I'm looking for a good plugin for my blog which is basically a photo bog but a little text for each post.

On each post I will have a main photo - then a bunch of thumbnails embedded. Right now the only options in wordpress are to link the thumbnail to the image file itself, the post page, or nothing.

I want to be able to link to the image but have it displayed within my blog template. Like they do on leftlane news.I can see from that URL that they use iimage gallery plugin but from what I was told it's not compatible with wordpress 2.3.

Are there any wordpress 2.3 compatible plugins that are similar or better for this purpose?

I haven't used specific photo related blog plugins, although I used the regular image inserts.

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One useful add-on is the php script "Gallery", which most fantastico panels should offer a 1-click install for.

You need to do some PHP code insertion, but it can do a random pic display, most popular pic display, which is pretty handy especially for graphic heavy blogs and websites.

As far as I'm aware, gallery is PHP based, rather than a plugin, so you should not have compatibility issues.

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Regarding insertion of javascript or other types of code in wordpress, what you need to do is go to "users" then "your profile", uncheck the visual editor, save the file, and you'll be able to insert code into your post.

That's what most of these plugins do anyway...