Every business has corporate meetings, events and vacations that are posted on a company website to share with clients and employees. With lots of social media channels these days, such content often goes to individual profiles. Too bad, these photos do not show up on a corporate website. Well, there is a way to fix it.

Instead of creating distributed media areas, you can convert a corporate website into a central media hub. Store and organize content structure in one place and share it to a specific social networks or just to personal account, having a corporate watermark on a photo. Besides, you can configure and layout media files presentation to make event report or product portfolio to match your market and audience.

Let's take a look at FW Gallery plugin available for WordPress and Joomla! websites and decide if it is the right choice for your business needs.

Any media hub starts with a category structure. The beauty of FW Gallery is that you can create a structure in text format in a quick way. Let's say we need this structure for our gallery:

Events
- Conference 2021
- Corporate camping 2021
- Expo 2020
Product
- Electronic devices
- Cables & adapters
Press

You can just copy and paste this text to create 8 categories, with 3 top categories and others assigned respectively. That is as easy as you can get. It works for new and for existing categories, which means you can include existing folders in the text list to extend a category tree.

After structure design is ready, it comes to data import. There are 4 way to import data into FW Gallery with FWG Files Import add-on:

• FTP folder
• Google Photos
• Facebook
• Instagram

FTP folder import helps to organize existing photo/video files into category try and define presentation layouts. Google Photos, Facebook and Instagram import helps to gather published media files from remote sources into your website. The most typical web media files formats are allowed:

• JPG, PNG, GIF for images
• MP4, Youtube, Vimeo for videos
• MP3, WAV, ACC for audios.

Speaking of presentation, we have a static gallery structure and dynamic slideshow. For video collections, static layout will work good enough to show a list of files with thumbnails and short description of what is inside. For images, often a slideshow works much better, especially if it is an overview of some business presentation or a meeting.

Gallery design is important and helps to build strong corporate identity. At the same time, it must be responsive and remain intuitive and easy to use on mobile devices.

Apart from design, there is another detail that may affect file presentation online. Depending on a presentation goal, a file can be shown full size or as a thumbnail. If it is a thumbnail it may remain the same, open in a lightbox, open as a slideshow or open in a new page.

FW Gallery comes with exceptional support, and you can count to get your questions answered within the shortest time. A detailed demo website for front-end layouts and back-end admin is also available and is updated every time a new release comes out. FW Gallery has documentation which is integrated into the product and helps to look up parameters or meaning for some configuration fields.

Every plugin has a design and a concept that developers put into it. Most of the time this design and concept match clients needs. In some cases, customization may be required. We offer customization services for WordPress or Joomla! plugins with further support and training, to make sure you got exactly what you looked for.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question or need a media gallery website. We are always happy to assist.

This month we’ve upgraded a plugin that allow to import photos from facebook pages or profiles. Also we did 3 big important releases:

• The opportunity to create a gallery by using hashtags - a gallery can be formed with all images and videos that contain the hashtag you’d chosen.
• 3 new gallery design you can chose for galleries group, one gallery or one image.
• The opportunity to limit a size of images without loss of quality.

This month we’ve fixed some bugs and released two upgrades:

• Keyboard navigation - when any image is open you can switch to another one by clicking arrow keys and turn back to the gallery by clicking ESC key.
• Additional parameter for displaying images - you can make them to display in ascending or descending order by date.

New:

• Gallery description next to the gallery. This feature allows to display description at the right of the gallery. As a result, the gallery and description are placed at eye-level allowing for better readability when long descriptions are added to the galleries. 

• Tags display on the gallery view. Earlier tags assigned to the gallery didn’t display on the gallery page. Now the tags assigned to the gallery are displayed underneath the gallery title.

• Search by ID. To simplify files management via the admin panel, we have added the ability to search for files by ID. 

• Search by tag. We have added a search by tag filter to the files management section so you could search for files by tags via the admin panel.   

• Custom CSS style section. We have added CSS style section in admin panel so the users could edit CSS styles of the component directly via Joomla admin panel.

• Gallery display in a map module. We have added galleries filter to the map module settings. With this filter, you can choose the galleries you want to display on the map.  


