NextGEN Gallery

Version: 3.9.1

Version : 3.9.1

Current Version

The most popular WordPress gallery plugin and one of the most popular plugins of all time with over 27 million downloads.

Overall Rating
WordPress Rating

Among the best WordPress gallery plugins, NextGen Gallery plugin has been the standard since 2007. It has received over 1.5 million downloads per year.

Today we are going to give an in-depth review of this WordPress gallery plugin.

Functionalities

Installing this plugin is as easy as installing any other WordPress plugin. After installing, you will see a new menu on the dashboard named Gallery and also on the top of the menu.

You will find an onboarding video on the Overview section, which is a nice touch for anyone to get an idea of how it works. Also, there is a setup wizard to guide you through your first steps.

Overview
Overview

You can create a new gallery along with a gallery tittle on the Add Gallery/Images section. You can add files or you can import images from the media library. Also, the NextGen Gallery has the feature to import the whole folder as well.

Add images/gallery
Add images/gallery

You can manage your galleries by setting a watermark, creating new thumbnails or resize the images and many more. You can do these actions in bulk. That’s all in the Manage Galleries section.

Manage Galleries
Manage Galleries

Also, you can manage your albums as well on the Manage Albums section. You can edit, update and delete an album.

Manage Albums
Manage Albums

For managing your tags there is also a section Manage Image Tags.

Manage Tags
Manage Image Tags

You can customize your slideshow, thumbnails from the Gallery Settings section. There are options to customize the single pics also.

Settings
Gallery Settings

NextGen Gallery plugin also has options to customize the Lightbox effects, watermarks, Roles and capabilities and more on the Other Option section.

Other options
Other options

But most of the exclusive features are available on the Pro version.

Features

As the standard of Gallery plugins in WordPress, NextGen Gallery has some unique features. Like,

  • Batch uploading images
  • Grouping galleries into albums
  • Plenty of transition effects
  • Lightbox effects
  • Control size of the image
  • Add images in bulk
  • Imports metadata from photos

Advantages

Let’s see what are advantages the users will get using the NextGen Gallery plugin.

  • You can control the size of the images. That means you can set any size for the images
  • Full control over timing and transition effects
  • Supports bulk uploading via FTP
  • No shortcode needed but there is an option to use shortcodes if any users want.

Drawbacks

  • Somewhat complex learning curve
  • Navigation is difficult
  • Time needed to configure settings
  • Use a lot of resources resulting in slowing down WordPress.

For Developers

NextGen Gallery plugin has a lot of actions and filters that will help you to change many functionalities of this plugin.

For Webmasters

This gallery plugin helps you build a customizable gallery full of images for your page. You can make your content look more attractive and exclusive.

If your website is heavily image-focused, you’ve probably noticed WordPress’s shortcomings in that area. WordPress was built mainly for blogs with a focus on written content.

A photographer, designer, artist, or any other profession that relies on visual content, they’ll have a lot of images to share with their website visitors. However, the best way to organize and display those images is with image galleries.

The problem is finding an image gallery plugin that’s easy to use, makes your images look great. That is where the NextGen gallery plugin comes in.

You have the option to create slideshows or thumbnails giving your page a unique look and different from others. You have full control over the size of the images. You can use lightbox effects to take your webpage to the next level.

Technical Report

LOC

Lines of code: 78463
Logical lines of code: 50616
Comment lines of code: 27816

Object-oriented Programming

Classes 430
Interface 3
Methods 3514
Methods by class 8.17
Lack of cohesion of methods 3.28

Coupling

Average afferent coupling 2.53
Average efferent coupling 3.26
Average instability 0.75
Depth of Inheritance Tree 1.24

Package

Average classes per package 54.25
Average distance 0.32
Average incoming class dependencies 28.5
Average outgoing class dependencies 14.13
Average incoming package dependencies 2.38
Average outgoing package dependencies 2.38

Complexity

Average Cyclomatic complexity by class 24.3
Average Weighted method count by class 31.68
Average Relative system complexity 781.38
Average Difficulty 10.56

Bugs

Average bugs by class 0.6
Average defects by class (Kan) 1.53

Violations

Violations
Violations

Critical 0
Error 187
Warning 124
Information 62

Cyclomatic Complexity Chart

Cyclomatic Complexity Chart
Each file is symbolized by a circle. The size of the circle represents the Cyclomatic complexity. The color of the circle represents the Maintainability Index. Large red circles will be probably hard to maintain. Greens are easy to maintain.

