NextCellent-Gallery Plugin instead of NextGen-Gallery

On my homepage I have a lot of pictures. In the meantime WordPress has improved the handling of large amounts of pictures but when I have started the homepage a better image plugin was a must. So I decided to use the popular and widespread NextGen-Gallery plugin.

Some time ago I published a small hack to use Nextgen gallery images as single picture in posts with a caption. The caption feature is lacked in NextGen but is missing from many users and was not difficult to implement. I followed the hints and ideas in some forums to create a suitable solution which has become a certain popularity following the access statistics of the homepage.

Then, the Nextgen inventor sold the plugin to the Photokrati company which is specialized in solutions for photographers. Photokrati published a totally rewritten update of the plugin which was unfourtunately totally incompatible to (not only) my solution.

As a programmer I really understand that someone better rewrites a program instead of making changes and enhancements in an unknown source code which was written and enlarged for a long time. Long term projects are often at a point where a rewrite is the only reasonable way. BUT if the project is so integrated into an ecosystem, compatibility is very very important. And the version 2.x from nextgen lacks the compatibility as well as fundamental software quality as the problems in the support forum show. So I currently disadvise the usage of nextgen.

Due to these problems somebody (an unknown hero) released the Nextcellent gallery plugin which is based on the last compatible version of nextgen. My singlepic-caption enhancement works with Nextcellent without problems. So I switched my home page to nextcellent and stoped the adaption of the singlepic-caption enhancement for Nextgen.

To migrate from Nextgen to NextCellent follow the these hints:

  • Never deinstall or delete NextGen nor NextCellent using the functions from the Dashboard. This would delete all images from the webspace. Also older posts would no longer work.
  • First install NextCellent. If NextGen is yet active, NextCellent will stay inactive so there are no conflicts.
  • Then deactivate (not delete!) NextGen. NextCellent will start to work, otherwise activate it.
  • If you use my singlepic-caption enhancement, copy the file singlepic-caption.php to the NextCellent folder ( /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/nextcellent-gallery/view/singlepic-caption.php
  • Things are ready at this point, but the NextGen plugin is yet in the WordPress installation and would frequently ask you to update it. You may use your FTP-tool to delete it manually by removing the /wordpress/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery folder. Remember: Do NOT use the delete function from the dashboard.
  • Before making significant changes with new plugins, it is always a good idea to make a backup.

Nextcellent is compatible to NextGen 1.9.x and use the same database structure. So it is every time possible to migrate to NextGen, if it seems necessary. Many thanks to the initiator(s) from Nextcellent!!!!!!!

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One Response to NextCellent-Gallery Plugin instead of NextGen-Gallery

  1. Klaus says:

    Hallo,

    da sage auch ich vielen Dank. Hat mir auch im Jahre 2016 gut weiter geholfen. Meine Nextgen 1.9 funktioniert wieder einwandfrei. Man kann unter dieser Version sogar wieder die Bilder sortieren. Weiß eigentlich wie es um die aktuelle Nextgen Entwicklung zur Zeit steht? Kann man es mittlerweile gebrauchen?

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