Updated:

• Renamed Default design to Fancy. We have renamed Default design to Fancy to avoid confusion with the default option allowing to set priority between menu item settings and global settings
.
• Geotag for a gallery. Now you can assign a geotag to the gallery. A gallery with a geotag is added to the galleries filter, in the map module settings. As a result, this gallery can be displayed on the map.

• Default image setting for a front-end manager. Now, the default cover image can be set for a gallery via the front-end manager.


Bug fix:

• Tags display in menu item settings. Fixed tags display in menu item layout settings. Earlier the tags added for a new gallery didn’t display in menu item layout settings

• Tags order. Synchronized the order of the tags between the front-end and back-end. 

• Batch upload via the front-end manager. Batch upload didn’t work for the front-end manager.

• File description. Fixed the file description display in the below position.

• Video cover upload. It was impossible to upload a video cover for a gallery.

• Magnifier display. Fixed magnifier display in the lightbox.


In this version, we have improved the product with several new features and a set of updates and bug fixes. Video gallery cover has become one of the most prominent features of this release. Let’s review its benefits and all other changes below:

• Gallery video cover with preview.  Earlier you could use only images as preview covers for your galleries, now you can also use videos as preview covers. The video is automatically played on hovering. Video preview cover allows to animate your galleries enabling your customers to quickly scan through the gallery content. This feature is particularly helpful for businesses using catalogs and portfolios to showcase their products and services.

Documentation reference: Galleries.

• Beauty design. A new Beauty design with new fonts and green/spa colors is a sound solution for beauty industry websites. Now you have more options for styling your galleries.
• Option defining the length of gallery/image preview description. Now you can set the length of the gallery/image preview description. This feature allows to save screen space and improve web page usability. It is particularly helpful when a gallery/image description is too long.

Documentation reference: Displaying settings.

• Lightbox for all designs. Lightbox allows to view images on the same page without leaving it. Thus, the user receives information faster and doesn’t have to take extra actions. Now Lightbox is available for all designs - Palaroids, Pinterest, Classis, Default, and Masonry.
• New full image preview lightbox script. The previous lightbox script cropped images and had glitches on responsive views. We have replaced the script to ensure better visual presentation and good user experience.
• Removed formatting from gallery preview description.In order to improve the readability of the gallery preview image, we have removed formatting from gallery preview description. Now the description on the gallery preview image is displayed as plain text.
• Default gallery cover parameter. We have added this parameter to make it possible for you to choose a gallery cover from the images that are already present within the gallery. Thus, you don’t need to upload it manually every time you need to set a gallery cover.

Documentation reference: Galleries.

• Slideshow/latest module display via file/gallery description.We have added the ability to insert a slideshow or latest module into the image description. This feature is particularly helpful if you need to provide additional information to the image/gallery.  
• Download button for a menu item. This feature allows for more flexibility. For example, if you use FW Gallery not as a photo gallery, but as a tool to promote your products and services, you might not need a download button on all pages. So now, if you don’t need the download button to be present for all galleries, you can easily disable it where it is needed.
• Files counter for a menu item.If the number of files is not required to be displayed for a particular menu item, you can disable/enable the parameter on the menu item level.
• Safari optimization. We have optimized the component for Safari to ensure smooth Safari experience.
• Watermark display. We have resolved the problem with watermark text display over the images.
• Comments display.It was impossible to disable comments via menu item settings. Now you can work with comments on both levels -  menu item and default gallery configuration.
• Latest module optimization for a lightbox. We have fixed the problem with Latest module layouts display within the lightbox. Now all layouts work fine with lightbox.
• Links display in gallery preview description.We have resolved the issue with incorrect links display within the gallery preview description.
• Show backlink option for default gallery settings. It was impossible to set show backlink option via default gallery settings. Now it is available in default gallery settings.
• Bellow gallery description display.We have fixed the problem with the below description option. Now you can place a description underneath the gallery.
• Gallery preview display in Masonry. We have aligned the gallery preview image for Masonry format.
• Files ordering.We have added files ordering buttons in the files section.
• Language files update. We have updated language files to fix some missing translations.  

Get familiar with FW Gallery documentation to find more information about our product. Please use the comments section at the bottom of each documentation page to comment and suggest improvements that will make the product experience better.