Many years ago, I was disappointed to find out there wasn’t a simple way to rotate images in WordPress so I developed an Image Rotator Widget Plugin for WordPress. Over the years, though, WordPress advanced its capabilities and a ton of other plugins, page builders, new widget user interface, and third-party tools have surfaced. It wasn’t worthwhile for us to continue to develop the plugin so we stopped supporting and updating it.
Elfsight Responsive Photo Gallery Widget
Our recommendation is a platform called Elfsight which has a number of widgets that can easily be customized and added to your site, one of which is their photo gallery widget. The widget helps brands demonstrate visual materials beautifully – whether you just want to display the logos of your customers in a nice carousel or you want a beautiful, responsive mozaic of your latest product photos.
Use the widget to show your products in all details, showcase the interiors of your place, highlight the top quality of the services you provide, and much more. It’s for any business case – and for yours, as well. Here are some examples:
Your great photos deserve the right presentation. It’s easy to do with various design options of Elfsight Gallery widget. Get one of the seven layouts, variate photos’ shape and size, show additional info and title, choose the right order of the presentation, and so much more.

You can choose where users will open them: in popup right there or on the website of your project. The popup allows to slide through, zoom in and out, switch to full-screen, and even turn on the slideshow. Varying the elements of the popup, you can add or hide additional info and change the whole picture and perception.

With various style options, you will add a unique touch to the photo widget appearance. Change the background by using any of the colors or uploading a custom image, choose the overlay color, add one of the on-hover effects, select the colors of the popup and use text settings. All the elements are flexible.
Design your own gallery quickly and easily… then copy and paste the widget script in your content management system or in your HTML and you’re up and running.
Create Your Image Rotator Widget Now
Disclosure: We are an affiliate for Elfsight and also a happy customer!
How does image sizing work? I notice that the upload box says 200×200. What if my image is of different proportions?
I think that would add way too much complexity to this plugin. And it would never look right because they may not be properly centered horizontally, could get pixelated, etc. Just like you need to size images appropriately for a post, the user should have to resize it correctly here.
DIfferent width proportions will work, however height proportions will not. As of now, to get the best out of the widget, you should make all of the images you plan to use the same height.
In the next release I’ll be adding dimension settings to the widget. You’ll be able to choose the width and height of the entire widget, and consequently the images will be resized proportionally to it.
@coleydotco:disqus amazing job on this #WordPress #Plugin. I absolutely love it!
Is there or will the be a way to link the images to a specific landing page when clicked?
Not yet, Bethany… but we’re planning to roll that out as a feature in the next release!
@BethanyBey:disqus the plugin has been updated to include the link!
We also made some modifications to it this week that corrected some of the link issues. @BethanyBey:disqus
Love this – will definetly use when it has linking and you can make change the transition time. good work guys – thanks
I really would like to use this plugin, but when I upload an image, I get no ‘send image to rotator widget’ possibility, only the ordinary ‘insert to post’.
I have deleted and reinstalled the plugin, but so far no luck. Can you please help me out?
I have added a screenshot, and eventhough it is in Dutch you should be able to see that the ‘send image… ‘ button is missing. I would highly appreciate your help.
Thanks,
Hi @google-2b6c75e336d02071c15626a7d8e31ccd:disqus ,
I can only guess that it will require us to build a translation file. Can you tell us what “send image to rotator widget” is in Dutch? We’re not planning a release soon, but will try to slip this in.
Doug
Hi Doug,
Thank you so much for your swift reply. The correct translation would be ‘invoegen in image rotator widget’.
I really hope this works. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind using the ‘send image to rotator widget’ in English if that would solve the problem.
Kindest,
Helen
Doug,
I have several WP sites running, so I tried this image rotator in an English version, and it works just fine. So, I think you are right, this has to to with the translation. Would be great if you could get around to build the translation somewhere in the near future. If you need me to translate more from English to Dutch, I will be glad to help.
Another question: is there a way to click a picture to make it stay, so people can read the text I added? Or in the loop, make it less fast?
This is now uploaded with a title field! Our next project is to see if we can’t get the anchor tags from the media library uploader to be incorporated.
This widget is nice and simple and the option to add links to images would be great. I checked some older comments and found that this feature has been requested by a few users 3 months ago. Hope you will be able to integrate it soon.
We’ll get there!
Not sure if you noticed that this was added.
Hi, I’d like to change the javascript for the image fade so one image fades into the next instead of fading to white inbetween. What do I need to change for this?
For some reason there is > character next to the image. Otherwise it works great.
That’s been fixed @google-71556138c8611ea275e4be4f3e34b930:disqus !
Hey all! We’ve updated the plugin to include the link path!
I love the plugin and it is working very well for me. My one questions, is there a way to have the link open in a new window?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the media upload page has that feature – we’re just using the WordPress dialogue that’s built in. We can look at making it an option on the plugin, though! Between now and then, it is possible to do that with jQuery if you have some experience doing that development.
I have tried what has worked with other plugins, but with no luck. Any chance you can tell me where to make the changes, and how?
Thank you,
janet
We have a select option on the widget panel to select if you’d like the link opened in a new window.
@janetmorrow:disqus the plugin was updated with the ability to open links in a new window. Grab the latest version!
Thanks for a great plugin. One question – Is there the option to have two instances of the plugin? I’d like to use one set of images in one spot and another set of images in another.
I don’t see why not – have you given it a try?
Just updated with a feature to start with a random image!
Loved this rotator but apparently it has been abandoned?
Hi Jon, yes… the array of great tools out there are great so we couldn’t keep up with features. We’ve updated this post with our recommendation.