Three years ago I wrote two articles about how to use the NextGen Custom Fields plugin with NextGen Gallery to link the images to a post or page. The articles are still two of the most visited and ones that I receive the most questions about. And, the instructions still work!
At the time, the one caveat about the NextGen Gallery customizations is that the plugin could not be updated with losing the customizations. Or you would need to copy the changes, upgrade the plugin, and then add the customizations back in.
Well, it turns out you can update the plugin but there a couple of things that you need to do first. I’ve actually considered trying this over the years but would get distracted by something else and forget about it. But, recently, I’ve been doing a lot of work with NextGen and decided it was time to update the plugin and test out this method.
In my earlier articles, we edited two of the NextGen files view/gallery.php and view gallery-caption.php. If you download these files, as well as any others you may have modified, and then upload them to your theme folder, you can update NextGen and you will still have your customized files. Of course, you do need to know how to use FTP or your cpanel file manager to do this and if you change themes you will want to copy the same NextGen files to the new theme directory.
Instructions
- You will need to use FTP or an online file manager to do the following.
- Download the customized NextGen files.
- Create a sub-directory in your theme directory called nggallery. For example, my theme is called kimwoodbridge so I created a sub-directory under wp-content/themes/kimwoodbridge
- Upload the NextGen files that you downloaded to the new directory.
- Test by updating the NextGen Gallery plugin.
This should work without any problems and I didn’t have any issues testing this on my own site. Of course, as always, I recommend making a full backup before making any changes to your site or plugins.
If you would like assistance customizing NextGen Gallery or with the instructions in this article, please contact me.
photo credit: ilovememphis
Hi. Trying to upgrade nextgen from 1.9.5 to las version but afraid of loosing all customizating in the blog. I started to follow steps in this great article BUT….no idea of wihich are the “customized NextGen files”. Could you specified. Thanks in advanced.
Quite useful your tutorial. I thought that you could to an update by exporting the gallery to the main file where you have the worpress installed. I was quite confused about it…now i am cleared in my head with your tutorial instructions.
Thanks for the info i was wondering about that and have been a bit apprehensive about doing my upgrade.
Thanks for the information, I tried doing this before but lost everything, I was lucky to have a back up.