose an image, set transparency, and watermark position. The plugin offers different formats for your image watermark, including JPG, PNG, or GIF formats.

The plugin can also add a watermark to all previously uploaded images. For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to automatically add watermark to images in WordPress.

13. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a must-have plugin for any website, especially for photographers. It helps speed up your site which is important for your WordPress SEO.

Speed is an important factor for all websites. For photography websites, it is even more critical because images are usually the most time-consuming elements on the page.

Using WP Rocket, you can improve your page load speed significantly. For the proper configurations, see our guide on how to install and setup WP Rocket.

Note: If you’re using SiteGround as your WordPress hosting, then you don’t need WP Rocket because their performance plugin is very powerful.

14. Imsanity

Imsanity is one of the best WordPress photography plugins that help to resize and save storage space.

When you transfer images from your camera and mobile devices, they are usually high-resolution images with image sizes reaching 3MB to 24MB+ per image.

Imsanity allows you to define more reasonable image sizes for the images you upload to WordPress. This not only saves you bandwidth but also makes your website faster with a better user experience.

The plugin will automatically scale down the images to the configured size and offer a bulk image resize option.

15. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the best lead generation and conversion optimization toolkit for WordPress. It helps you capture leads, optimize your site for conversions, and get people to subscribe to your newsletter.

With OptinMonster, you can build an email list for your photography website. That’s because most people who find your website through search engines and other sources will probably never find your website again.

This is where getting people to subscribe to your newsletter can be beneficial. As a photographer, you can stay in touch with your audience, share your latest work via email, and get people to visit your website again.

Besides that, an email list can also help you get more clients. You can build your brand, increase awareness with your subscribers, and convert subscribers into paying customers.

OptinMonster is the perfect solution for converting visitors into subscribers and customers. Please take a look at our case study where we increased our email subscribers by more than 600% using OptinMonster.

16. MemberPress

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin and it helps you make money from your photography website. You can offer digital downloads of your pictures to members.

For instance, you can create different membership levels and offer exclusive content about photography like downloadable pictures, blog posts, podcasts, eBooks, and more to only logged-in users with a paid subscription.

Besides that, MemberPress is great for selling online courses. You can create a professional photography course for your audience and use the plugin to monetize your website.

Other features offered by the plugin include creating a registration form, restricting permission, and managing your transactions.

17. Easy Digital Downloads

Easy Digital Downloads is one of the best eCommerce plugins for WordPress that lets you sell eBooks, PDFs, music files, images, and more.

Using the plugin, you can sell your photographs to your visitors and make more money. It is very easy to use and offers seamless integration with payment services like PayPal and Stripe.

You get a full shopping cart with Easy Digital Downloads along with different customer management features. For instance, you can view, edit, or delete customer records, track customer activity, and more.

Besides that, the plugin lets you track your earnings and shows a report inside the WordPress dashboard. You can also create discount codes using the plugin to boost sales.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress plugins for photographers. You may also want to check out our guide on how to choose the best blogging platform and the list of 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 17 Best WordPress Plugins for Photographers first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 9, 2020

How to Fix Common Image Issues in WordPress

WordPress comes with some pretty neat tools to manage and edit images. You can easily upload images, align them, and even edit them inside WordPress.

Most beginners are not aware of these WordPress image editing features. It takes users a while to discover out some of them while other features go completely unnoticed.

If you ever had a question about WordPress images, then you’re in luck. In this article, we will cover the most common image issues in WordPress and how to fix them.

Since this is a detailed article, here is the list of image related issues that we will cover this article.

How to Upload Images in WordPress?
How to Align Image to the Left or Right in WordPress?
How to Add Caption below Images?
How to Display Photos in Columns and Rows?
Create Beautiful Responsive Image Galleries in WordPress
How to Fix Missing Post Thumbnails / Featured Image?
How to Add Cover Images in WordPress Posts and Pages
How to Fix Featured Image Appearing Twice Issue?
Image too Big? How to Crop Images in WordPress?
How to Add a Header Image in WordPress?
How to Add a Background Image in WordPress?
How to Find Free Images for Your WordPress Blog Posts?
How to Tag Images in WordPress?
How to Import External Images in WordPress?
How to Require Featured Image for Posts in WordPress?
How to Set a Default Featured Image in WordPress?
How to Remove the Default Image Link in WordPress?

Let’s start with the most obvious one.

1. How to Upload images in WordPress?

WordPress makes it super easy to upload images to your posts, pages, and non-content areas like sidebars.

To upload images in WordPress posts and pages, you simply need to add the image block to the content editor.

You can also add the image block by simply typing /image in a paragraph block. The editor will start showing blocks you can insert as soon as you start typing.

WordPress will now add the image block to the editor. You need to click on the ‘Upload’ button to select and upload the image from your computer.

You can also select a previously uploaded image from your media library.

After uploading the image, you’ll see a live preview of the image in the content editor.

You’ll see a bunch of image settings on the right panel. From there you can provide image alt text, select image size, and image style.

2. How to Align Image to the Left or Right in WordPress?

WordPress makes it easier to align images to the left, right, or center. Simply select the image by clicking on it, and then click on alignment button from the block toolbar.

You may have noticed how some popular blogs use images with text wrapped around them. This is done by using the align feature.

