WordPress fancyBox Plugin

WP fancyBox plugin enables fancy lightbox functionality on your WordPress site. It allows you to pop up an image, YouTube video, Vimeo video, external page, or inline HTML content beautifully.

fancyBox is a jQuery lightbox script developed for opening content in a Mac-style lightbox. This plugin makes fancyBox lightbox script available for WordPress.

WordPress fancyBox Lightbox Info

WordPress fancyBox Plugin Installation

• Login to your WordPress admin dashboard
• Go to Plugins->Add New
• Enter WP fancyBox in the search box
• Once you find the plugin hit the install button

Option 2

• Download the zip version of the plugin
• Go to Plugins->Add New and switch to the Upload tab
• Select the zip file on your computer
• Upload and install it

Option 3

• Download the zip file and extract it
• Connect to your website via FTP (you can use a software like Filezilla to transfer files to your server) and browse to the “/wp-content/plugins” folder
• Select the folder containing the plugin files on your computer and upload it
• Once all the files have been uploaded to your web server you can activate the plugin from the Plugins menu (WordPress admin dashboard)

WordPress fancyBox Plugin Usage

You can pop up your media file from either a text or image link (it’s called hyperlink in the shortcode) by using a shortcode.

Photo/Image in Lightbox

[wp_fancybox_media url="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/image/lightbox.jpg" type="image" hyperlink="click here to open image"]

Here is a screenshot of the popup window from a mobile device:

YouTube Video in Lightbox

[wp_fancybox_media url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpg9yizPP_g&autoplay=0" type="youtube" width="640" height="360" hyperlink="click here to open youtube video"]

Autoplay is enabled by default on all YouTube videos. That’s why you need to add “autoplay=0” to the URL. Here is a screenshot of the YouTube video popup from a mobile device:

Vimeo Video in Lightbox

[wp_fancybox_media url="https://vimeo.com/1084537" type="vimeo" width="640" height="360" hyperlink="click here to open vimeo video"]

Here is a screenshot of the Vimeo video popup from a mobile device:

External Page in Lightbox

[wp_fancybox_media url="http://wikipedia.com" type="iframe" hyperlink="click here to open external page"]

Here is a screenshot of the External page popup from a mobile device:

Inline HTML in Lightbox

[wp_fancybox_media url="#inline_content" type="inline" hyperlink="click here to open inline HTML"]

After entering the shortcode switch to the “Text” editor, create a div (The ID needs to match one specified in the url parameter) and enter your custom HTML content that you want to pop up in lightbox. For example:

Save the page and view it in a new tab. When you click on the text link your inline HTML content will pop up in lightbox.

Using Thumbnail as Hyperlink

In order to open lightbox from a thumbnail image you need to specify your thumbnail image URL in the hyperlink parameter. For example:

[wp_fancybox_media url="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/image/lightbox.jpg" type="image" hyperlink="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/image/thumbnail.jpg"]

Alternate Text for an Image

If you have a thumbnail image as the hyperlink, you might also want to specify an alternate text for it. This can be done using the “alt” parameter in the shortcode (This is very useful for SEO). For example:

[wp_fancybox_media url="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/image/lightbox.jpg" title="overlay image" type="image" hyperlink="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/image/thumbnail.jpg" alt="thumbnail image description"]

Showing Caption in Lightbox

In order to show a caption for your media file you need to use the caption parameter in the shortcode. For example:

[wp_fancybox_media url="http://example.com/wp-content/uploads/image/lightbox.jpg" caption="overlay image" type="text" hyperlink="click here to open image"]