Pricing

To unlock all the features, you can go for the premium versions of the NextGen Gallery plugin.

LifetimeProPlus
$ 399 $ 139 $ 79

Final Word

NextGen Gallery plugin is one of the best gallery plugins in WordPress. Although it has an array of customized options, it is rather difficult to navigate those customizations. They have quite an efficient onboarding video after installing the plugin.

  • Helpful setup wizard
  • Onboarding video to get you through
  • A lot of options for designing your gallery in the Pro version
  • Uses too many resources eventually slowing down WordPress.

The plugin have some issues.

Sorry, pal! The plugin couldn’t pass all our tests. No hard feelings, right?

Tests done by WP Hive test script Results
  • Minimal impact on memory usage The memory usage of this plugin is more than the average memory usage of other plugins on WordPress.org + 200KB
    Download Iocn
  • Minimal impact on pagespeed The impact of this plugin on PageSpeed is more than the average impact of other plugins on WordPress.org + 1000 milliseconds
    Download Iocn
  • No PHP errors, warning, notices WP Hive automated test found PHP error/s while activating this plugin on our server
    Download Iocn
  • No Javascript issues WP Hive automated test found no JavaScrip error while activating this plugin on our server
    Download Iocn
  • Latest PHP 7.4.8 compatible The latest version of the plugin is not compatible with the latest PHP version
    Download Iocn
  • Latest WordPress 5.7 compatible The latest version of the plugin is not compatible with the latest PHP version
    Download Iocn
  • Optimized database footprint The plugin creates less than 50 database tables
    Download Iocn
  • No activation errors WP Hive automated test found no activation error while activating this plugin on our server
    Download Iocn
  • No resource errors WP Hive automated test found no resource error/s while trying this plugin on our server
    Download Iocn
  • Frequently updated The plugin was updated at least once in the last 90 days
    Download Iocn

All the plugins are tested on the same server with exactly same configuration via test script that automatically activates and logs the data WP Hive shows.

  • All the scripts run on a VPS with 8 CPU cores and 8 GB of RAM.
  • The test sites are hosted on Google Cloud VM instances, one site/plugin per instance. The machine type is n1-standard-1. The server is a 8 core CPU with 8GB of RAM.
  • The test sites are hosted on Apache/2 server and they are tested on PHP 7.4.8 & WordPress 5.7.
  • The database server is MySQL 8.0.15 and the default PHP memory limit is 256MB.
Download Iocn

36M

Total Downloads

Installation Iocn

600K

Active Installation

Calendar Iocn

15 years

On WordPress

Growth Iocn

0.0%

Growth Rate

Support Iocn

42

Support Thread

Rating Iocn

3983

Ratings on WordPress

Download Iocn

00

Downloads This Week

Update Iocn

00

Ago Last Updated

Download Plugin Plugin Website Wordpress Icon

About NextGEN Gallery

Description

WordPress Gallery Plugin NextGEN Gallery has been the industry’s standard WordPress gallery plugin since 2007 and continues to receive over 1.5 million new downloads per year. It’s easy for simple photo galleries, but powerful enough for the most demanding photographers, visual artists, and imaging professionals. On the back end, NextGEN offers a complete WordPress gallery management system with the ability....

