Living in a world where cameras capture our every move and photos plaster themselves across the internet on blogs, social media networks, and image hosting websites, it is impossible to underestimate the importance of a high-quality and engaging photograph on your website.
However, if by some chance you don’t understand the powerful effect images can have on your website, consider the following statistics and get on board with the image craze that is not slowing down anytime soon:
- Photos are the most engaging types of posts on Facebook – so much so that they make up 93% of all user engagement
- Compelling imagery on your website has the potential to net you 94% more views than your image-free competition
- 64% of all people are visual learners and are highly affected by stunning photos
- Posts with images are three times more likely to be shared than text-only content
- People tend to remember 10% of what they hear, 20% of what they read, and a whopping 80% of what they see or do
Is that enough convincing? Do you want to make better use of your website’s images in an attempt to increase traffic, boost social shares, and improve conversion rates on your WordPress website?
If so, keep reading to find out how you can take advantage of these startling statistics and boost the value of your website’s imagery using the premium Gallery Factory WordPress plugin.
What is Gallery Factory?
Gallery Factory is a premium WordPress plugin designed to help you manage your image collection in WordPress separately from the default WordPress Media Library. More so, you can arrange photos into folders and albums, build beautiful layouts using the visual editor, and even create attractive galleries for your website using this revolutionary plugin.
Meant for website owners with thousands of WordPress images, though suitable for those with any number of photos, Gallery Factory aims to take your website to the next level in terms of visual appeal. With a trendy Material Design interface, and cutting-edge technology allowing you to handle images like never before, this plugin works as a full-featured web application right inside of your WordPress dashboard.
No matter how large your image library is Gallery Factory can handle it. Giving you the chance to upload and organize images into neat categories, create unique galleries with the WYSIWYG layout editor, and optimize your images with lazy loading, five pagination types, and gallery caching, your site visitors are sure to get an eye full without ever suffering in terms of speed and performance.
Gallery Factory Features
Take a look at some of the great features Gallery Factory offers website owners:
- Fast and Responsive Loading Times. Gallery Factory comes 100% mobile-friendly with responsive design so all site visitors, can view you website galleries seamlessly. In addition, this plugin implements album view caching for optimal loading speed and allows you to enable lazy loading of thumbnails.
- Multiple Lightbox Options. Gallery Factory comes with three lightboxes built-in to the plugin – ImageLightbox, Lightbox2, and Colorbox. Moreover, Gallery Factory supports integration with several additional lightboxes.
- Advanced Customizations and Features. Enjoy things such as customizable hover effects, clickable breadcrumbs, Yoast SEO support with Gallery Factory image inclusion in XML sitemap creation, and translation ability with .po files
- Optimized for Large Libraries of Images. This plugin comes ready to take on even the largest of image galleries. In fact, it supports full importation of images from both your WordPress Media Library and your NextGen Gallery as well.
- Post Folders and Albums. Easily post folders and albums as beautiful galleries of images using the generated shortcodes once you have configured every last setting you wish to.
Altogether, this rather simple concept of organizing your images apart from the WordPress Media Library as well as creating custom galleries to impress your site visitors makes Gallery Factory a standout plugin.
Using the Gallery Factory WordPress Plugin and Utilizing its Main Features
Apart from the features mentioned above, Gallery Factory boasts many more that make handling your large library of images super easy.
Step 1: The Guided Tour
One great feature that Gallery Factory offers website owners is the guided tour. Navigate to Gallery Factory > Gallery Factory immediately after installing and activating the plugin and see the link to continue with the tour if you want.
Through each step of the guided tour, you will be pointed to specific features and their functions giving you a quick idea of the things you can do with this plugin. This is helpful for those that are unsure as to where to start. It’s great too because there are tiny snippets of information throughout explaining exactly what each section does.
Step 2: Configure Gallery Factory Settings
After you have taken the guided tour, navigate to Gallery Factory > Settings to configure the plugin’s settings.
Under the General tab you will see the following setting options:
- Lightbox. Define which lightbox effect you would like users to experience once they click on a thumbnail image.
- Gallery Item Style. Set the appearance and hover effects to display for folders and albums not yet created.
- Pagination Style. Pick from the pre-defined pagination styles to match your current theme – Light or Dark, or customize your own style.
- Use Lazy Loading. Select this box to enable lazy loading of thumbnails.
- Thumbnail Maximum Resolution. Determine thumbnail resolutions to best fit the layout of your website.
- Thumbnail Quality. Define the compression ratio for your thumbnails.
In addition, under the Layout Defaults tab you can change things such as:
- Layout Type. Choose from Grid, Metro, or Masonry layout types for your image galleries.
- Column Count. Define how many columns to allow in your layouts.
- Column Count (mobile). Set a different column amount for better mobile viewing.
- Aspect Ratio. Configure the width and height of images in the Grid or Masonry layouts.
- Horizontal and Vertical Spacing. Set the pixel spacing between images both horizontally and vertically.
- Pagination Type. Choose from None, Numbers, Bullets, Load More, or Load on Scroll pagination types.
- Page Size in Rows. Determine the page size in your layout rows.
