Photographers are among the most creative people in the world. In today’s world when photography has gone from analog to digital more and more photographers look to showcase their work online. Most photographers have given thumbs up to WordPress to manage their websites and photo blogs thanks to its user-friendliness. WordPress on its part offers photographers exciting plugins which allow them to add interactivity and glossiness to their masterpieces which enhances their online appeal. Let us now take a look at some of the most popular WordPress plugins for photographers.
1. All In One SEO
You might be wondering why have we started with an SEO plugin but the fact is most of your visitors would come via the search engines – Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. and it becomes very important to optimize your websites with focused keywords and description. For example if you are a shutterbug in New York you want people to find you using keywords such as ‘photographers New York’. A good photographer’s website can often draw little mileage due to lack of a good SEO plugin.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
2. Flickr Photostream
This is an awesome plugin which allows you to showcase feed from your Flickr account in your blog. This creates attractive thumbnails of your photographs within a justified grid. Powered by a strong JavaScript algorithm this plugin allows you to customize the size of the cells and their behavior. This plugin also choses the right resolution for the image, using the Flickr size suffixes.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flickr-feed-gallery/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
3. NextGen Gallery
With more than 5 million downloads this is surely one of the most used photo plugin in WordPress. This plugin allows you to update and manage large number of photographs into your blog even when the files are zipped. You can import Meta data from another source and easily add/delete/rearrange/sort images, edit thumbnails in your blog. You can also add transition affects to the photographs.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
4. Online Booking Calendar
For any professional photographer this is one of the must use plugins. This allows the clients to know your availability in the coming days and months and book you for an event. This does away with the hassle of check for your dairy for the note of your schedule and accidental double bookings on the same day. This interactive plugin turns your WordPress into your digital assistant where bookings can be made 24×7.
[button-dark url=”http://onlinebookingcalendar.com/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
5. Contact Form
This is a very important plugin for any photographer who seeks to get future assignments through the website. With the use of this plugin you can easily build a highly customized contact form for your potential customers. This form can be easily customized from the backend and fit in any corner of the WordPress website. This contact form is also compatible in multiple languages which add to its advantages.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
6. Lightbox Gallery
This is a brilliant plugin which displays the images in your blog prominently. The user just needs to select the image that he or she wants to view from among the small thumbnails and the plugin immediately renders the image in a large size within a bright frame (light box hence the name) while darkening the surroundings grabbing the user’s attention only on the image concerned and nowhere else.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-lightbox/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
7. Share This
Social networking website are the best platform to showcase your work and be promote on a large network virally. This is where the Share This plugin comes so good as it allows your visitors to share your work in their network. This plugin allows you to customize the social networks over which you want your posts to be shared. This plugin can drive tons of traffic to your website and make you popular in no time.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-this/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
8. No Right Click Images
For any photographer protecting his/her work against plagiarism is high on the agenda. The No Right Click Image plugin hinders right click on your website which prevents people from saving your images and using them elsewhere without proper permission. Yes, screen shots of the blog can always be taken but that would prevent the plagiarist from getting hold of high resolution images.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/no-right-click-images-plugin/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
9. Membership
To further protect your images you can run the website purely based on membership basis and the Membership plugin comes good in this. It allows you to monitor who all have access to your website and customize permission to the users to view galleries and download images from your website. You can give different kinds of membership to the users such as Free Membership, Paid Membership, Renewable Membership, Unlimited Membership etc.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/membership/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
10. Google Analytics
Creating a good photo blog is okay but you also need to make sure that you have access to the statistics of your website. And what better plugin to think of than Google Analytics which gives you all the statistics that you need to manage a website and the campaign surrounding it. You will get data on the keywords used, location from where your users have come etc.
[button-dark url=”http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/” target=”_blank” position=”right”] Download [/button-dark]
These plugins go a long way in making your photo blog successful and attractive. Apart from this there are many other plugins which add to the mileage of a photographer’s blog.
