Overview of Great WordPress Media Plugins

Overview of Great WordPress Media Plugins
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Introduction

In order to manage WordPress media (images in most cases), a website administrator will have to use some of the great media plugins available. Furthermore, considering the quality of some of these plugins, it is a true miracle that they come at no charge. This article will outline four great WordPress media plugins that should be installed on every WordPress blog by default.

There is no doubt that the NextGEN Gallery is the best plugin for image and gallery management currently available. Regularly updated, it was created by the Alex Rabe & NextGEN DEV-Team in 2007. This plugin has a friendly user interface and it is very easy to implement the galleries into pages, but what’s more important is the fact that this plugin has vast possibilities and options.

Some of the most important features are custom templates, albums, gallery author option, sidebar widget (displaying images from the gallery or galleries), image tag support, integrated slideshow solutions (such as jQuery or Flash), several JavaScript effects and many other. Any website that deals with large number of images should definitely try this solution.

This plugin can be downloaded here: NextGEN Gallery

jQuery Lightbox

Lightbox is a very popular image-viewing solution, as it offers both easy implementation and elegant style. In order to use the benefits of this solution on a WordPress blog, it is required to install some Lightbox plugin that will add required “rel” attribute to images, so they can use the Lightbox effect. There are numerous solutions available and since they all have the same purpose, it actually does not matter which one is installed. If webmasters don’t have a desire (or time) to seek for their favorites, they should definitely try the plugin called jQuery Lightbox.

This plugin can be downloaded here: jQuery Lightbox

Featured Content Gallery

Some sort of featured content carousel is implemented on numerous websites, as it appears to be both attractive and useful solution. As a result, there are some high-quality featured content plugins available. According to the download statistics available on the official WordPress plugin website and considering the fact that many websites rank it among the best solutions of its kind, Featured Content Gallery appears to be one of the best carousel implementations. This plugin can display desired categories, posts or pages, while it also has some custom options such as overlay text, transition time setup, etc.

This plugin can be downloaded here: Featured Content Gallery

Podcasting Plugin by TSG

Users who publish podcasts on their websites should definitely try the Podcasting Plugin by TSG, as it is the comprehensive podcasting solution for WordPress-based blogs. Besides many great features this plugin has, two of most important are certainly its ability to add a podcast into an iTunes-based feed, while the second is an integrated player that allows the visitors to view the podcast file on the web. An overview of great WordPress media plugins finishes with this plugin, but the reader is encouraged to browse the Bright Hub articles for other lists of great and useful WordPress plugins.

This plugin can be downloaded here: Podcasting Plugin by TSG