Plugins 014 – NextGEN Gallery Plugin

Today we’re covering the  NextGEN Gallery WordPress plugin.

The NextGEN Gallery plugin adds image gallery functionality to your WordPress blog. Click here for a demonstration.

Features include:

  • Flash Slideshow
  • Flash Viewer (as an additional addon)
  • Templates
  • CSS styling
  • Watermarks
  • JavaScript Effect (Web 2.0 feel)
  • Custom Media Gallery RSS feed
  • Sidebar Widget
  • Tag images
  • Detailed descriptions
  • Multi-language support
  • Administration
    • Copy/Move images
    • Upload zip file of multiple pictures
    • Integrates to Post/Page editor (TinyMCE)

The NextGEN Gallery plugin makes it easy to add a modern gallery to your blog. Users knowledgeable in CSS and HTML can take further advantage of this plugin, though knowledge of CSS and HTML is not necessary to use this plugin.

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Any

To learn more about the NextGEN Gallery plugin, please go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/.

Plugins 012a – MailPress Plugin

MailPressToday we’re covering the MailPress plugin to quickly add a newsletter mailing list to your blog.

Features include:

  • Newsletters for (users can subscribe to)
    • Each post
    • Daily (digest of posts each day)
    • Weekly digest
    • Monthly digest
    • Comments
  • Manually send newsletters
  • Detailed logging of sent messages
  • Themes for Email newsletters
  • Add-ons (Sort of like plugins for this plugin)
    • Bulk import tool (comma separated list of addresses)
    • Import data (csv, XML sample, other WordPress plugins from database)
    • Mailing lists manager
    • Newsletter categories
    • Synchronize WordPress accounts with MailPress Users
    • Add roles and capabilities (Special User Roles to apply to WordPress accounts)
    • Custom Fields

The plugin is very powerful which makes it very complicated to setup and configure. It definitely helps to read all of the documentation and have previous knowledge of how to edit source code before attempting to use this plugin.

Plugins Podcast Skill Level: Advanced

To learn more about MailPress, please go to www.mailpress.org.