Alternatively, you can also use the ‘Media & Text’ block instead of the image block. This block is made specifically for adding images next to the text.

You can then upload an image and text side by side. You can also use the block toolbar to change the image or text side.

3. How to Add Caption below Images?

WordPress allows you to easily add caption for images. After you upload an image, you’ll see the option to add caption right below the image preview.

Similarly, you can also add captions to image galleries in WordPress. For more details, see our guide on how to add captions to images in WordPress.

4. How to Display Photos in Columns and Rows?

Often users ask us how to neatly display photos in columns and rows.

Let’s say you want to share photos of a birthday party or vacation photos. You can add them one by one into a post, but this will look like a lengthy list of images.

The better way to group your photos is by creating image galleries.

WordPress comes with a built-in gallery block that allows you to easily add images in rows and columns with thumbnail previews.

Simply add the gallery block to the post editor and select the images you want to upload.

For more detailed instructions see our guide on how to create an image gallery in WordPress.

5. Create Beautiful Responsive Image Galleries in WordPress

You will notice that the default WordPress image galleries lack several features. For instance, they are also not very easy to browse.

If you often upload images and photographs to your WordPress site, then you will need a proper WordPress photo gallery plugin.

We recommend using Envira Gallery. It allows you to easily create beautiful and fully mobile-friendly image galleries on your WordPress site.

The best part is that it adds additional functionality like albums, gallery templates, social sharing, slideshows, watermarking, pagination, password protection, tagging, fullscreen view, and much more.

6. How to Fix Missing Post Thumbnails / Featured Image?

Most WordPress themes allow you to prominently display a featured image with your articles. Here is how to set a featured image in WordPress to avoid missing thumbnails.

Now, you can click on ‘Set Featured Image’ to upload your post thumbnail. After uploading the image, you’ll be able to see your post thumbnail in the featured image meta box like this:

For more details, see our guide on how to add featured image or post thumbnail in WordPress.

7. How to Add Cover Images in WordPress Posts and Pages

Cover images are the wide or full-width images that can be used as a separator between different sections of an article or a lengthy sales page.

They are highly engaging and help users easily scan a page without feeling overwhelmed by too much text.

To add a cover image, you simply need to add the ‘Cover’ block to the content editor.

Next, you need to upload the image you want to use from your computer or select one from the media library. If you don’t want to use an image, then you can also select a color background as the cover.

Tip: It is best to use a large image for a better result.

You’ll now see a liver preview of your cover image in the editor. You can change the cover image display options from the block toolbar or using the settings on the right.

To learn more see our guide on the difference between cover image vs featured image in WordPress and how to use them effectively.

8. How to Fix Featured Image Appearing Twice Issue?

Inserting the featured image inside content is a common mistake made by beginners.

Once you set a featured image, you don’t need to insert it into the post editor along with your post content.

Doing so, will make your featured image appear twice. Once as the featured image, and once as an image inside the post.

You can add other images in your post, but your featured image goes in the featured image box.

For more details, see our guide on how to fix featured image appearing twice in WordPress posts.

9. Image too Big? How to Crop Images in WordPress?

When you are uploading images from your phone or camera they are usually too big.

WordPress automatically creates small, medium, and large image sizes for your original upload. But sometimes you may need to crop the image in a different size.

WordPress is no Photoshop, but it comes with some basic image editing features like scale, crop, flip and rotate images.

Go to Media » Add New and upload your image. After uploading the image, you will see an Edit link next to the uploaded image.

Clicking on it will open the Edit Media screen where you will see an Edit Image button right below the image. This will open the WordPress image editor.

From here you can click on the ‘Edit Image’ button below the image preview. This will open the image editing screen.

On the image editor screen, you will see buttons to perform some basic image editing tasks such as cropping, rotating, resizing, etc.

For more detailed instructions see our guide on how to crop, rotate, scale, and flip images in WordPress.

10. How to Add a Header Image in WordPress?

A header image in WordPress is a theme feature. Many WordPress free and premium themes comes with support for header image.

You can upload your own custom header image from the Appearance » Customize page.

Since it is a theme feature, many WordPress themes come with their own header options. Some allow you to set a site-wide header image, while others allow you to only set a header image for the homepage.

11. How to Add a Background Image in WordPress?

Just like the custom header image, custom background image is also a WordPress theme feature. Many WordPress themes come with support for custom background images.

Visit Appearance » Customize to launch the theme customizer. If you can see the Background Image option, then your theme has support for custom backgrounds.

It is a theme feature which is why it varies from one theme to another. Depending on your theme you’ll see different options for styling your background image.

If your theme does not support background image, then you can still use a plugin to add full-screen background images to your website.

12. How to Find Free Images for Your WordPress Blog Posts?

Images can make your articles stand out. However, you must respect copyrights of other people and try to find images that you are legally allowed to use.

We are often asked by our readers about how to find best royalty free images to use in their posts?

There are many websites where you can find free images to use. However, you will soon notice that images on those sites look overused and generic.

See our list of the best sources for free public domain and CC0-licensed images on the internet.

13. How to Tag Images in WordPress?

If you run a photography blog, then you will notice that WordPress does not allow you to sort photos and images.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could add tags to your images, so that you and your users can easily browse them?

