Erick Danzer

@anthony.professionel – Quick follow up. Do you really think the issues you described above warrant a 1 star review, taking into account all the other things you can do with NextGEN? If so, that’s definitely fine. If not, just wondering if you can adjust it with the whole 1 to 5 star scale in mind. Thanks again.

Erick

@anthony.professionel – thanks for taking the time to leave feedback. A few thoughts:

*You can edit the actual alt text, just not the front end display of that gallery without using a template. I think that’s probably similar to WordPress.

*You’re right though, that you can’t link a thumbnail to, say, a page. That’s a popular feature request and something that’s definitely on our radar. For what it’s worth, you can do this using NextGEN’s album functionality.

*While you can’t link an image to a specific URL, NextGEN does add a few hundred other options for image management and displays. I think most people who opt to use NextGEN are using it as a whole package for image management.

In any case, it sounds in this case like NextGEN may not have been the solution you need. That’s a bummer. But we appreciate you leaving the feedback, and hope you find an alternative that does work great for you.

Thanks (Erick).

@choppy6 – Thanks for the feedback and apologies for the difficulties.

Quick note that open letter you are linking to (from me) is from over a year ago and was associated with the initial release of the major 2.x update (about 60+ versions ago) in 2013.

I don’t want to minimize your issues, which sound really serious, but I do want to emphasize that our recent updates are great for almost all users, and there is definitely no known issue with our recent updates crashing sites. That means the issue you’re experiencing is somewhat unique and probably requires site-specific troubleshooting.

I did just find your support thread, and I see you wrote in over the holiday weekend. You are correct, we do not provide support over the weekend which is why you had to wait.

We’re a very small team, and there are real reasons for not trying to provide support coverage over the weekend. Regardless, the timing was terrible for you to have a site go down when support is not available, and I’d be really unhappy about it as well. So I honestly think your frustration is warranted.

It’s painful to me that you were left hanging for several days with a serious issue.

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I do see that Cais responded to you by 7:30AM on Tuesday morning:

“Sarah –

The post you are referring to is actually over a year old and we have had numerous releases since then addressing known and at that time unknown issues.

Updating from version 2.0.66.17 to version 2.0.66.27 as you indicated in your report would not by itself cause your site to go down. This is most likely going to be due to a conflict with another active plugin. We’ve seen a few unfortunately, but these cases have been extremely rare … and the plugin conflict alone was not the only issue in most of those cases as well so we have no reasonable justification to point to any specific combination of plugins which may in rare cases cause this issue.

We believe there is approximately 500,000 active installations of NextGEN Gallery, if this was a common issue we would be working in it non-stop to sort out what would be the cause but it is not a common issue and we do not really have much details to go on with your report at this point.

If you were happy with the plugin prior to updating then you should be able to easily roll back to the 2.0.66.17 version until a more practical time can be set aside for you to update and if the issue persists we would be more than happy to look at your site specifically.

If you need assistance rolling back, this article is very useful: https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/how-to-rollback-a-version/

Thanks!

– Cais.”

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We haven’t heard back from you on this yet. Did you roll back or otherwise resolve the issue? If not, please reply to that email with additional details so we can get this resolved for you.

Again, my apologies both for the initial issue and for the wait. While I know it’s little solace for you, this situation is quite rare for us.

Thanks. Erick

@tim92109 – Hi and thanks for the feedback. I want to second/emphasize what Cais has already said. NextGEN’s basic gallery displays *are* responsive. As examples, you can go to the following links and try resizing your browser:

https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/basic-slideshow-gallery/
https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/basic-thumbnail-gallery/
https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/basic-imagebrowser-gallery/
https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/basic-compact-album/

Cais also talked about working lightboxes (the pop-ups that show your main images when you click on thumbnails within a thumbnail gallery).

Is there something specific you are seeing that’s not responsive? We’d love to ensure that reviews, whether positive or not, are at least accurate on our functionality.

Thanks in advance! (Erick)

Hmm. @teakay – I’ll be honest and say I’m not really sure what to make of your feedback. We usually take feedback seriously. But it’s almost like maybe you are reviewing a different plugin? A few specific points:

“You can’t control thumbnail size” – There are so many ways to control thumbnail sizes in NextGEN Gallery that I can’t really understand what you mean. At the most basic, you can resize thumbnails in central gallery management area, or as you are adding a gallery through the Insert Gallery Window.

“watermark feature is basically pointless because of how limited and hideous it is” – Our watermark feature allows you to upload your own image, and use that to watermark images, so I’d think the appearance would be fully dependent on what image you use? Or you can use a text-based watermark in which you can customize color, size, location, opacity, etc. For those who choose to use that, I’m not sure how we’d make it any more powerful. And there are very few if any plugins that have watermark functionality at all.

“don’t like the way this orders images either” – For sorting we display a grid of images that you can drag and drop to sort. You can do this in the central gallery area, or as you are adding a gallery to a page/post through the Insert Gallery Window. I’m not sure how we could make this any simpler or intuitive?

