The End of NextGen

Oh, and when I’m done uploading, there’s no link to the newly-created gallery to go edit the descriptions and captions, nothing to offend my purist eye. Instead, all I do is click the Manage gallery link in the sidebar, then see the title of that gallery I made 4 years ago on top, then click the ID column header to reverse the order, then select the gallery I just made minutes ago…there, it’s loading, should be able to see it soon…

Oh, and thanks so much for making an unwanted Page automatically when I make a Gallery, what an ingenious idea to take over my blog and add stuff to the menubar that I don’t want there.

So yes, yet another step to uploading and displaying photos, going to Pages and trashing an unwanted page. I’m hoping that soon NGG will start posting ads in a new post automatically as well, saving me the effort of composing and editing my own posts which are not monetising anything and are therefore useless.

Good news! Go to the Developer tab on the NGG page and grab a copy of 1.9.13, so far it works for me on 3.6.

Meanwhile, plotting the move to Drupal. :^)

Developer Folks, some of us are tired of adapting to your improvements. We just get a workflow down and then you mislead our muscle memory. Around where I grew up, we called that being a jagoff.

I’m sticking with the older version. It’s obvious the ‘new’ owners have an agenda to restrict the plugin in order to force the ‘Pro’ version purchase.

You’re right, NGG is sinking to a slow death.

Yup, after spending over an hour trying to get 4 cellphone photos to upload, the older version just got it done, in minutes. Thank you Alex, for the original.

And Photocrati, consider what your rep will be if you keep going down this path.

NGG was the “top of the heap” because it’s one of the oldest, and still was being tended to, but it’s always been a hassle to work with.

Many kept hanging on because of time invested in content, and hoping that they would improve and add features.

Others because there was simply nothing else.

The time is ripe.

It’s sad that Gallery 2 integrated with WordPress has the ability to give a much more integrated experience, though Gallery 2.

The beta testing phase was short, and poorly executed. It’s pretty evident the whole point was to launch the “Pro” version and recoup some loot on this project. Nothing wrong with that on the grand scheme of things, something needs to pay the bills. But that should have come after this was seeded, launched and on it’s way.

I think it’s time to use this opportunity to make a change from NGG and Aperture to something that has Lightroom and WordPress support. There seems to be -a lot- more options there.

Even with 1.9.x, it’s maddening that if I want to create a browsable photo section, by event/topic, I’ve got to have hundreds of page entries in the back end.

Gallery 2 was not like this. One short code and the whole thing was browsable, drill-able up and down, all over.

As a developer of a Lightroom plugin that exports to NextGen gallery, I’m really disappointed and worried of the direction NextGen took. I used for more than 5 years, and it’s been mostly good but v2.0.x is a disaster, not only in terms of bugs and compatibility, and in terms of design and simplicity. Old short codes which were simple and short are now deprecated, replaced by horrid new ones and now mostly html code, which is pain (impossible?) to generated. The UI to attach content is a , real pain, not programmable, stylesheet/templates are huge over engineering (it used to be a single php file placed in a directory), now see:
https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/how-to-build-a-display-type/

I used to recommend nextgen to all my friends, there’s no way I can do this now.
Time to look for something else…

sad.

https://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2013/03/wordpress-gallery-plugin.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=wordpress+gallery+plugin+exif+-nextgen

Viva la Revolution!

This is so screwed up there’s no way they’re going to fix it without starting over.
I just tried it on a second site. Several things didn’t work, I have no idea where to begin. Graphics and functionality just broke all over.

Thanks, Alex, for the years of advancement, it wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t like this.

Is there any plugin that will automatically take care of seamlessly porting over Nextgen galleries to their side ?

Maybe time to head over to CodeCanyon, paid plugins but at least they work , and made by Elite authors … Pay once only, not every year

There is a plugin for Gallery 3 integration, not pretty but it did work last time I tried it. Look for heiv Gallery 3

I really don’t understand why publishing words and photos online is such a big thing to ask, it would seem like the most natural thing to do with blog software.

Maybe it’s time to learn Markup and get out of the dependency wheel.

Is it possible to fork an earlier version of NGG?

Someone could do just that, once it’s GPL, you can’t take it back. Tough the effort put into going back and understanding the big ol’ wad of code and mess is better spent starting from scratch.

NGG was already a hodgepodge of patches and hacks based on backwards nomenclature and workflow.

Better to start from scratch. There’s plenty of plugins getting a fresh start.

I have nearly 200 galleries, spread over 1,500+ posts. The idea of having to redo all of them from scratch makes my head hurt, and makes me sick in my stomach. I am so annoyed ATM, and feel very betrayed. This should have been foreseeable. I don’t know how 1 person (and the people he credited), could have been able to make sure the plug-in worked as well as it did, while presumably a software company manages to screw things up as much as they have.

Hey, here’s an idea: Maybe Photocrati might want to hire Alex back as a consultant to fix this mess. Because let’s face it, the last version of NGG may not have been flawless, but it worked damn well.

I don’t think it is too bad. There is a Search and REplace plugin to replace all shortcodes, and our pictures are already in the server. Just need to know how to tap it …

And the next plugin we are moving to, if we are, could probably help port them over … all is not lost.

I just took a look, the photos are kept in folders named like the galleries they went into. I started my names with yymmdd to make them easier to add to a post or page.

So you might be able to download the Gallery folder from wp-content and then upload the folders via whatever you choose. The Thumbs folder is inside each one, those might need to be stripped.

I just looked again at the stock WP Media thingie, way inadequate.

If anyone finds something please post here, I was looking YAPB, but not sure if it’s still being updated.

This would be an excellent time for Automattic to step up and save an old friend of WP and integrate it well at the same time…ahem…if it could handle any filetype including video and make a gallery of them, and also track/block downloads…