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Image galleries are an excellent addition to your WordPress blog, and the latest most professional ways to display your images is to use a lightbox plugin solution. This is where the image is displayed in a new window that comes up over the current page, fading the current page to a duller blocked out page while bringing the image to the forefront. It looks great and as usual there are plugins out there that you can download and use, and we have found you 5 of the best on offer.
- Picasa Lightbox: This plugin is a Picasa product, so you will need to have your images saved in Picasa for this to work. The albums have to be saved as public albums for this plugin to work but that said, it was easy to install and use. You can download it here http://bogde.ro/computers/picasa-lightbox.htm where there is also a comment forum which gives a few hints and tips from other users. Obviously you will also need to get yourself a Picasa account and get all your images uploaded to there, which isn’t very arduous and is a great way to host images anyway.
- Lightbox 2: Stimuli.ca brings you the next offering, and this is another good example of a lightbox plugin. Again the images are brought to the front of the screen whilst the rest of the site fades into darkness. It is simple to install, in fact one of the easiest, and can be found here http://stimuli.ca/lightbox/. You shouldn’t run into any installation problems and it is user friendly.
- Flexible Lightbox: Offered here at http://web-argument.com/flexible-lightbox/, Flexible Lightbox is another WordPress plugin. This works as a photo organizer as well, so you upload your images directly to your WordPress site rather than using external storage for your images. You can create thumbnails and medium size images and again your images are displayed in a lightbox effect with the background fading to darkness. Again, this is a nifty little plugin and we like it.
- jQuery Lightbox Plugin: This is a simple no frills lightbox plugin that basically does what it says. The images are displayed with a nice lightbox effect. It is simple to install and easy to use – who could ask for more? You can find the jQuery Lightbox Plugin in here to download: http://www.pedrolamas.com/projectos/jquery-lightbox-en/. There is nothing difficult about installation or use, which again is always a bonus.
- Lightbox Gallery: Lightbox Gallery is an example of a tool that changes an existing gallery that doesn’t have lightbox capabilities into one that does, and again it is a simple plugin that isn’t hard to install. This one requires you to be running WordPress 2.5 or higher to work and can be found here at http://wpgogo.com/development/lightbox-gallery.html. It adds a touch of class to your previously flat galleries and brings them to life with a modern touch.
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