“It’s extremely basic” – honestly, the usual complaint from people is that NextGEN has too many options. There are literally hundreds of them. It probably has 4 or 5 times more options than whatever the next most powerful gallery management plugin is. So as with your other feedback, I’m just not sure what you mean by “basic.”

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I’m also noticing that your WordPress account is brand new (created the same day as this review) and that this is your only post. I’m wondering if maybe you are just new to WP or NextGEN Gallery and just not that familiar with the interface maybe?

I’d really suggest posting at least once in the great community support forums to get some assistance from Cais or other community members in getting up and running with the plugin.

Sorry if all this comes across as non-receptive to feedback, but I think we honestly just find your review perplexing. Thanks (Erick).

Thanks for the additional details, @afaverman. Just a couple follow up thoughts.

1) It sounds like you may be editing the main gallery.php file? If so, you should expect that every plugin update would overwrite that file and your changes would be lost. I may be misunderstanding. But otherwise, you should put your changes in a separate template in the templates folder. For details: https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/templates/

The only thing I’m not quite understanding is why your edits to the same file wouldn’t have been taking effect. Not sure if that was caching, or related to which file you were editing, etc.

While rolling back to 2.0.66 is a good short term solution, it would be better for us and for you to identify and resolve the issue if there is one. Otherwise you won’t be able to update going forward, meaning you’ll miss everything from feature updates to security patches.

In any case, if you do update again and see issues, please do post in the forums. Cais on our team is quite active there in terms of providing support. Maybe do this when you have just a bit of time to work through any issues.

2) On the topic of support… I do need to add a note. You seem to be indicating that we were slow to respond to your review, or to general support queries? From what I can see, I responded to your review within 5 hours. For free support of a free plugin on WP.org that has hundreds of thousands of users, that’s actually fairly fast. We also have some of the fastest and most thorough free support of any major WordPress plugin in the forums. At time of writing about 42% of all support forum questions are marked resolved, which is quite high given the volume and given that it’s all provided free.

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In any case, I’m mostly concerned that you be able to update and maintain your functionality intact. If/when you do update, if you have issues, please let us know. Thanks (Erick)

Hi @afaverman – Doesn’t look like you’ve posted a support thread or anything on this. I recommend doing so, so we can try and diagnose what happened. I will say it would be very unusual for a NGG update to just break alt titles. Is there any chance you were doing something custom / different from out of the box NGG functionality with alt titles? Also, when you say “trying to reverse” this can you describe exactly what you were doing? Thanks (Erick)

@mari1919: Can you give more detail about what “doesn’t work” exactly? I see just one thread from you with similar language: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/why-this-changes?replies=2

Cais followed up with you but never got any additional detail as to the nature of your specific issue. If neither old versions nor new versions are working for you, then it’s very likely to be something specific to your environment. We’d be happy to try and troubleshoot with you.

@thatposhgirl: Thanks very much for taking the time to leave feedback. Especially given that you’ve got your own plugin in the repository, we value your feedback.

Can you please provide some details about “messing up other areas of the site”? That in itself sounds like it’s probably a conflict of some kind with a theme or plugin. And also which other plugins specifically it wasn’t playing well with?

It sounds to me like you were experiencing mostly either plugin or theme conflicts. While our initial overhaul in August 2013 did produce greater than normal conflicts, we’ve sorted the overwhelming majority of those at this point. So we’d be interested to hear more.

Thanks again. (Erick @ Photocrati)

@michael: Thanks for taking the time to leave your thoughts. Can you clarify what you mean by “going out of their way to prevent you from removing” styles and scripts?

@jsowers897: We’re normally quite thankful of feedback, but I have the impression that mostly you are just using your WP account to add on to NGG reviews like this one. There aren’t any support threads, any threads discussing or troubleshooting any specific issues you’re having, and almost no threads on any other plugins. If you haven’t done so, I’d honestly recommend trying to post a normal support thread and see if we can help you sort whatever issues you’re having.

I’d add that I actually think Nextcellent is a fine plugin. It should be – it’s just an exact copy of the last legacy version of the plugin that we created. But I will say using it ‘locks’ you in to the same level that using NGG ‘locks’ you in. And the developer, explicitly, doesn’t intend to develop it or improve it. It will stay more or less like it is. Which is good if all you’re wanting is stability. But over time, it’s going to get left behind compared to other plugins, including NGG.

In any case, thanks and best wishes to you (Erick @ Photocrati).

@jsowers897: Hi there. Thanks, as always, for taking time to leave your feedback and thoughts.

Just to correct the impression you’re suggesting, however, when we took over management of NextGEN Gallery, it had between 4 and 4.5 million downloads. It’s now about 10.2 million. So the majority of downloads have come since we took over the plugin.

Also, I think we all recognize that the introduction of our major overhaul of NextGEN in August 2013 was bumpy. It did, admittedly, produce a spike of poor reviews. But two further points on that.

First, we managed NextGEN for a year and a half before that overhaul. The version we took over from the previous developer (1.9.3) actually had a lot of issues and broken votes. We incrementally stabilized that version over a year and a half. The last “legacy” version we produced was one of, if not the most stable versions of NextGEN ever. When most people refer or compare us to the “old” version of NGG, they’re ironically comparing us largely against an older version of the plugin we maintained and stabilized.

