As a photographer, your website will be based on the essence of capturing your unique style and offering a user-friendly experience. It is essential to utilize the available plugins for your WordPress site to get the most out of it. There are many great options available to provide enhanced galleries, social media sharing, copyright protection, and more. Deciding which ones will suit your website needs can be an overwhelming task.
Check out: Best Photography WordPress Themes 2019
We took the confusion and frustration out of it and scoured the web for the best plugins for your WordPress website. These plugins have been tested and verified for their ease of use, dependability, and overall asset to your photography website. Each one of the site issues mentioned can play a part into your search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the number one thing leading to your site being successful or not. Check out which plugins we feel can help a photographer out best to display and market their work.
Envira Gallery
Every photographer needs an excellent gallery for their WordPress site. Envira Gallery is sure not to disappoint. The plugin created by Thomas Griffin has become one of the most popular, which is not surprising due to its easy interface and beautiful layout. It’s a smooth process of choosing your images and moving them into the gallery of choice. There is also the unique feature of a sidebar widget giving your website more options than ever.
Envira Gallery is also noticeably faster than many of the other word press app choice available. Speed plays a crucial role in the ranking of your website. A fast website will get you noticed with high search rankings. The exceptional speed technology of Envira Gallery will bring your site to a new level.
The gallery app had one goal to be both easy and powerful. It truly packs a punch with its core features as well as additional add-ons. Your galleries will be easy to share on social media with advanced social sharing and easy import to Pinterest and Instagram. Watermarking your images for copyright protection and a full-size gallery option is a fantastic option for client proofing.
Storyform
If you are a photographer who enjoys attaching stories to your work displayed on your website, then Storyform is going to be an excellent option for you. It will take the struggle out of the process of combining your photography with the actual stories of your clients.
This WordPress plugin will allow you to bring your photos to life with an accompanying story text. Using the well-designed interface, one can use this plugin to arrange better how the images and text look on the website. The design style will be similar to a modern magazine feel. This plugin uses a full screen with a responsive page. These pages flip horizontally this allows the site to free up additional room for a multi-column article and even different graphics or animation. What really makes Storyform a great choice is that it will enable you to select and choose the images most important to you to post and apply in Storyform. You also have the option of placing images in a gallery style or in a storyteller photo essay type of way.
Easy Watermark
As a photographer making sure your images are copyright protected is crucial to your livelihood. It is a frustration to see a picture you took being used for free without credit on the internet. Some may say do not post your images online and you would not have that problem. The issue with that is most marketing is done online. Photography is an image-based career, and the internet is the best way to get your work in front of your client base.
Instead of refraining from posting them online, you can use a watermark. While this may not prevent everyone from using your copyrighted images, it certainly helps an immense amount when used correctly. The best way to do this is with a plugin for your WordPress site. Easy Watermark has been designed to take the stress out of the process of protecting your images.
Once you have downloaded Easy Watermark, you will find an easy to use the site with three main general areas. The first option you will see will be to automatically add a watermark to any image that is uploaded to your website. Next, you can choose which images you want watermarks on and what size and finally, if you’re going to add a watermark to your featured images. That is all it takes to get Easy Watermark set up. What is great about this plugin is you can go back in and watermark past photos on your site. You can not only use text or images as a watermark, but you can also add them manually or remove them.
WordPress Photo Gallery
As we were explaining with the Envira gallery choice for your website are endless. WordPress provides a free version. It is worth a download of the plugin for your website. This version offers many different beautiful layouts to choose from. It is designed for all photographers in mind as well as your site visitors.
The free version has the option of either slideshows or thumbnails for gallery styles. They also have two different types of album styles available; compact or extended. In addition to those options, you are also able to personalize by controlling timing, style, size, lightbox effects, and more. WordPress photo gallery also offers different premium bundles, which would increase the options for your website.
With all of the different options, no two galleries will look identical. Uniqueness is a beautiful thing when you are trying to set yourself apart in the photography industry. Advanced options such as watermarking and linking will provide you the additional steps you need for an overall plugin option for your galleries.
Optimole
As a photographer, your images are the main component of your site. Websites and social media are how you sell your work to the world. One of the significant downfalls with pictures on your website is they slow things down. Slow sites lead to low SEO, which leads to fewer potential leads. Your WordPress images must be optimized to keep things running quickly and smoothly. Using this plugin will make it easier for people to visit your site view images quickly. It will also decrease the amount of space your images take up on your server potentially saving you money in the longterm.
Optimole is a solution to image issues. Designed as a plugin for your WordPress site Optimole handles both your resizing and image compression needs. What’s more, Optimoles exclusive technology will assist in the loading of images, making the viewing experience a pleasurable one. What does that mean? No more waiting for images to load and come into focus.
Both free and premium plan exists with Optimole, which you choose depends upon how many images you will be uploading to your site. The settings tab is very user-friendly and will satisfy the needs of both the beginner and the advanced user. Options available include image replacement, Javascript & Lazyload, compression level, and resizing. This image optimization plugin will allow you to bring your WordPress website to the next level.
Custom Feeds for Instagram
Social media is a colossal beast that photographers have to tackle. Advice will be given on which site you need to be on, how often to post, what to post, and if you need to take part in boosting your work through premium options. With all of the advice, it can be challenging to decide what is best. One thing is sure Instagram is the king of images. As a photographer, it is one site you must be using to promote your work.
It is not as difficult as one might things, and many apps can assist in this process. One of those apps is Customer Feeds for Instagram. This WordPress plugin takes all of the work out of optimizing your Instagram experience.
Installing this plugin will be the ticket to targeting your audience and increasing that engagement between you and your followers. Your Instagram content is displayed directly on your site. The plugin will allow you to save a step by only posting to Instagram and then having it show up on your website as well. Your website will always be updated, which leads to high search engine rankings. The best thing no coding is required, even a beginner can be up and running in a few minutes with a fully customizable experience.
Keeping your website content-rich and current can be an overwhelming experience. With these six WordPress plugins, your days will become more relaxed, leaving you more time for photography and less time working and worrying about your website. Even if you only use one plugin, you will notice an exciting user experience on your website. It is our hope this will lead you to many more clients and additional photography work to share with the world.
