One of the first stops an ideal client makes in searching for a wedding photographer is at your website. Your website is where you share your past photography work and is a reflection of your brand and what clients can expect when they book you. That’s why it’s so important to have all the tools necessary to create a positive experience for them as soon as they access your website. Plugins are a popular feature that helps you expand what your website can offer to ideal clients. We reached out to Scott Wyden Kivowitz from Imagely, a leading provider of WordPress products and services for professional photographers, to gain his insights on 4 visual plugins to use for wedding photography websites.
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Wedding Photography Websites
I’m often hearing from wedding photographers who want to know what must have WordPress plugins they should use on their site. So today, I’d like to address this popular question. To be specific, though, I’m going to offer my recommendations for visual plugins. Plugins which add features to make your website more aesthetically pleasing.
Before we dive in, I want to make sure you understand that almost all the plugins I’m recommending are free but have paid counterparts and services. Continue to read for 4 of the best WordPress plugins for photographers.
Related: Ensure the images you share on your website are consistent and in your style when you send them to a wedding photography editing company!
1. Elementor
If you’ve been tempted by the commercials on television for Squarespace and Wix then you likely have an interest in drag and drop page builders. It’s understandable as they make website creation and editing extremely simple.
Well, guess what, WordPress can do this!
There are countless page builder plugins available for WordPress. But the one that stands out above them all is Elementor. It’s 100% free if you want it to be. But there are many other reasons to choose Elementor over other page builders.
- Many page builders will litter your website with something called shortcodes. And if you ever decided to stop using those page builders, your site will be a pain in the behind to clean up. Elementor does not litter your site with shortcodes.
- Usually, the free page builder plugins are limited to what they can do next to their paid counterparts. Not this one. Elementor is the most robust page builder available. The free version can actually do more than some page plugins.
- Just above I wrote that this is a plugin. Many page builders are built into themes, which is not a good thing. That makes you stuck with using that theme because if you change themes you lose all your site content. Elementor is a plugin that works with any theme.
As I mentioned, Elementor is extremely robust in its free version. But there is a paid version, which has an annual cost. It does include some additional elements, or modules, that you can drag into your site, as well as additional features like their pro template library and support.
Related: 4 Wedding Photographer Websites Done Right – see them here!
2. Imagify
As photographers, we have to share photographs on our website. And we like to share them in large size, so our clients can see them. That has some drawbacks. Here are two:
- Large images can slow down a website
- Slow websites can impact SEO, even slightly
My go-to image compression tool, out of Lightroom and Photoshop, is JPEGmini Pro. But it’s a desktop app. And it’s only existed for a couple of years. So what about all those other images already on the website? That’s where Imagify comes in. It’s an image compression tool for WordPress. It compresses images during upload and also offers the ability to bulk compress all of your images previously uploaded.
Imagify offers three levels of compression.
- Normal
- Aggressive
- Ultra
I keep my website set to Aggressive. I found that it doesn’t degrade the image quality and still saves a lot of space on the server, by reducing the image file sizes. Imagify is a free plugin with a limit (by file size) to how many images can be compressed. By creating an account on their website and adding your API key to the plugin, it unlocks additional compression ability. And then there is the option to pay for even more compression. If you’ve never compressed your archived images then I recommend paying for a higher plan from the get go, running the bulk compression and then changing plans to a lower one based on your upload rate. Imagify will analyze your ongoing upload rate and offer its advice as to what plan you should be on.
IMPORTANT: By default, the plugin is set to strip EXIF/Metadata out of images it compresses. Turn that option off so it retains your EXIF.
3. NextGEN Gallery
There are numerous gallery plugins available for WordPress. But only one WordPress photography plugin is designed for photographers in mind. It’s designed for users who heavily work with a lot of images on a regular basis. It’s more than just a gallery plugin. It’s a photography management plugin WordPress tool photographers can use for their galleries.
I work for Imagely, the company who develops NextGEN Gallery, but I want to tell you why it’s on my recommended visual plugins list:
- Photographers need galleries and multiple ways of displaying their work
- The plugin is used by over 1.3 million people
- NextGEN Gallery existed before WordPress had a useful media library
- It offers a familiar gallery management interface
- It allows for dragging and dropping for sorting
- And the plugin comes with many display styles
- NextGEN Gallery offers Albums which are a group of galleries, similar to Collections and Collection Sets in Lightroom
- Finally, you can upload your images, galleries, and albums directly from Lightroom
By the way, Imagify can also compress the photos you upload to NextGEN Gallery. In addition to the free plugin is NextGEN Pro, a paid upgrade. The paid version comes with additional display styles for galleries and albums. It also includes the ability to do proofing on our website. The combination of NextGEN Gallery and NextGEN Pro is ideal for any wedding photographer who wants complete control over the customer experience.
4. WP Instagram Widget
The last visual plugin I want to recommend is WP Instagram Widget. It’s literally a widget that allows for pulling from your Instagram feed. With it, you can display your Instagram photos anywhere on your website, where your theme offers widgets. Combine it with Elementor and you can put your Instagram photos any place on your website. It’s worth noting that calling external images from Instagram can have a slight impact on site speed. I have examined many Instagram plugins, though, and I found this specific plugin to be the lightest weight for the fastest load time.
So there you go – 4 visual plugins for your wedding photography websites. Let us know below if you’re using any of these, or if you have your own preferred visual plugins. Next time you hear from me, it will be in an article about the best lead-generating plugins.
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When you include plugins (in this case, WordPress photography plugins) on wedding photography websites, you create an overall positive experience for ideal clients. What else can you do to attract and book more clients each year? Our free Guide: How to Grow Your Wedding Photography Business has 50+ pages of helpful tips and tricks to create a successful business. Click on the banner and download it today!