Luckily, there are some great plugins that allow you to do just that.

For a photography related blog, the best option is to use Envira Gallery which comes with an add-on to add tags.

Envira Gallery allows you to create beautiful, mobile-ready, photo galleries in WordPress. Using tags, your users can easily filter and sort photos without even reloading a page.

For more details, see our article on how to add categories and tags to WordPress media library.

14. How to Import External Images in WordPress?

This question often comes up when you are migrating your site to WordPress. Some images on your website may still be pointing to older location.

Specially users importing blogs from Blogger, Squarespace, or WordPress.com may face this problem.

While the images on your site may appear correctly, they are still loading from external source. To solve this issue, all you need to do is install and activate Auto Upload Images plugin.

The plugin will check for external images once you update or save any post or page. You can manually do that for each post or page or you can bulk edit all posts and simply click the update button.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to import external images in WordPress.

15. How to Require Featured Image for Posts in WordPress?

When running a multi-author site in WordPress, some of your authors may not be familiar with the featured image functionality.

In this case, you may want to remind yourself or your users to upload a featured image whenever they are submitting a post in WordPress.

You can do this by installing and activating the Require Featured Image plugin.

Once activated, the plugin will display a notification box in the post edit area, informing users that this post requires a featured image.

You and your users will be able to save posts as drafts, but you cannot publish the post until you add a featured image.

See our article on how to require featured images for posts in WordPress for more instructions.

16. How to Set a Default Featured Image in WordPress?

Finding the perfect featured image for every post or article is a tough task. Sometimes you may not want to add a featured image to a post, but your theme may look awkward without a featured image.

This is where a default featured image can come in handy. A default featured image is used when an article does not have a featured image of its own.

You can set a default featured image by using the default featured image plugin.

We hope this article helped you fix some of the most common image issues in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Fix Common Image Issues in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 27, 2019

7 Best WordPress Portfolio Plugins for Designers & Photographers

Are you a designer or photographer looking for the easiest way to build a portfolio website in WordPress?

There are plenty of WordPress portfolio plugins that allow you to easily build beautiful portfolio websites.

However, finding the perfect portfolio plugin can be difficult for beginners. You will need to find a plugin that makes your work stand out, loads fast, and looks good on mobile devices.

In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress portfolio plugins for designers and photographers.

Choosing Between WordPress Portfolio Themes vs WordPress Portfolio Plugins

Many WordPress portfolio themes come with built-in functionality to create a portfolio website.

This makes many beginners wonder why would anyone want to choose a plugin when themes can do the job?

Themes in WordPress are only supposed to handle the visual appearance of your website. This includes colors, styles, layouts, and presentation of your content.

Plugins on the other hand are the proper way to add functionality to your WordPress site such as slider, contact form, and more.

Adding a portfolio comes under functionality, which is why we recommend using a plugin.

Using a theme for functionality ties your website with that theme. If you change the theme, then you will lose your portfolio data.

On the other hand, if you decide to use a portfolio plugin, then you are free to use it with any theme you want.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the top WordPress portfolio plugins.

1. WP Portfolio

WP Portfolio is the best WordPress portfolio plugin for photographers, freelancers, developers, and agencies. It allows you to instantly create portfolio websites from 40+ professionally designed portfolio templates.

It is made by the creators of Astra Theme, which is one of the best WordPress themes of all times. WP Portfolio brings the same ease of use to portfolios.

It comes with multiple style choices, layouts, supports all types of media, and can be easily customized without writing any code or CSS.

Most importantly, all portfolio layouts look equally great on mobile devices and work as elegantly as they do on laptops.

2. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is a premium WordPress gallery plugin. It allows you to create beautiful image galleries and albums. Already used by thousands, Envira Gallery is the best WordPress plugin for photographers and designers.

Creating a portfolio with Envira Gallery is quite easy. Simply create galleries containing your portfolio items with optional description and details. You can also group galleries into Albums or make filterable portfolio.

The plugin also makes it easy to add your portfolio anywhere on your WordPress site with the click of a button.

For detailed instructions, take a look at our guide on how to add a portfolio to your WordPress site.

3. NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN Gallery is a popular WordPress plugin for creating image galleries, albums, and photography portfolios. Loved by beginners and expert photographers alike, NextGen comes with an intuitive user interface to create galleries.

It includes multiple styles and layout choices with support for albums, filterable portfolio, columns, and more. You can also create portfolio carousel/slider, compact portfolio albums, and list or timeline style layouts.

4. Visual Portfolio

Visual Portfolio is an elegant WordPress portfolio plugin that allows you to create beautiful portfolio galleries.

It comes with multiple layout styles including masonry, grid, justified, tiles, and carousel. The plugin also includes a Gutenberg block which makes it even easier to add a portfolio anywhere you like.

Your users can also sort portfolio items using filters, which offers a beautiful browsing experience.

5. GridKit Portfolio Gallery

GridKit Portfolio Gallery is a simple WordPress photo gallery and portfolio plugin. It allows you to manage portfolio items in projects and make them sortable. It comes with support for new WordPress block editor with shortcode support for older editor.

The base plugin is very with limited layout styles and features. You’ll need the premium version to get access more styles and features.

