I’ve been looking for a WordPress image/photo gallery plugin that is simple to setup and has a great viewer that is customizable, and has an esthetically pleasing look. I found one – SimpleViewer. You can download SimpleViewer from the WordPress plugins directory or direct from the plugin’s website – AirTightInteractive.

There are plenty of these galleries but SimpleViewer seemed to catch my eye as I was reading the article WordPress Photoblogging Plugins – Create a Gallery with WordPress.  I’m sure there are plenty photo/image galleries out there, so I’ll keep looking, but if you know of any “off the hook” galleries, please let me know in the comments.

Features of SimpleViewer

Here are some of the features of SimpleViewer:

• Intelligent image pre-loading.
• Intuitive image navigation
• Lightweight (17k).
• Customizable interface – Set text color, frame color and width, navigation position.
• Resizable interface – Interface scales to fit browser window.
• Cross platform – Windows/Macintosh/Linux (requires Flash 8 or higher).
• Flash 8 detection. Users without Flash 8 are messaged to upgrade Flash.
• International font support.
• Keyboard Navigation (Cursor keys, Home, End, Page Up/Down)
• Mousewheel navigation
• Optionally right-click to open image in a new window.
• Free!
• Rockin’ (added by me – Bill Bolmeier)  

Setting up SimpleViewer

1. Upload, Activate and Configure – After uploading the plugin to your WordPress plugins folder and activating it, you’ll need to configure it, which can be as simple as saving the default settings on the configuration page.  I like that because it allows me to test quickly and determine whether I’m going to use a gallery or not.

SimpleViewer suggests the default folder where you’ll put images – http://billbolmeier.com/wp-content/photos. However, this location can be altered to what you want.

2. Create a Folder and Upload Photos – You create a folder under that default folder, let’s say gallery1 for this example, so your first gallery would be http://billbolmeier.com/wp-content/photos/gallery1.  This is where you’d ftp all your photos.

3. Create a Blog Post or Page – Create a new blog post or page and plop in the control by typing the secret code, which is svgallery name=”gallery1″, surrounded by square brackets – [ ].  I didn’t actually place the brackets around the code statement because it would execute and display the gallery on this page.  I didn’t want that to happen.  That’s it. Now view it, reconfigure it to your hearts content and test it.

You can also click on a button under the “Add media:” row above your WordPress editor to insert a gallery into a post or a page.

Here is the Image Gallery test page I set up. I’m using the images of art from my wife’s art gallery for testing purposes.