WordPress plugins for media

So I’ve been working on writing a chapter on WordPress as an open source blogging platform for a book I’m working on. Ironically, even though I wrote a chapter on WordPress for the blogging book, the software has changed so much since the book went to press, I’m having to re-research particular areas. Media support especially has improved and changed. As a result, I’m learning about some really cool plugins that I’ve never used before. Two favorites? NextGEN Gallery and Flickr Manager. NextGEN gallery is an awesome gallery building tool for WordPress. Much more robust functionality than the built in gallery shortcode functionality. WordPress Flickr Manager is a tool which helps you add Flickr photos to your blog. What makes it superior in my humble opinion is that you can upload photos to Flickr from within WordPress. This is a huge time saver if you want to both photoblog and put your photos into Flickr. I also particularly like the fact that you can add an entire photoset to a post. Another Flickr plugin that you might like is Flickr Photo Album. It works very similarly to WordPress Flickr Manager. The major difference is you have greater control over how your sets display. Unfortunately neither of these plugins allow you to embed Flickr photos as a slideshow which is often appropriate for a large photoset. If you want to insert a slideshow of Flickr images then the best way to do this is to view the slideshow and use the Share link to get the slideshow’s embed code. Below I’ve embedded a slideshow of photos from my trip to Italy.

I’ve also been exploring plugins for video and the one which I’m most impressed with so far is All in One Video Pack from Kaltura. If you haven’t heard of Kaltura or checked it out, it is well worth your time. In addition to there being a WordPress plugin, a module for Drupal also exists as well as an extension for MediaWiki. This plugin allows you to upload video in a variety of formats to Kaltura’s site. Kaltura provides a limited amount of space (4GB) for free and then encodes the video for display on the web. Kaltura also can be used to to create videos using a webcam or edit videos which have been uploaded. Kaltura can also be used to embed videos, audio, and images from external sites such as YouTube, ccMixter, and Flickr.