In my last post, A Last Ditch Call for Help!, I wrote that I was basically at my wits' end because I couldn't figure out how to make a photo gallery perform a certain way.

I tried countless WordPress photo gallery plugins, all to no avail. I was thinking to myself–and saying vehemently out loud–why in the world hadn't such a thing been created yet?

After all, I'm sure I'm not the only person on the planet who had tried to put a photo gallery online using WordPress and not dealing with any code mods or creation.

Seems silly, right? If I want to view a photo or series of photos from a gallery, I simply click on the picture. Forward and backward buttons are mandatory, as is a close button. It would also be nice to have a description or alt tag within the "effect."

I finally came up with a winner though. NextGen is pretty horrible at the displaying of photographs, but it is really cool at the creation and organization of photo galleries. Each time I tried to "make it work," the work only got worse, to the point where I was ready to throw in the towel. For example, I was using NextGen for the gallery piece and WP prettyPhoto for the display.

Only problem was this: When clicking on an individual image, NextGen would attempt to render a photograph and so would WP prettyPhoto. It looked pretty funky.

Incredible.

I've been toiling away at this thing for about a week now and I almost gave up. Then I thought of something: RTFM (that's short for Read the F^#$%$ Manual).

There is a teeny tiny little setting within NextGen that allows you to turn off any effects. Problem solved. Here's that setting:

Go to NextGen, then Options, then Effects. Choose "None."

Here's a screenshot:

That's all there is to it. And to think that I even contemplated outsourcing work for a new plugin that "does it all."

It's still baffling to me that NextGen doesn't have this already built in. But that's for another day. For now, the problem has been solved–quite easily.