Simple Image Gallery 
The plugin can turn any folder of images located inside your Joomla! website into a grid-style image gallery with cool lightbox previews. And all that using a simple plugin tag like {gallery}myphotos{/gallery}.
So for example, if we have a folder called "my_trip_to_Paris" located in images/stories/my_trip_to_Paris, then we can create our gallery by simply entering the tag {gallery}my_trip_to_Paris{/gallery} into some Joomla! article.
The galleries created are presented in a grid using a polaroid-like background for the thumbnails. When your visitors click on a thumbnail, they see the original image in a lightbox popup. The thumbnails are generated and cached using PHP for better results.
So let's briefly see what are the main advantages of using Simple Image Gallery: a) You don't need to have an additional gallery component to display a few images, b) you don't need to tell your visitors "to see our photos from Paris click here" and c) you focus more on content writing and less on administering the images!
The plugin is ideal for news portals wanting to display some product images, for example, inside their articles. Or for people who quickly wanna show their summer vacation pictures. With Simple Image Gallery, you can have as many galleries as you want inside each article.
Please note that if you want to create a gallery from a subfolder located inside your "image gallery root folder", simply adjust the plugin syntax to reflect the remaining path (after your set "root folder"), e.g. {gallery}folder/subfolder/othersubfolder{/gallery}. Make sure you write the path to your target folder without any slashes at the beginning or the end of your path.
Simple Image Gallery utilizes "Slimbox" (developed by Christophe Beyls), which is a more modern implentation of the famous "Lightbox" script, based on Mootools (1.1/1.2 for Joomla! 1.5) and jQuery (1.4 for Joomla! 1.6/1.7/2.5). "Slimbox" generates the nice popups that display the original images in a gallery.
You can see a demo of the plugin here:
http://demo.joomlaworks.net/simple-image-gallery
Simple Image Gallery is a Joomla! plugin developed by JoomlaWorks, released under the GNU General Public License.
I've built hundreds of Joomla! websites over the years and the guys at JoomlaWorks consistently produce top quality stuff. The freebies are great, and the "pro" extensions are well worth the asking price. Whenever I've had an issue (usually with customization) the forums are active and a huge help. 5 stars!!
I strongly disagree with previous reviewer: it works perfect to me after activating it...
Here we go...
You wrote:
"I have the exact same problems and complaints that the other negative reviewers wrote here. I installed the free version of the extension and it worked sometimes and had NO options."
Which problem is that? Unless you are uploading 25MB pics and causing your own server to choke, the plugin works flawlessly even on the crappiest servers.
You wrote:
"Basically this "free" extension is just an attempt by the owner, JoomlaWorks, to upsell you to buy their pro version which they advertise as being full of photo layout features. So I bought it for $20 and it doesn't work with Joomla, as noted in the other negative reviews here!!"
The Pro version is indeed more powerful. But we don't force you to buy it. People use the free version in literally hundreds of thousand of sites. They do that because it's good in providing, well, a "simple image gallery". Downloads from our site for the free version have surpassed 2m last time I checked. So I'll assume you're uploading 25MB pics on a shared host... You'd need a cluster to convert galleries of 25MB pics...
You wrote:
"Do NOT install this free extension nor buy their Pro extension!! Just like the other users who wasted their time wrote, the JoomlaWorks extensions do NOT work"
That is really your assumption...
You wrote:
"...and their support wants Super Admin Control Panel access to your Joomla site to change your core Joomla files to make their faulty extensions work!!! No way I'm giving someone I don't know over the Internet ACP access to my site so they can change core files, delete files, and screw up my whole website - just to make their defective extension work!!!! Stay away from JoomlaWorks and their extensions!!"
Your problem was clearly server related. We always ask our customers login credentials in order to provide thorough support, which, if you think about it, most of the times is not even remotely related to our extensions. Crappy hosts, bad permissions, badly written extensions causing issues and the list goes on. You may not know JoomlaWorks cause you maybe new in this community. If JoomlaWorks was "thin air", we wouldn't be around since 2006, nor distribute some of the best free extensions in the Joomla! community.
Bad developers are indeed quickly identified in open communities. But so are bad, angry users, who don't read any documentation and have no patience at all...
To have more options, Joomlaworks sells a Pro version. This is where it gets tricky. The most recent update of the SIG Pro version (2.5.4) requires you to install a third party plugin, Admin Tools of Akeeba - which requires access to your server.
Further, SIG Pro requires full (CHMOD 777) access to the cache folder, something my host isn't too happy about.
When asked about this issue in the Forum, the support only repeats itself that Admin Tools should be installed. That is disappointing.
From your first sentence it seems you enjoyed the free version. So I don't get the low rating, really...
Secondly, the rest is not a review for the free version. Thirdly, neither SIG Pro asks for 777 folder permissions, nor the suggested tool "Admin Tools" by AkeebaBackup.com changes permissions to 777! Admin Tools will correct folder permissions to 755 and it's a free tool, that's we suggest it to anyone who may have permission issues...
You are probably referring to some other extension, because Simple Image Gallery is one of the top extensions EVER made for Joomla! and it's on of the top because it's easy to use... Of course that sometimes pisses off copycats... Just saying...
It's fully compatible with Joomla 1.7.
anyway, none of the two folders works.
I've created an article and I wrote this:
{gallery}gallery{/gallery}
all my pictures are in images folder and they are jpg
when I see my article the pictures don't show up, I only see this again {gallery}gallery{/gallery}
The plugin uses a "root" folder so you don't have to write long folder paths. If the root folder (e.g. in Joomla 1.6/1.7) is just "images" and you enter the plugin tags {gallery}gallery{/gallery} in some Joomla article, K2 item etc. then the plugin will look for images in the folder "images/gallery". If you images where directly located in "images", then it's natural you don't see the gallery.
Read the documentation for more.
Simple Image Gallery is FULLY compatible with Joomla 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7.
Why have I not intalled this before now? Makes adding images so easy, no need to use tables, no hassles with lining up images or having them all show the same size, this simple plugin does it all.
Thank you to the developers for this great tool, am now going to purchase pro version. Excellent work!
On the free version default template, there is a call to an undefined $title reference and you'll get traces. So it looks like a little detailed overlooked.
After fixing this it works nicely.
I still give 4 stars cause I found through the documentation about the Joomla MVC feature that allowed me to fix the SIG default template within my own site template, without modifying the core plugin and still get updates.
It would have been nice to be able to customize the global messages but I also understand why they've been up into the language files.
Actual the MVC overrides for the plugin is not a standard Joomla "thing" for plugins. It's how JoomlaWorks implements MVC on most of its plugins so designers can easily change a plugin's HTML output with not too much fuss.
Regarding your issue, it would help if you could submit your issue on our forum and mention the PHP version your server is running or whether you had error reporting in the global configuration of Joomla set to maximum or not...
Thanks
