WordPress needs no introduction. Millions of websites and blogs all across the world are being developed and maintained using this powerful Content Management System. WordPress developers can perform wonders on your site and come up with beautiful interfaces for your visitors. All that is possible thanks to the flexibility offered by WordPress plugins. It will not be wrong to say that it is the availability of plugins that makes WordPress the most popular CMS in the world.

A blog isn’t complete without videos and images. The media features offered by WordPress are sufficient for bloggers who just need to add a few images here and there. On large multimedia websites, however, a powerful gallery plugin becomes essential. Here are some of the best WordPress gallery plugins available on the internet:

NextGEN gallery

With over ten million downloads, NextGEN is one of the most popular gallery systems available on the internet. It comes with a multitude of features and visual effects. You can manage everything from a central location and move images across galleries with ease. Using the watermark function you can add a watermark to your images. This is a very powerful feature that will allow you to protect your multimedia content. Galleries can be displayed in two formats: slideshow and thumbnails.

After installing NextGEN gallery you’ll have new box show up on the dashboard called Gallery. Note the icon to some extent looks like a scrapbook with several photos before it. This is the place you can create galleries and add pictures to your WordPress website.

Lazyest Gallery

If you are looking for a simpler solution than NextGEN, you should consider installing this plugin on your site. It performs many tasks automatically for you so that you can focus on other things. It just needs two settings: your image directory and your gallery page. You can arrange your photos and folders as you wish and handle numerous other details as you see fit. An added benefit of Lazyest gallery is that it integrates seamlessly with many other plugins like Lazyest slides and Lazyest widgets.

WP Photo Album Plus

This is an extremely powerful plugin using which you can convert your WordPress installation into a full-blown photo portal. From the included control panel you can create and manage your galleries. It provides a number of integration methods and several powerful sidebar widgets. It also has an optional rating and comments system.

WordPress Gallery Plugin

This plugin uses the famous TimThumb script to resize your images. In other words you need not worry about the dimensions of your images at the time of uploading. It is also one of the simplest and most intuitive WordPress gallery plugins around.

Awesome Flickr Gallery

This is a great option if you use Flickr to host your images. It allows you to add highly customizable galleries to any post, page or sidebar widget. You can even add more than one galleries on a single page. The galleries created by Awesome Flickr Gallery are not only good to look at but are also fast and search engine friendly.

WP Inject

WP Inject is not exactly a gallery plugin but it is a must-have for all bloggers. It gives you the ability to search the flickr database for open source images relevant to your content. After setting up this plugin on your wordpress website you won’t have to manually scour the web for high-quality images.

Easy Media Gallery

This is another powerful media gallery plugin using which you can create a wide variety of portfolios and photo galleries. However if you want to take advantage of all its features you will have to buy the pro version. The free version only has a small number of features.

Lightbox 2

This plugin permits viewers to see a bigger picture in a unique format. Once a picture is clicked it’ll pop up and whatever is left of the page will darken. Load times remain practically the same.

Shadowbox JS

Shadowbox JS is a multimedia viewing system similar to Lightbox 2 however it works with a wider variety of media formats and is more customizable. Having been created entirely in Javascript and CSS, it is extremely light-weight and fast. You can use the commercial version if you intend to use this plugin for business purposes.

Featured Content Gallery

This is a relatively old plugin but it is still a great solution for showcasing your featured content. To include a post or page in the carousel you just need to add a custom field. The gallery itself is highly customizable as well.