6. Meow Gallery

Meow Gallery is a free WordPress gallery plugin with full Gutenberg block editor support. It allows you to organize your portfolio items in beautiful image galleries.

It ships with support for multiple layouts including masonry, grid, tile, and justified. You can select the number of columns you want to display. It also comes with several add-on plugins that can be used for additional functionality like lightbox, audio commentary, external links, and more.

7. Genesis Portfolio Pro

If you are using a StudioPress theme or any theme made for the Genesis theme framework, then you would want to try Genesis Portfolio Pro plugin.

It is made specifically for Genesis framework and provides a custom post type to create your portfolio items. It also comes with templates to display the featured image you set as the portfolio item in a grid layout.

It is a simple plugin and does not include many features of several other portfolio plugins. However, if you are looking for something minimalist, then it would get the job done nicely.

That’s all we hope this article helped you find the best WordPress portfolio plugins for designers and photographers. You may also want to see our list of 41 best free photography themes for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best WordPress Portfolio Plugins for Designers & Photographers appeared first on WPBeginner.

May 31, 2019March 5, 2024

5 Best WordPress Slider Plugins – Performance + Quality (Compared)

Are you looking for the best WordPress slider plugin?

There are dozens of WordPress slider plugins on the market that you can use. However, not all of them are created equal. We’ve found that most of them have poor performance or limited customization options.

In this article, we will show you a list of the best WordPress slider plugins, so you can choose the right one for your needs.

What Makes a Good WordPress Slider Plugin?

When choosing the plugins for this showcase, we installed each tool on our test site to explore its pros, cons, and features. This allowed us to recommend only the best WordPress slider plugins.

We’ve found that a good WordPress slider plugin should offer a good balance of these features:

Ease of use – A user-friendly plugin interface is very important. The best slider plugins offer a drag-and-drop builder with a visual editor for easy slide creation.
Responsiveness – The plugin should offer a fully responsive design so your sliders will easily adapt to any desktop, tablet, or mobile device.
Customizability – The plugin should offer enough customization options to make the slider suit your website design. Examples include transition effects, font options, custom animations, slider templates, and so on.
Performance – Ideally, the plugin should be fast and not affect the page loading time on your site. This way, your site can be fast and SEO-friendly.
Support for various media types – If you want to create a testimonial or video slider, then it would be best if the plugin supports other media files besides images.

With all this in mind, the best slider plugin for your WordPress blog or site will depend on your specific requirements, technical skills, and budget. Therefore, we recommend testing the plugins that catch your attention to see if one of them is the right solution for your needs.

Now, let’s look at our expert pick of the best WordPress slider plugins.

1. Soliloquy

Out of all the WordPress slider plugins we’ve tried, Soliloquy is the fastest and most beginner-friendly option.

To test the plugin’s speed, we installed each slider plugin on a demo WordPress site. We uploaded the same images to create a slider, didn’t change any other settings, and embedded the slider on a blank WordPress page.

After that, we used the Pingdom speed testing tool to run the test. Here are the results:

Slider Plugin	Page Load Time	Requests	Page Size
Soliloquy	860 ms	22	679 KB
MetaSlider	863 ms	25	229 KB
Smart Slider 3	865 ms	19	382 KB
Envira Gallery	899 ms	18	896 KB
Master Slider	900 ms	22	345 KB
SeedProd	1030 ms	19	349 KB

As you can see in the above scores, Soliloquy was the fastest-loading WordPress slider in our tests, followed by MetaSlider. Plus, if you look at the test results, then you will see that Soliloquy increased the page size without affecting the speed.

Soliloquy also comes with an easy drag-and-drop user interface to create your sliders. You can then change the slider template, resize the images, adjust the transition duration, and so on.

If you know some code, then you can also use custom CSS to further customize the slider.

Pros of Soliloquy:

You can create various types of sliders without worrying about slowing down your WordPress website.
Mobile-friendly sliders out of the box, with support for touch-swipe on mobile and tablet devices.
Besides images from the media library, you can also use your WooCommerce products, Instagram photos, PDFs, and posts/pages/custom post types to create your sliders.
Multiple ways to embed the slider in WordPress posts or pages: shortcodes, a Gutenberg editor block, a button for the old classic editor, and a widget.
Various add-ons to enable advanced features, like dynamic content support, lightbox, right-click protection, thumbnail navigation, and more.

Cons of Soliloquy:

The free plugin is only enough for creating a simple image slideshow. That’s why we recommend getting the premium version to make the most out of its features.

Pricing: Free plugin available. The premium plans start from $19.50 per year to create unlimited sliders on 1 website and 1 year of support and updates. You can use our Soliloquy coupon code to get 10% off of your purchase.

Why we chose Soliloquy: If you run a photography or any other image-heavy website, then investing in Soliloquy is a great idea. You can create multiple sliders using its easy-to-use controls without worrying it will negatively affect your website speed.

You can learn more about this WordPress slider plugin in our Soliloquy review.

2. Envira Gallery

Is Envira Gallery the right photo and video gallery plugin for you?

If you are looking for the best WordPress slider plugin for images, then check out Envira Gallery. This gallery plugin comes with a Slideshow Add-on that can turn your lightbox gallery into a beautiful slideshow.

