Client project - Next Gen gallery

The Next Gen gallery has been ranked as one of the top photo galleries to be used by wordpress users. Its easy to use even for new users to wordpress and does require a flash player. Having also been stated in my wordpress book I thought that this would be ideal for the site...I was wrong.

It took me over 3 full days of work to try and get the gallery up and running however wordpress is completely new to me and still comming round to where all the files are suppose to be kept made the process of attempting to create the gallery even longer.



The user is greeted with a user friendly menu (left image) providing a straight forward step by step process on how to create your gallery. Starting by creating a gallery the user is able to create as many galleries/albums that they wish to use. The galleries and albums can also be created for the user if they wish to only use certain images as each gallery has an id number, the user simply has to change the id number the code provided (the code provided is just like the code produced from the contact form, shown in previous post).

Once you have added you images you can manage your gallery (image below). In the manage gallery section the user is allowed to add image descriptions, give the images titles for the users to see. Another section is also icluded to add details about the album i.e. add descriptions about the album. I did not use this part however I could see that it could be handy if the user had multiple albums.

Even though a slider effect (image would slide on to the screen) was included Next Gen gallery also allowed a Lightbox option though you had to have the plugin for this for it to work.



Even though the gallery sounded perfect and very user friendly it did not work for me. The first problem which occurred was that I could not alter the CCS code. However like I said before I am new to wordpress and without realising I had uploaded my CCS file to another folders when I had been previously working on the site. So whilst I was working on one file the wordpress site was pulling the information from another file.

Once this had been solved I managed (with help) to make the image display in line, but there's more. When I clicked on the images rather then displaying on the same page I was directed to another page. After days of working on the gallery I come to terms that I needed help.

With Shaun having a lot of knowledge on wordpress sites he immediately explained that the problem wasn't with what I has done but it was how I wanted to display the gallery. With wordpress being a site designed for blogs the Next Gen gallery was built to be a side bar widget, and so I was trying to ise it as a full gallery when its main purpose was for a side bar widget.

I understand this now but it is a little frustrating to know that the three days of trying to solve why it wouldn't work was all pointless because it was never built to work the way I wanted it too. But its good learning process and so its better that I know about it now rather then later.