My personal site runs on WordPress, and hosts family photos, videos, and news. I’ve just switched to running NextGEN Gallery to power the photo portion of the site. The hardest part of the switch was figuring out the difference between an “album” and a “gallery” in NextGEN Gallery. This might be because the terms have a different meaning than they did in other software I used. I looked all over, but the only way I was able to get my brain around the concept was through trial and error. So, here I will try to explain a gallery versus an album in NextGEN Gallery.
An album typically contains several galleries. The best way to explain the difference between galleries versus albums in NextGEN Gallery is by example. On a site, I may have several galleries, such as the following: Christmas 2009, Mom’s Retirement Dinner, Montana Ski Trip, Joe’s Birthday Party, Ed and Sue’s Murder Mystery Dinner, Office Retreat, and World Series. I might have 4 different albums: Family, Friends, Vacations, and Miscellaneous. In the Family album, I put the Christmas 2009 gallery and the Mom’s Retirement Dinner gallery. In the Friends album, I put the Joe’s Birthday Part gallery and the Ed and Sue’s Murder Myster Dinner gallery. The only gallery I have so far for my Vacation album is the Montana Ski Trip gallery. In the Miscellaneous album, I have the Office Retreat gallery, and the World Series gallery. For a second example, here’s a real example from my personal site, showing what the “Manage Album” page of NextGEN Gallery looks like when I choose to manage the “Family” album: 
In this example, “Family” is the name of the album. There are a few galleries that I have assigned to that album. Those galleries are the following: Aunt Barb’s Birthday, Box Hill Club, Brooke’s Visit, and Trip to see Brooke and Melissa. Not shown here are my other albums (Friends, Vacations, and Miscellaneous), each of which contain several galleries. Hopefully this will help you get started in NextGEN Gallery, which I’m discovering is a fantastic WordPress gallery tool.
Udo K says:
Hi Evan,
this article was very helpful for me to understand the difference between gallery and album, because I started to use WordPress with the NextGEN Gallery and had problems setting up galleries and albums.
Thanks a lot,
Udo.
January 7, 2010 — 8:25 am
Evan Kline says:
I’m glad it helped you, Udo. Good luck with NextGen Gallery. I still use it and love it!
January 7, 2010 — 9:08 am
dm13 says:
finally! your’s is the ONLY info I could find on the difference between albums and galleries. and its easy to undertand and remember. Thanks!
June 5, 2010 — 4:27 pm
Evan Kline says:
Glad it was of help to you! I had a tough time getting my brain around it in the beginning.
June 6, 2010 — 8:29 am
TINA says:
great explanation! thanks!
now i just need help figuring out how to POST an album with the galleries showing on a page….so far i’m not figuring this part out.
November 28, 2010 — 2:41 pm
Evan Kline says:
Hi Tina. On my personal site, all I did was create a new page from the WordPress admin area, and in the page content area, just put this (replacing the id# with whatever album you want to appear):
[album id=3 template=extend]
November 29, 2010 — 11:06 am
Marcellus Easley says:
Evan,
Thanks for this post. I was seriously stumped. NextGen isn’t very intuitive as far as albums vs. galleries. I believe that logical reasoning has taught us normally that a gallery would contain different albums, but in NextGen it is the reverse. Once again, thanks.
April 12, 2011 — 11:26 pm
Evan Kline says:
You’re welcome, Marcellus. I’m glad it helped. The funny thing is, I STILL get mixed up with galleries/albums if I don’t use NextGen for extended periods.
April 15, 2011 — 10:37 am
Ace says:
Hi Evan.
Thank you for the explanation , I followed your explanation as you set out. Thank you.
Could you also tell me how I can display an albvum that contains many galleries in a page? For now I can only display a gallery in that page eg. [nggallery id=4]
Thanks
Ace
(Greetings from South Africa)
August 8, 2012 — 4:22 am
Tajamal says:
Thanks for the guidance
April 25, 2013 — 2:42 am
Evan Kline says:
You’re welcome.
April 25, 2013 — 9:34 am