Read More >>

Performance

Memory Usage

  • Download Iocn Average memory usage is 1922.96 KB
  • Download Iocn This is more than 96% plugins

Page Speed

  • Download Iocn Average page loading time is increased by 0.56 s
  • Download Iocn This is slower than 95% plugins

Speed Test Benchmark Learn more how we collect the data

  • Before plugin activation
  • After plugin activation

Pages

Benchmark

Change

Average Change
+ 0.56s
/(front page)
- 0.23s
/wp-admin/edit-comments.php
+ 0.23s
/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=category
+ 0.2s
/wp-admin/edit.php
+ 0.6s
/wp-admin/index.php
+ 0.36s
/wp-admin/media-new.php
+ 0.35s
/wp-admin/options-discussion.php
+ 0.14s
/wp-admin/options-writing.php
+ 0.23s
/wp-admin/post-new.php
+ 1.94s
/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=page
+ 1.72s
/wp-admin/upload.php
+ 0.66s
MoreLess

Memory Usage Memory Usage Benchmark Learn more how we collect the data

  • Before plugin activation
  • After plugin activation

Pages

Benchmark

Change

Average Change
+ 1922.96KB
/ (front page)
+ 182.29KB
/wp-admin/edit-comments.php
+ 249.38KB
/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=category
+ 241.33KB
/wp-admin/edit.php
+ 247.95KB
/wp-admin/index.php
+ 249.82KB
/wp-admin/media-new.php
+ 247.56KB
/wp-admin/options-discussion.php
+ 248.99KB
/wp-admin/options-writing.php
+ 242.43KB
/wp-admin/post-new.php
+ 239.53KB
/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=page
+ 239.52KB
/wp-admin/upload.php
+ 255.3KB
MoreLess

User Rating of NextGEN Gallery from WP Hive Users

5Star Icon

Overall Quality

Measures the overall quality

5Star Icon

Ease of Use

How easy it is to use?

5Star Icon

Quality of Support

Satisfied or not?

5 Star Icon

Value for Money

Is it good bang for the buck?

5Star Icon

Features

Is it feature riched?

Rate Now

Stats Stats

Download Statistics

Plugin Version Usage

Stats More

Database Tables

The plugin has added 3 additional options to your WordPress.

WP-Options

The plugin has added 9 additional options to your WordPress website.

Errors

Memory Usage

  • This plugin uses 1922.96KB memory on average, which is more than a plugin should use.

PHP Compatibility Issue

  • The plugin has not been properly activated on PHP 7.4.8. It may not work.

WordPress Compatibility Issue

  • The plugin may not be fully compatible with WordPress 5.7.

Pagespeed Optimization

  • This plugin increases page loading time by 0.56s

Read more how WP Hive determines this data.

Error Log

We found the following errors while activating the plugin. Read more how WP Hive generates this data.

  • [29-Mar-2021 18:15:24 UTC] PHP Notice: WP_Scripts::localize was called incorrectly. The $l10n parameter must be an array. To pass arbitrary data to scripts, use the wp_add_inline_script() function instead. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 5.7.0.) in /wp-includes/functions.php on line 5313
  • [29-Mar-2021 18:15:32 UTC] PHP Notice: WP_Scripts::localize was called incorrectly. The $l10n parameter must be an array. To pass arbitrary data to scripts, use the wp_add_inline_script() function instead. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 5.7.0.) in /wp-includes/functions.php on line 5313

Awards & Achievements

Downloaded

Most Downloaded of All Time

#15 in Most Downloaded of January 2020

Show Off Your Plugin

Download Iocn

PHP 7.4.8

Powered by WP Hive

Download Iocn

WP 5.7

Powered by WP Hive

Icon

Love using this plugin?

Why don’t you compare the plugin side by side
with another plugin

Start Comparing

Ratings & Reviews

Overall Quality
5
Ease of Use
5
Quality of Support
5
Value for Money
5
Features
5

Social Reviews and Recommendations Widgets Review Write a Review

5

4

3

2

1

Icon

Are you an author
of this plugin?

Write a Review

Overall Quality

Ease of Use

Quality of Support

Value for Money

Features

Stina Gunnarsdottir
5/5
Overall
Easy of Use
Features
Quality of Support
Value for Money

Pros & Cons: This is a review from the Editorial staff of WP Hive for test purposes. We are sure the plugin made it with good heart for WordPress users and we want to encourage his/her efforts by the first review.

Overall:The plugin should be working great. Even if it does not, we respect the time and effort. If you are using this plugin - leave a review with more information.

Changelog