This means that you can display multiple pictures in a regular lightbox gallery. When users click on an image in that gallery, they can navigate through the different pictures using a slider.

The Slideshow Add-on is pretty easy to use. You can set the slideshow to automatically play once it’s opened, pause it when a cursor hovers over it, and configure the speed of the slideshow.

Envira Gallery offers several gallery layouts to choose from. You can choose the automatic layout so that the gallery automatically adjusts its layout based on how many images are there. Alternatively, the square layout can emulate a social media photo feed.

Besides that, you can enable lazy loading so that the gallery doesn’t weigh down your web page. This way, you can maintain a stable and fast performance and make sure your website is SEO-friendly.

Pros of Envira Gallery:

Easy-to-use Slideshow Add-on that turns a lightbox gallery into an image slider.
Beautiful gallery layouts out of the box.
Lazy loading feature to prevent slowing down the web page.
Mobile-specific settings to ensure the slideshow looks good on smartphone screens, such as setting custom dimensions for the gallery.
Right-click protection to make sure no unauthorized users can save your images without permission.

Cons of Envira Gallery:

The Slideshow Add-on only supports images.

Pricing: Free plugin available, but you need to purchase a Basic plan ($39.50 per year) or higher to use the Slideshow Add-on. You can use our Envira Gallery coupon to get 10% off your purchase.

Why we chose Envira Gallery: Envira Gallery is one of the most beautiful image gallery plugins we’ve tried, so it was a no-brainer for us to feature it in this list. It’s a great option if you want to create a good-looking yet speed-optimized image slideshow for your website.

You can learn more about the plugin in our Envira Gallery review.

3. MetaSlider

MetaSlider is one of the most popular WordPress slider plugins on the market. Many well-known companies like Vimeo and NASA have used this plugin to create fast and fully responsive sliders on their websites.

If you are only looking to create a simple image slider, then the free version is enough. The drag-and-drop builder lets you create a slideshow or a carousel using images from the media library or Unsplash, which is a free stock photo library.

The live preview makes it easy to see what the slider will look like when it’s published.

However, the real power comes in its Pro version. MetaSlider Pro supports various types of content for the slides, like images, videos, posts, eCommerce products, and even HTML.

What’s more, MetaSlider lets you hide slides or display a different slide when viewed on mobile. As a result, you can show slides that look best on a small screen size.

Pros of MetaSlider:

User-friendly drag-and-drop builder with a live preview that connects with the WordPress media library and Unsplash.
Support for various types of slide content, from images to products and HTML.
Settings to adjust the slide for mobile viewing, like hiding the slide or using a different slide on mobile.
Multiple professional slider layouts to choose from.
Scheduled slider feature to make a slider visible only on certain dates, which is useful for online stores that want to showcase special deals or seasonal promotions.

Cons of MetaSlider:

Like Soliloquy, you will need the Pro version to leverage its full offers.

Pricing: Free plugin available. The premium plans start from $39.50 per year for 1 website license.

Why we chose MetaSlider: This WordPress slider plugin costs slightly more than Soliloquy, but we found it to be excellent for people looking to create various types of non-image sliders that look good on all devices.

4. Smart Slider 3

Do you want to create beautiful interactive sliders on your WordPress website? If so, then check out Smart Slider 3.

This WordPress slider plugin comes with 11 free sliders that support images, texts, videos, buttons, and so on. You can also layer each content element on top of each other, like adding text on top of an image. This makes it a great tool for creating presentations in WordPress.

It’s an excellent choice if you want to get users not just to sift through your slide content but also to interact with it, such as clicking on a button to read a post or check out a product.

The user interface itself is pretty different from the rest of the options in the list. The editing screen looks a bit like a photo editor, which can intimidate beginners at first. But once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty self-explanatory.

Pros of Smart Slider 3:

Professional slider layouts available in the free plugin, from full-width sliders to sliders with thumbnail navigation.
Layering feature to stack elements on top of each other in one slide.
Dynamic content support that can pull content from external sources like YouTube or Facebook.
Advanced parallax effects to make your sliders more eye-catching.

Cons of Smart Slider 3:

The abundance of customization settings and photo-editing-like user experience can seem overwhelming for complete beginners.

Pricing: Free plugin available. The premium plans start from a one-time fee of $49 for 1 website license.

Why we chose Smart Slider 3: Considering how powerful it is and the fact that it uses a one-time payment system, this WordPress slider plugin offers great value for money. The interface may seem intimidating at first but you can get used to it with some practice.

5. Master Slider

Last but not least, we have Master Slider, which is a freemium WordPress slider plugin. Like many other options on the list, it comes with a drag-and-drop interface to rearrange your slide content.

The free version supports images only, but you are able to choose the slider control buttons (like arrows, tabs, or bullets) to personalize the design. It also includes built-in caching and smart preloading to make the slider faster.

On the other hand, the Pro version includes more features, like full-width and full-screen layouts, custom slider templates, tooltips, and even a slide video background feature. That last feature is a great way to make a strong first impression on visitors when they land on your page.

Pros of Master Slider:

Easy drag-and-drop builder to move the slider content around.
Speed optimization features like caching and preloading.
Comprehensive Pro feature set to customize the sliders to your exact liking, like 90+ premium sliders, premium transitions, a slide video background, tooltips, and more.
Supports sliders from WooCommerce, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Vimeo.

