The people behind the WP.org introduced a new pie chart. It returns a percentage breakdown of the versions being actively used by that plugin’s users. I’m very surprised how many user are currently uses (or activated) NextGEN Gallery. It’s more than 80.000 blogs worldwide… More over I’m astonished how many user are not updating to the latest version, only 18% installed the latest version….
alex.rabe 
Some users probably modify the css or code in the plugin.
Then it is not possible to update. Thats why a good changelog is ideal..
Custom CSS & custom templates can be moved to the template folder, so an update didn’t break your blog
And it is hard to update on free hosting services because of the limitations.
I have modified the code in order to get the basic functionality I need (and that currently have low priority in google code. Porting them to each version is too time consuming, so I lag a few version behind.
It’s really simple…
If you have manually change the code you are not willing to lose that you have done…
Also people like some time to pass before they update, so they avoid bugs in new versions…
In my case, I have not updated because the WP dashboard doesn’t offer an update for NG. I use automatic update for my plugins, and it’s not saying an update is available. I’d guess that’s the big reason. Just a guess, tho.
Congratulations!
I’m using the plugin on my blog. It’s worked great so far. Thanks ^_^
hmmm… Very interesting statistics. I wonder if this trend of not updating could be found in other WordPress plugins, with generally the same update frequency.
Is there a way to deliver messages to the users about the updates (and there importance) through email? (I know the answer is “no”, but I’m just dreamin’.
I’ve used NextGen for several months now, and it has been just a joy to use this WordPress Gallery Plugin, the best one -bar none. So I’ll be donating by getting one of the gifts from the Amazon thingy there.
You really want a email when a plugin has a update ready ?
i’m using 1.5.5 because I have modified the code to allow two preview photos on the gallery page, and also added a before and after shutter effect in the gallery view. 1.6.x hasn’t added any features i need so it’s not worth it to port my code.
It’s funny to hear all the people complain about customizations with next gen and not upgrading. I upgrade as soon as a new release is available because those update usually have what I need done in them. I don’t use many customizations within my plugins though to make sure I can upgrade. I will say I’ve been using this plugin for a VERY long time though (since 7.27.2007) and to me nextgen is as important as wordpress itself for what I do. I can’t thank Alex enough for the work he’s put into this.
Ben Jacobsen
Well I usually keep my site up to date with the latest plugins all the time, its just that next gen is the only one I don’t update, since I have modified it to randomly generate a 6 character folder name, instead of the default slug being used as the folder name; and since you have not recently released any new features, its pointless updating.
Alex says:
“Custom CSS & custom templates can be moved to the template folder, so an update didn’t break your blog”
What exactly should I do to keep modifications to nggallery.css and imagebrowser.php intact on an upgrade? Is there some documentation about that specifically?
@Dash
See here http://alexrabe.de/2008/11/25/new-in-version-100-templates/
Hi Alex,
I LOVE the nextgen plugin, but on the point of upgrading: Some of the sites I use it with have custom code written into one of the ‘view’ files. It lacks some modularity which means that often it takes time before I get round to checking out the new code in comparison with the old.
Some of this functionality could be written into the NG backend pages rather than editing the PHP. Sometimes it is as simple as switching captions on or off and other times I need to add tags (such as as seen on your examples with custom borders). Also, I tend to use UL, or DD tags rather than left float divs (for coding preference and flexibility on multiple devices mainly), so often adjust the gallery.php file.
I have been meaning to present some code to you for this, but have not quite finished it yet (or at least found a way to make it universally simple, modular and coded elegantly).
More importantly perhaps, is to do with customised CSS. This could do with a ‘child theme’ type approach. Copying the nggallery.css to the main theme folder (as recommended on the Style page)is not an intuitive method (not your fault, it is the WP way…). If NG could be updated without touching the gallery ‘theme’, then updating would be a more failsafe procedure for those who use custom galleries.
Not sure what the solution to this would be, just making passing on my personal reason for not upgrading immediately on some sites.
FYI, I have just updated the plugin on one website and the Style page shows:
Oops, no such file exists! Double check the name and try again, merci.
Everything else is good 😉
Otherwise, keep up the amazing work. Your plugin is as important to me as the WordPress system itself.
[…] people use the NextGen plugin – or at least have downloaded it. Check out the stats on the NextGen developers site (direct […]
Alex – this is an awesome plugin! It took us less than 5 minutes from the time to install it to getting a gallery published on our site. Excellent! Kudos to you on the number of sites using it – it really shows just how powerful and easy to use this plugin really is.
Hello forum…
I recently upgraded to version 1.6.2. But now I’m getting the word “SLIDESHOW” at the top of the picture display window on my Home page.
Is this because I’m running PHP 4.4.9? Perhaps I need to downgrade to previous version of GalleryView? It was working great until I upgraded recently.
Thanks,
Dan
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Operating System : Linux (32 Bit)
Server : Apache/1.3.41 Ben-SSL/1.59
Memory usage : 16.77 MByte
MYSQL Version : 5.0.67-1~ui40+2
SQL Mode : Not set
PHP Version : 4.4.9
PHP Safe Mode : Off
PHP Allow URL fopen : On
PHP Memory Limit : 40M
PHP Max Upload Size : 20M
PHP Max Post Size : 8M
PCRE Backtracking Limit : N/A
PHP Max Script Execute Time : 50000s
PHP Exif support : Yes ( V1.4 )
PHP IPTC support : Yes
PHP XML support : Yes
Graphic Library
GD Version : bundled (2.0.28 compatible)
FreeType Support : Yes
FreeType Linkage : with freetype
T1Lib Support : No
GIF Read Support : Yes
GIF Create Support : Yes
JPG Support : Yes
PNG Support : Yes
WBMP Support : Yes
XBM Support : Yes
JIS-mapped Japanese Font Support : No
[…] I’m focused on NextGEN-Gallery , which is a real challenge for me. It has a large user base and is used in various way. I spend a lot of time for the upgrade process, so that a new […]