Step 3: Access Gallery Factory’s Tools
Before creating a gallery, you will want to import any existing images you want to include in the Gallery Factory library. Remember, this is separate from your WordPress Media Library so any images you want to include in Gallery Factory will need to be uploaded here. Luckily, Gallery Factory provides an easy way for you to upload images from either your NextGen Gallery or WordPress Media Library.
To do this, navigate to Gallery Factory > Tools. To import existing images from your WordPress Media Library, click on Import From WP Media.
On the other hand, to import from your NextGen Gallery, click on Import From NextGen Gallery. Here you will also have the option to place all of these gallery images in their own folder for later use.
In addition to the import feature, you can also regenerate thumbnail images in the Tools section of Gallery Factory plugin. This function recreates downsized copies of original images using the current thumbnail settings. To use this function, simply click Regenerate Thumbnails.
Step 4: Manage Your Folders and Albums
Navigating to Gallery Factory > Gallery Factory leads you to the “interface hub”, or Gallery Manager, where you can efficiently manage you Gallery Factory image library and access some of the plugin’s best features.
The Gallery Manager has three distinct sections: the navigation panel, main panel, and info panel.
Navigation Panel
This displays your image library’s multi-level folder structure for keeping all of your albums organized. You must create a parent folder before creating an album as part of the organization tree.
By clicking on the “+” you can create and name new folders and albums. With this feature, you can group albums into folders and folders into additional folders up to 7 deep.
Moreover, the Navigation Panel has three pre-defined items for you to access:
- All Images. See all images you have uploaded to Gallery Factory.
- Unsorted Images. View all images not stored in a folder or album.
- Library. This is the root folder for your image library.
Main Panel
This is where you can begin to edit folders and albums in terms of functionality and design.
You can access several folder management functions in this section by clicking on the particular folder or album you would like to work with and then selecting the editing icon in the top right hand corner. This takes you to the Folder and Album Editor. From there, you can utilize the tabs labeled General, Layout, Style, and Settings (for my example I am editing an album).
General
This section is where you can rename your folder and slug, caption the folder with a description and access the shortcode needed to insert this album (or folder if you are editing one) anywhere on your website.
You can also include any tags you wish to attribute to the folder for organizational purposes. Lastly, set a cover image by clicking on the image section and choosing from the available images.
Layout
To configure how your folder will display to site visitors, click on the Layout tab. Here you will see all of your album’s images in one panel, and editing functions in another.
Here are some of the things you can do while in the Layout tab:
- View how your album will look if published on your website
- Drag and drop images in whatever order you want them to appear
- Crop images by clicking directly on them
- Change the gallery layout, column count, thumbnail sizes, spaces between images, and pagination type.
As you make the changes in this section you will notice that the changes appear in real time so you can see just how your album will appear on your website.
Style
The style tab is for changing the hover effects on your album’s thumbnail images. Start by choosing from a variety of Gallery Item Styles such as Aiden or Crazy Layla.
Each style has their own set of additional customizations you can make including things like color options, hover effects, and fonts. These reveal once you choose a Gallery Item Style.
Settings
This simple section allows you to override the global settings that are in place for the album you are currently editing.
Append new images to the top or bottom of the gallery as they are uploaded to the album. Choose from the Light, Dark, or Custom pagination styles. Lastly, give your tag filter a style that matches the look and feel of your website.
Info Panel
This simple section shows you the info summary of whatever item you have activated in the Main Panel. This is helpful for previewing information without having to enter the folder or album editor.
Step 5: Manage your Images in the Image Editor
The Image Editor gives you the chance to change individual image properties.
To do this, simply double-click on an image in the Main Panel.
Here find several tabs for editing your image in different ways:
- General. Change the image’s name, caption, description, alt text, URL, and tags.
- Metadata. Find the image’s metatdata that was imported during the image upload.
- Preview. See a preview of the original image.
- Settings. Define the action that should perform when a site visitor clicks on a gallery image. Also, redirect a URL, open a dedicated image page, or disable any action.
Documentation, Support, and Pricing
Altogether, there is a lot you can do with the Gallery Factory plugin. In fact, that’s one reason why it is so great that Gallery Factory comes with such extensive documentation. Outlining everything you can do, with easy to follow step-by-step instructions, makes using this plugin easy for website owners of all levels.
Additionally, the plugin developer’s offer lots of support via the CodeCanyon support page and by email. This alone makes spending your cash on a premium plugin worth it. After all, you never know if you will need some help.
Lastly, this cool plugin comes in at a low $24.
Conclusions and Recommendations
In the end, Gallery Factory offers website owners with large galleries of images a neat, user-friendly, and feature-packed way of uploading and organizing images separate from the default WordPress Media Library. With the ability to upload, edit, and manage images using the intuitive Gallery Manager, and create impressive galleries of images that can post directly to your website – all from one place – it’s no wonder this plugin is being deemed revolutionary.
If you are looking for a great way to organize your website’s large collection of images and make use out of them by creating structured folders, albums, and of course galleries, give Gallery Factory a try. Your site visitors are sure to be impressed, share your content, and remember your brand after seeing such amazing images on display.
Have you ever used Gallery Factory for your website’s image organization or gallery creations? I would love to hear all about it in the comments below!
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