Cons of Master Slider:

Some users have complained that the plugin asks them to leave reviews and ratings on the WordPress.org repository too often, so that’s something to keep in mind.

Pricing: Free plugin available. The paid version starts from $34 for a regular license. This means the plugin can only be used on one website by you or a client and is not meant to be sold to end users.

Why we chose Master Slider: We decided to feature this WordPress slider plugin on the list is its unique Pro features, like the slide video background and tooltips, which are not very common in other plugins.

Bonus: Use SeedProd to Build a Landing Page With a Slider

When you use a slider plugin, you may find it difficult to adjust the slider’s design to the rest of your page’s appearance. In this case, we recommend using a WordPress page builder with a slider element, like SeedProd.

SeedProd is a WordPress page builder that comes with an easy-to-use image carousel block.

It’s a great option for people looking to add a slider to a landing page or a custom page on their website. By using a page builder, you can ensure that your slider’s design seamlessly matches the rest of your page.

With SeedProd, you can add as many images as needed from the media library or their built-in stock photo integration. After that, simply pick a slider template that suits your needs best.

You can also adjust the dark or light mode of the slideshow navigation buttons, how many images to show in a single slide, enable autoplay, add captions, and more.

SeedProd has a free plugin, but the image carousel block is only available in the premium version. The plans start from $39.50 per year for 1 website license, but you can get 60% off using our SeedProd coupon code.

You can learn more about the plugin in our full SeedProd review.

What Is the Best WordPress Slider Plugin?

Out of all the plugins we’ve reviewed, Soliloquy is the best WordPress slider plugin on the list. During our tests, it performed the fastest and has a beginner-friendly interface that anyone can use to create their sliders.

What’s more, it has tons of add-ons you can use to extend the basic slider functionality. This way, you can pick and choose features based on what you need and avoid dealing with ones you don’t use.

If you are looking for a free WordPress slider plugin, then we recommend Smart Slider 3. It offers professional-looking slider templates out of the box and there are plenty of customization options to play with in the editing interface.

We also recommend checking out SeedProd. Sometimes, it can be hard to find an image slider plugin that works well with your theme. Since SeedProd already has an image carousel feature, you won’t have to worry about compatibility issues.

Best WordPress Slider Plugin: Frequently Asked Questions

Now that we’ve shown you the best WordPress slider plugins, let’s go through some frequently asked questions about using sliders in WordPress.

Should I use sliders on my website?

Sliders can be a good addition to your website, but whether you should use them depends on your content and design goals. They are useful for showcasing multiple images or messages without taking up too much space.

You will want to consider the visual appeal and relevance to your audience when deciding whether to use sliders on your WordPress blog or website.

What is the best size for a slider in WordPress?

It’s recommended to keep slider sizes responsive so that they adjust to different screen sizes. However, a common practice is to make the slider’s width equal to the device’s width, and its height proportional to the width, typically around 40-60%.

This helps ensure that the slider looks good on a variety of devices and screen sizes.

What is the difference between Soliloquy and Smart Slider 3?

Soliloquy and Smart Slider 3 are both popular WordPress slider plugins, but they have differences in terms of features and user interface.

Soliloquy is known for its beginner-friendliness and fast performance, while Smart Slider 3 offers slightly more advanced customization options. The choice between the two depends on your specific needs and skill level.

Ultimate Guides to Using WordPress Sliders

We hope this article answers your questions regarding the best WordPress slider plugins. You may also want to see our list of must-have WordPress plugins to grow your website or our tutorial on how to create an image gallery in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Disclaimer: We also tested other plugins for this article, including Slide Anything, Slider Revolution, Post Slider and Post Carousel, PickPlugins Product Slider for WooCommerce, and Ultimate Responsive Image Slider. However, we only included the very best options in this roundup to avoid choice paralysis.

The post 5 Best WordPress Slider Plugins – Performance + Quality (Compared) first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 4, 2019

Best WordPress Gallery Plugin – (Review Updated For Winter of 2019)

If you search for “gallery” on the WordPress plugins page, you’ll see nearly 3,000 results to choose from.

To say that number is overwhelming is an understatement.

Who has time to go through all of those plugins to determine which one is the best? Fortunately, you don’t have to. I’ve narrowed down the list to the 7 best WordPress gallery plugins for 2019.

Why You Need a Gallery Plugin

Without a gallery plugin, you’ll be forced to use the basic image gallery that’s built into the core feature set of WordPress. Does this work? Yes. But it’s extremely limiting, and you’ll never be able to take your web design to the next level with this gallery.

To add visual elements to your website that will stun your visitors and provide them with a user-friendly viewing experience, you need to install a gallery plugin.

Depending on your needs, you can find free gallery plugins, as well as paid gallery plugins. I’ve done my best to identify the best ones for different purposes, so there’s something for everyone on my list of the top seven gallery plugins that I recommend for WordPress sites.

How to Choose a WordPress Gallery Plugin

Before we dive in and look at the list, there are certain things that you should keep in mind during your search for a gallery plugin.

