Better Image Selection with NextGen Gallery and WordPress

By default the NextGen gallery plugin for WordPress displays images by their gallery id and filename. We find it hard to find our desired image in galleries with numerous images based on filename. Most of the time our filenames have no meaning. However, a simple change to a source file will display the description in the selection dropdown menu making searching much easier.

Note: This method depends on having descriptions for your images. Obviously, if you do not fill in descriptions then your dropdown menu is going to display blank listings. Manage galleries allows you to edit numerous details of your images including the description.

We are looking for a file named window.php which is inside the tinymce directory under the admin root.

Open the file in your text editor of choice and navigate to the section that starts with

. There will be a second

at the end of the section.

All we need to do is to change the id and filename to description. Alternatively, you could use the alttext property instead of description ($picture->alttext).

Here is the original code.

Here is the modified code.

Keep in mind that you are editing a plugin directly. This means that you will need to repeat this step whenever you update your NextGen gallery plugin.