WordPress – http://www.wordpress.org/ – is an amazing tool and started out as a blogging platform and over the years has grown to a full featured content management system (CMS). One of the greatest things about the tool is that while it’s incredibly powerful out of the box, it can very easily be customized to meet your needs. Much of the customization we do for our clients is done through Plugins. (See also Essential WordPress Plugins)
One of the plugins that I’m a big fan of is called Jetpack. It’s got a whole slew of additions that depending on the website and client can really create some outstanding looking results. (Note, there can be some issues utilizing certain plugins, Jetpack included.) Jetpack now includes a new gallery feature called Carousel which allows you to create a photo gallery that works across multiple browsers and allows for a full screen viewing experience, social sharing and much more.
Want to see Jetpack Carousel in action? You’ve come to the right place! Click on any of the images below to launch the Carousel experience.
A couple of notes to consider when using Carousel.
- If you’re using the standard implementation, ANY image that you include with a post/page will be included in the gallery. That’s why you’re seeing the image in the upper right hand corner of this post as part of the gallery.
- Make sure you’re thinking SEO. If you don’t name your images properly, include proper ALT tags and add a description, that lack of content is going to show up in your gallery. You want to engage your users and these things will help!
- This is a cross browser platform. This post (and the gallery) will look great in Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox and other browsers.
- It’s mobile ready! It also looks great on your iPad (and other tablets), your phone and other mobile devices.
Are you looking for a new way to display your portfolio? Got some images that you want to put into a slick looking gallery? WordPress Jetpack with the Carousel module turned on may be the way to go! Let us help you get started today!
NOTE: The Jetpack Carousel plugin has been updated so you can now select which images are included in your gallery. So, if we wanted, we could remove the image in the upper right hand corner of this post from the gallery.