Speed — Adding lots of images to your website can impact your website loading time. You want a lightweight plugin that won’t slow your site down, even as you upload more photos.
Features — Are you just looking for grids, or do you want slideshow options? Do you want to upload only photos, or do you need video and audio galleries as well? Will you need ecommerce integration? These are just a few of the feature sets you should think about when you choose a plugin.
Usability — Sure, having a plugin that’s packed with features is great, but not at the cost of its ease of use. Some plugins are designed for developers and people who are a bit more tech-savvy, while others have drag-and-drop features that are really easy to use, regardless of your technical abilities.
Price — The majority of gallery plugins have a freemium version. In most cases, though, you’ll probably have to upgrade to a pro version to access the top features. You’ll want to check the feature sets for each pricing level.

The 7 Top Gallery Plugins for WordPress

Now that you know how to pick the best WordPress gallery plugin for you, we’ll take a look at some of my favorites.

1. NextGEN Gallery

With more than 900,000 active installations, NextGEN Gallery is one of the most popular WordPress gallery plugins on the market.

It’s so popular because it offers a lot of gallery options. Unlike other plugins, there isn’t one typical or standard NextGEN gallery.

You’ll first choose between the two main styles: slideshow or thumbnail. From there, you’ll decide if you want a compact or extended album style. Then, you’ll have nearly limitless choices for size, transitions, effects, timing, and things of that nature.

As you can see from this example thumbnail gallery, this plugin is perfect for photographers and artists to showcase their latest work. You can add watermarks and hotlink protection as well, which is a great feature. The lightbox galleries have deep linking options too.

But NextGEN Gallery offers much more than that. They also have ecommerce functionality, so you can sell images on your website.

You can install this plugin for free, but to get advanced features like watermarks, you’ll need to pay for the premium version.

2. Modula Image Gallery

Modula Image Gallery is one of the lightest and most responsive image gallery plugins available on WordPress. I like it because you can create galleries that are unique and fully customizable.

In addition to images, Modula lets you share video galleries as well.

This plugin has a custom grid feature — you can manually change the size of each image within the gallery. Just navigate to the custom grid option and control dimensions like height, width, and aspect ratio by simply dragging the corners of an image.

Modula Image Gallery is great for beginners, as well as more advanced WordPress users. That’s because you can apply CSS to separate galleries.

The free plugin will be suitable for most WordPress users, but if you’re looking for things like hover effects, lightbox styles, and unlimited photos, you’ll need to upgrade to one of their plans, which start at $29.

Modula Image Gallery is just for grids. To create slideshows, you’ll need to get a different plugin.

3. FooGallery

FooGallery is another highly responsive plugin. These retina-ready galleries will enhance the user experience as they navigate and explore the pictures on your website.

It’s available for free but has a pro version with additional features and benefits. But unlike other gallery plugins, the free version still comes with plenty of variety in the templates. You’ll have plenty of template options to choose from with this plugin.

Here’s how the dashboard looks in WordPress.

As you can see, it’s very easy to add photos and change the settings of the responsive gallery.

You can customize things like:

Hover effects
Paging
Captions
Filtering
Loading icons
Border sizes
Themes
Shadows
Loading effects

FooGallery also has custom CSS for developers. Another cool feature of this plugin is the infinite scroll, which is a nice option for those of you who don’t want to have photos on multiple pages within a gallery. You can also manage video galleries on your WordPress site with the FooGallery plugin. And it has tools for generating boilerplate extensions.

4. Envira Gallery

The interface of Envira Gallery is extremely user-friendly. You’ll be able to add photos with its drag and drop functionality. Similar to Modula, you can adjust the sizes of your visual elements as well.

You’ll start with one of its pre-built templates, then customize it to your liking. In addition to photos, Envira Gallery has options for video galleries.

I also like this plugin is because it’s easy to stay organized. After you add photos to an album, you can select cover photos and choose custom tags for sorting.

All of your galleries will be mobile-responsive, so site visitors won’t have any problems accessing, viewing, or navigating through content if they are browsing from a tablet or smartphone.

Envira Gallery has social media integration and is compatible with WooCommerce, making it easy to share your images on other platforms and get your social media users to purchase content from your ecommerce store.

If you’re a photographer, you can add password protection and watermarks to galleries as well. Slideshows and lightbox mode can be viewed on a full screen so that visitors can look at images in your gallery with a closer view. These features make Envira Gallery a popular choice for artists and photographers.

5. Flagallery Photo Portfolio

Flagallery Photo Portfolio has a feature that we haven’t seen so far on this list. In addition to photo and video galleries, this plugin lets you create music and audio playlists as well.

Another benefit of this plugin is the batch upload feature. It’s great for sites that want to upload a ton of content at once, while still staying organized.

It’s easy to manage all your visual content with one centralized dashboard via WordPress. From here, it’s a simple process to create collections that are fully customizable.

The plugin is optimized for SEO and compatible with all major Internet browsers.

6. Gmedia Photo Gallery

Just like Flagallery, the Gmedia Photo Gallery plugin lets you play music on your website, as well as displays photo and video albums. Gmedia Photo Gallery lets you enable comments on your albums, so website visitors can tell you what they think about your content and you can assign categories and add tags to your galleries to help you stay organized. It even includes editing features. While all of these features may not be important to you, I know some websites are definitely looking for an all-in-one plugin like this.

