There are of course also functional requests (Flickr or Picasa support, sub-album, comments etc.) but the most questions are around layout or design. Since WordPress introduce the automatic upgrade feature, all you changes in the code could not be saved during a upgrade. Also it’s not so easy to study my code to do some minor changes on the layout.

With Version 1.00 I extract the most output code to separate files and enable new templates which can be ceated without any code changes in the core plugin. Here a example :

Web Designer Wall published a very good example how do you can style a gallery without editing the images itself. If you read the post, you will see that you need a <span> element inside the <div> or <ul>. In the past you need to modify my core plugin files, but now you can create a new file which include all the changes you need for your new gallery design. Custom templates are PHP files that can be stored in the folder nggallery, inside your theme directory. For example, if you are using the default WordPress theme then you can store a template file at :

/wp-content/themes/default/nggallery/gallery-sample1.php

To use now this template in a post or page you insert the tag:

[ nggallery id=1 template=sample1 ]

This tells NextGEN Gallery to use ‘gallery-sample1.php’ to show the gallery output. Without this template tag, NextGEN takes the default template in the plugin folder, normally located at :

/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/view/gallery.php

The same you can use for album, singlepic or imagebrowser, all of them are template driver so that you can easily modify the output without having problems during a upgrade.

Here now a example , I copied the original gallery.php file and changed it to a <li> output instead the <div> classic way :

<ul id="ngg-gallery-<?php echo $gallery->ID ?>" class="sample3">

<!-- Thumbnails -->
<?php foreach ($images as $image) : ?>

<li id="ngg-image-<?php echo $image->pid ?>">
<a href="<?php echo $image->imageURL ?>" title="<?php echo $image->description ?>" <?php echo $image->thumbcode ?> >
<span></span>
<em><?php echo $image->alttext ?></em>
<img title="<?php echo $image->alttext ?>" alt="<?php echo $image->alttext ?>" src="<?php echo $image->thumbnailURL ?>" <?php echo $image->size ?> />
</a>
</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

The CSS styles can be now added from the samples of Web Designer Wall without any changes :

.sample3 {
list-style: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
text-indent:0px !important;
}
.sample3 li:before {
content: '' !important;
}
.sample3 li {
padding: 10px;
margin: 0;
float: left;
position: relative;
width: 180px;
height: 130px;
}
.sample3 li:hover img {
border-color: #000;
}
.sample3 img {
background: #fff;
border: solid 1px #ccc;
padding: 5px;
}
.sample3 em {
background: #fff;
color: #000;
font-style: normal;
padding: 2px 8px 0 22px;
display: block;
position: absolute;
top: 20px;
left: 5px;
border: 1px solid #999;
}
.sample3 a {
text-decoration: none;
}
.sample3 span {
width: 30px;
height: 60px;
display: block;
position: absolute;
top: 7px;
left: 9px;
background: url(images/paper-clip-mini.png) no-repeat;
z-index: 3;
}

You find more gallery layout examples at nextgen.boelinger.com