Want to design beautiful WordPress portfolio themes and galleries that stand out? Check out our top picks for WordPress portfolio plugins!
Why choose one of these WordPress portfolio plugins?
Creating WordPress portfolio themes for your website can be an effective way to market your design experience. It's also an effect way to start making money online.
Many types of business and websites can benefit from a portfolio or gallery. Artists, catalogues, and online stores are just the start. Other businesses that use visual portfolios include real estate websites, educational sites, and sites that display user reviews.
However, not all WordPress portfolio themes or galleries are created equal. The design will need to be carefully created, responsive, and user-friendly.
So, how can you easily create a WordPress image or review gallery on a WordPress site?
With a WordPress portfolio plugin, you can add image and video galleries to your website using pre-designed layouts. This can be an easy way to express your capabilities, feature your personality, and gain new clients.
In this post, we’ll recommend five of the best WordPress portfolio plugins. Then we'll go over the great features each one uses to make creating a portfolio super easy.
This way, you can choose the best one for your needs. Let’s get started!
1. Formidable Forms
First on our list is the all-in-one form builder plugin, Formidable Forms.
With Formidable Forms, you can create flexible forms for just about any type of content. Using Formidable's drag-and-drop builder, you can design surveys, quizzes, event calendars, and even filterable portfolios.
This makes Formidable Forms an all-in-one solution. You can use its limitless features to create beautiful portfolio sites and galleries.
Formidable Forms offers a simple way to feature a portfolio on any WordPress website. When you add a new form, you can choose a gallery format or image carousel to display images in a list. You can also upload photos to a contact or registration form to increase its visual appearance and maximize engagement.
Best of all, Formidable Forms allows instant uploads to appear on pages and posts on any WordPress website. This means you can set up an upload form that instantly converts all submitted data to portfolio pages in real-time.
Even better, Formidable comes with a huge library of pre-made templates that make form and portfolio setup a breeze.
In other words, Formidable is an excellent option for a page-builder that makes custom post types for portfolios.
Features:
- Drag and drop form builder with pre-built form templates
- Multiple file upload forms to easily add images, documents, and even music
- Application builder to display images with infinite flexibility
- Visual form styler
Pricing: The core plugin is free, while premium tiers start at $39.50 per year.
2. Portfolio Gallery
Next up on our list of WordPress portfolio plugins is Portfolio Gallery.
Portfolio Gallery is a popular WordPress portfolio plugin because of its simple features. Thanks to its filters and layouts with multiple columns, this tool enables you to organize your portfolio images into different categories.
You can also use Portfolio Gallery to arrange galleries in a cohesive, professional format to showcase examples of your work.
This portfolio plugin's minimal settings make Portfolio Gallery easy to set up. After that, you can add images and videos to a gallery.
If you're still looking for more custom options, this plugin can do that, too. After adding images, you can customize the captions, spacing, and numbering.
Even the free version provides advanced features such as grayscale effects and multi-color filter buttons.
Features:
- Two types of column layouts
- Five filters with four primary colors
- Bootstrap Lightbox
- Overlay and Zoom hover effects (premium only)
- Custom CSS
Pricing: Free for the basic plugin, while the premium version starts at $29.
3. Grid KIT Portfolio Gallery
If you're still searching for a great WordPress portfolio plugin, third on our list is Grid KIT.
If you need a portfolio layout with more custom options, Grid KIT Portfolio Gallery can be a great option. Using its layout builders, you can create a unique image structure and group galleries into albums.
Since this plugin is capable of featuring product catalogs and client logos, it can be a great option for freelancers.
Although the standard WordPress portfolio plugin can help you build a responsive gallery, the premium version offers more advanced features. It provides over a dozen different layouts that can be used to feature YouTube videos and Instagram feeds.
You can even showcase multiple portfolios on one page, and allow visitors to share your photos on social media. This is a great way to generate leads and bring traffic to a WordPress site.
Features:
- Embedded layout builder
- Option to add portfolio images, gallery sliders, client logos, and team members
- Ability to list product catalog items
- Embedded popup extension
- Shortcode add-on
Pricing: Grid KIT Portfolio Gallery is available as a free WordPress plugin, while its premium version starts at $29 per year.
4. Visual Portfolio
For portfolio plugin number four, we have Visual Portfolio.
Visual Portfolio advertises itself as a simple but powerful portfolio plugin. With its modern layouts and galleries, Visual Portfolio offers some of the best WordPress portfolio themes for photography and art.
Despite its aesthetic focus, this plugin is optimized to be lightweight, so it shouldn't impact your website's speed. That said, it still doesn't offer the compact efficiency that an all-in-one plugin like a form builder could.
Using Visual Portfolio, you can focus on your portfolio's design rather than on learning technical skills. This plugin enables you to showcase your work in a variety of visual styles.
Also, you can edit design settings in the gallery block, which doesn't require any coding knowledge. However, there are options for customizng features. Advanced developers can access a CSS module and PHP filters for additional changes and tweaks to the design
Features:
- Layouts such as Masonry Gallery, Tiles Gallery, and Grid Gallery
- Video and audio support
- Visual effects
- Powerful lightbox feature
- Custom CSS and CSS Variables
Pricing: The core WordPress plugin is free, while Visual Portfolio Pro starts at $39 per year.
5. NextGEN Gallery
And last but not least is NextGen Gallery.
When building a photography portfolio, you can't go wrong with the NextGEN Gallery plugin. This portfolio plugin worked with photographers to provide well-designed galleries.
This makes for an easy time organizing images on your WordPress website. It also means the layouts are sleek and provide a visually pleasant experience for users.
With help from this WordPress portfolio plugin, you can upload batch photos into galleries. On the front end, you can choose from three gallery styles to edit sizes, transitions, and lightbox effects.
Additionally, NextGEN Gallery integrates into the Block Editor so you can add your portfolio anywhere on your website.
Features:
- Add Gallery Window option
- 3 gallery styles
- 2 album styles
- Supports the Block Editor
- Simple shortcodes
Pricing: Free to download as a WordPress plugin, while NextGEN Pro starts at $49 per year.
WordPress portfolio plugins conclusion
A WordPress portfolio theme is a simple way to increase your credibility and grow your business. With the right portfolio form-building plugin, you can use custom layouts to design a dream portfolio in minutes.
To recap, here are five of the best WordPress portfolio plugins:
- Formidable Forms: A flexible plugin with image and file upload capabilities. Create custom image galleries, contact forms, and surveys.
- Portfolio Gallery: A simple plugin you can use to rearrange images into specific portfolio categories.
- Grid KIT Portfolio Gallery: A portfolio gallery builder that can feature product catalogs and client logos.
- Visual Portfolio: A lightweight portfolio plugin for creating clean and appealing photo galleries without custom coding.
- NextGen Gallery: A portfolio plugin that was designed by photographers for photographers.
With Formidable Forms, you can make and customize image layouts to fully personalize your portfolio. Check out our flexible plugin if you want to make your website more engaging!
Create a WordPress portfolio now!
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