The drag and drop functionality is extremely user-friendly and the results are mobile responsive.

My favorite part though is the Gmedia iOS mobile app. With the app you can upload files to WordPress without having to transfer it to another device. If you’re using your smartphone to take business photos, which you probably are, this feature will save you a step in the process. You can take a photo from your phone and directly upload it. Super simple.

7. Photo Gallery by 10Web – Responsive Image Gallery

Photo Gallery by 10Web is a top choice to consider because it offers so many different options for showcasing images.

Slideshow
Thumbnails
Image browser
Masonry
Mosaic

With slideshows, you have the option to add a filmstrip above the images, so users can jump ahead instead of being forced to view one photo at a time in order. You can completely customize the dimensions of each slideshow as well.

Whenever you click an image in the thumbnail view, a lightbox will be opened. Alternatively, you can redirect each image to a specific URL, but I like the lightbox version better.

Masonry view lets you display thumbnails with different dimensions, depending on the ratio of those images. This is ideal if you have lots of photos of varying dimensions.

But the mosaic view option is probably my favorite.

The mosaic view uses the concept of masonry view, but the thumbnails are resized, so the entire content area is filled. I love the effect that this creates on the screen, and I think it’s a great way for your website to stand out from the crowd.

It’s worth noting that you’ll need to pay for the premium version to access all of these view options.

Photo Gallery by 10Web offers social sharing, watermark protection, and ecommerce integration as well. Overall, it’s definitely a top choice to consider.

Conclusion

If you want to take your visual content strategy to the next level, I highly recommend installing a gallery plugin. Don’t limit yourself with the basic image gallery that comes standard with WordPress.

There are thousands of plugins available, but instead of going through each of those one by one, use this list as a reference and framework to help you narrow down your choices:

What features do you want?
Do you need the gallery to handle just photos, or do you use other types of media? Videos? Audio files?
How much are you willing to pay?
How important is mobile uploading to you?

Some of these plugins have more features than others; it all depends on what you’re looking for. No matter which option you choose, any plugin on this list will improve your site from the perspective of your visitors.

Why Do You Need a Content Protection WordPress Plugin?

1. MemberPress (Members-Only Content)

2. OptinMonster (Email List Subscriber Content)

3. Envira Gallery (Anti Image Theft)

4. PPWP (Password Protect Pages)

5. MemberMouse (Members-Only Content)

6. WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click (Blog Content Protection)

7. Passster (Password Protect Pages)

8. Wishlist Member (Members-Only Content)

9. WP Content Copy Protection with Color Design (Protect Blog Posts and Images)

Which Is the Best Content Protection WordPress Plugin?

Frequently Asked Questions

Best WordPress Guides for Content Protection

Why Switch From NextGEN Gallery to Envira Gallery?

Step 1: Install and Set up the Envira Gallery Plugin

Step 2: Choose Which NextGEN Photo Galleries to Import

Step 3: Edit Your WordPress Envira Image Galleries

Step 4: Display Your Imported Photo Galleries

Ultimate Guides to Improve Your Envira Photo Galleries

WPBeginner Recap 2023 by Syed Balkhi

WPBeginner – Fun Fact:

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Why Should You Create WooCommerce Product Galleries?

Creating WooCommerce Product Galleries with Envira

Adding WooCommerce Product Gallery in WordPress

Why Use a WordPress Photography Plugin?

5. WPForms

15. OptinMonster

16. MemberPress

17. Easy Digital Downloads

1. How to Upload images in WordPress?

2. How to Align Image to the Left or Right in WordPress?

3. How to Add Caption below Images?

4. How to Display Photos in Columns and Rows?

5. Create Beautiful Responsive Image Galleries in WordPress

6. How to Fix Missing Post Thumbnails / Featured Image?

7. How to Add Cover Images in WordPress Posts and Pages

8. How to Fix Featured Image Appearing Twice Issue?

9. Image too Big? How to Crop Images in WordPress?

10. How to Add a Header Image in WordPress?

11. How to Add a Background Image in WordPress?

12. How to Find Free Images for Your WordPress Blog Posts?

13. How to Tag Images in WordPress?

14. How to Import External Images in WordPress?

15. How to Require Featured Image for Posts in WordPress?

16. How to Set a Default Featured Image in WordPress?

Choosing Between WordPress Portfolio Themes vs WordPress Portfolio Plugins

What Makes a Good WordPress Slider Plugin?

1. Soliloquy

2. Envira Gallery

3. MetaSlider

4. Smart Slider 3

5. Master Slider

Bonus: Use SeedProd to Build a Landing Page With a Slider

What Is the Best WordPress Slider Plugin?

Best WordPress Slider Plugin: Frequently Asked Questions

Ultimate Guides to Using WordPress Sliders

Why You Need a Gallery Plugin

How to Choose a WordPress Gallery Plugin

The 7 Top Gallery Plugins for WordPress

1. NextGEN Gallery

2. Modula Image Gallery

3. FooGallery

4. Envira Gallery

5. Flagallery Photo Portfolio

6. Gmedia Photo Gallery

7. Photo Gallery by 10Web – Responsive Image Gallery

Conclusion