Second, as for the overhaul itself, while it was indeed bumpy, almost every indicator suggests that it is dramatically stabilized at this point, and that the NGG community is doing quite well. For example:
*Downloads are as high or higher than they’ve ever been
*The active user base is as large as it’s ever been
*Voting is now in line with “legacy” versions
*Support volume in the forums is also now in line “legacy” versions

And just as incremental releases allowed us to bring the legacy version of NGG to some of it’s highest levels of stability and reviews, ongoing incremental releases will allow us to do the same with this version.

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To be clear, I don’t say this to be dismissive of your feedback. You are very welcome to your view of the plugin, and we welcome you expressing that view here in the review section.

But as you’ve moved away from reporting your own experience to trying to make more general statements about the state of the plugin, you’ve unfortunately wandered into factual mis-statements that need to be corrected.

Regardless, I have the impression that you’ve used NGG in the past and aren’t a fan of changes that we’ve made. We’re always genuinely sorry to hear that. We wish you the best in finding an alternative gallery solution. Thanks!

Ah, yup. Sorry I misread. In that case, you just need to remove the carousel template from https://bassbari.com/portfolio/blitch/. To do so,

1) Login and go to edit that page in the back end.
2) Click the placeholder image to open the Insert Gallery Window
3) You should see that you have NextGEN Basic Thumbnails selected as the gallery type
4) Go to the “Customize” accordion and find the field near the bottom where you can select a template. Right now, it should show you are using the carousel template. Just adjust that field so it’s blank and save. That should return you to a normal thumbnail gallery.

Again, let me know if that works. Thanks (Erick).

@timhillimages: Thanks very much for providing additional details. The gallery I’m seeing on https://bassbari.com/portfolio/blitch/ looks like it is using the carousel template. To duplicate the same look with your other gallery:

1) Go to the edit screen in the back end for https://timhillimages.com/newsletters/

Then, assuming you are using our new Insert Gallery Window (which inserts a placeholder image for the gallery) and not a shortcode…

2) Click the place holder image which will open up the Insert Gallery Window

3) Confirm that you have Basic Thumbnails selected as the display type

4) On the same page, open the “Customize” accordion section

5) Find the option for Templates, and select the carousel template

6) Save your gallery and update your page

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Please let me know if that provides the look you want. Thanks (Erick).

PS. If you are using a shortcode, I’d just remove it and add a new gallery via the NextGEN Insert Gallery window following the same steps.

@joshsmith01, @demonboy: Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback. Just a few thoughts.

First, it sounds like you’ve both had difficulties, and for that I apologize. Indeed, it sounds like neither of you have gotten to a point where you’ve extensively used the plugin.

@joshsmith01 – what PHP errors are you seeing exactly? And you said, you’ve “never gotten it to work.” NGG is obviously working for a large number of people, so if it’s not working “at all” for you, I suspect there’s something unique going on. Can you provide details on what’s not working exactly? I checked for any forum threads from you on it, but I don’t see any.

@demonboy, from your other review, which I just replied to, I took your main issue to be simply that it’s non-intuitive?

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Some responses to your other commentary.

@joshsmith01: on your comment about social media and “finding time to work on the plugin”… we do engage with our user base on social media. We have a person who handles blogging, social media, and other community engagement for us, and he does a great job. We think the time he spends interacting with our community adds value and it doesn’t, obviously, take away from the time our developers have available to spend on NextGEN. We have multiple developers working on NGG full time, and based on that we pushed out as massive an update of the plugin as is possible last August (probably too massive as it turns out); and we’ve released 60+ versions since then between betas and full releases. Those many releases have dramatically stabilized NGG since our major release and resolve almost all commonly experienced issues.

So while I think it’s feasible to object to specific development decisions we’ve made, we’re obviously investing very substantial time in development.

On the download numbers, I’d just want to point out that whether you measure by active user base or new adoption rates, NextGEN continues to be one of the most popular plugins in the WordPress ecosystem. We generally get 100,000 updates the first week following any release, and our steady state download rate is 4-5,000 downloads per day (1.4 – 1.8 million per year). That’s not a historical in any way, that reflects current activity. And neither our active users base or nor our steady state download rates have declined, even following the major bumps with our big release last August.

In any case, we do generally appreciate feedback, positive or otherwise, and I am genuinely disappointed to hear you’re both having difficulties. My sense is some of your comments go beyond your own experiences to draw conclusions either about our team or about the community of NextGEN users that seem rather unwarranted. But we still appreciate you taking the time to add your voices.

@flag: NGG was well tested against 3.9 and is working for most users fine. So if there’s an issue, it’s likely to be somethings specific. It sounds like you are having an issue with lightboxes not opening. Try changing lightboxes at Gallery > Other Options > Lightbox Effects. If that doesn’t work, try clicking the reset button at Gallery > Other Options > Misc. Resetting will return all setting to default. It won’t affect your galleries, but you’ll need to go back through and re-adjust any global options settings to your preferences.