Elementor has a problem, its widget library is too popular. There are over 120 Elementor add-on plugins available in the WordPress plugins directory Now this turns out to be a dual edge advantage for Elementor. First, users can find added help among the many add-ons making Elementor a more attractive WordPress ThemeBuilder buy. But there are two downsides: first, in the recent Elementor coding glitches involved in the move to Flexbox, a number of add-on vendors failed to keep up with changes to the Elementor API. Second, advances in Elementor components using query-loop facilities are obsoleting many add-on vendors’ plugins. This impacts add-ons/plugins for sliders, charts, galleries, and composite objects.
So this post will test how various Elementor Gallery plugins have been affected by Elementor Gallery Pro. We shall examine filtering rules, options for grid, masonry, and justified layout; flexbox and overlay settings; and the ability to absorb media library titles, captions, and descriptions plus centering and typography settings. Warning – simple options are annoyingly missed.
First up, Elementor Pro Gallery – 5 images, masonry layout, no filtering
Elementor Pro Gallery delivers grid, masonry, and justified layouts while picking up title and caption settings from media library images[but not descriptions or image exposure settings]. The lightbox opens a very fast slider that loops through all the images this time using the title and descriptions [but not captions nor image exposure values. However, the Pro lightbox has a very useful control widget in the upper righthand corner that supplies a magnifier, download, and share buttons. So only filtering and complete usage of Media library text settings are the Elementor Pro Gallery shortcomings…
So nextup is the Elementor Addon Gallery which will add filtering to gallery features:
Data from Mobile Report 2022
123
World Wide Growth in Online retail sales
nada
The Elementor Add-on Gallery duplicates many Elementor Pro features – display in masonry, grid or justified layout;, shows overlays on hover but only with captions; ;and has a lightbox that loops through the images with very fast response time but without the share, magnifier, and download features found in the Elementor Pro Gallery.
So our next gallery demo uses the Basic Gallery that comes with free Elementor:
The Basic Gallery is missing 3 key features – no filtering; no layout beyond the default grid layout, and no overlays on moving over an image. Instead, the Caption is shown under each image i have added borders around each image and grey brow background behindthe gallery block [this option is available in all of the other gallery tools].
But the pleasanr surpris is how well the lightbox works – it delivers very fast image slider that loops around the images. It also delivers the image title and caption below each lightbox image. The bonus is that magnifier, sharing, and download tools are available in the upper righthand control widget.
Our last gallery will be done using the free Foo Gallery plugin. This will be a test of how well a very good gallery plugin stands up to the new Elementor Pro features. One nifty feature of Foo Gallery is that it uses a shortcode to activate it:
But the downside is that FooGallery and Ultimate Addons Gallery conflict. As shown here the FooGallery appears as five blank images; dectivate Ultimate Add-ons plugin and the Foo Gallery images appear and in right layout.
Lessons Learned About Elementor plugins
Now some could easily argue that Foo Gallery and Ultimate Addons Gallery do not need to be run at the same time. However, one client is running Ultimate Add-on carousels and has a back log of Foo galleries that he does not want to convert to Ultimate Addons. So Elementor suffers from the same weaknesses as WordPress plugins in generl:
1 – hidden conflicts among add-ons/plugins;;
2 – Need to keep al the add-ons/plugins updated when securit or /performance changes are made toto containing plugins;
3 – Overlapping features none of which meets all user needs.This latter case arises with gallery and CPT-Custom Post Type add-ons/plugins.