FooBox WordPress Plugin Review | How Do I Love Thee?

I kept hearing about this FooBox plugin for awhile now. Now I finally have a minute to spare and decided to take a look. Join me as I go through what FooBox is, what it can do, and why I have fallen in love with this awesome WordPress plugin!

What is FooBox?

FooBox is a fully-responsive media lightbox plugin for WordPress. It offers you the ability to display images, video, or even html content inside of a lightbox.

What Makes Foobox So Awesome?

There are a lot of reasons why I love FooBox. It does what it is advertised to do. It integrates great with Genesis. It really is 100% responsive on mobile devices. It offers a great list of features such as social buttons, the ability to customize the look and feel of it. The list goes on and on. Below are some of the things that it can do:

It is 100% Responsive “Out of the Box”

Finally a Lightbox that looks great on mobile! With FooBox no matter what device the visitor is using, PC, Tablet, or Smartphone. Images will always re-size properly and look great while doing it!

Change the Look and Feel of FooBox

Look and Feel / Options

You get a ton of different options to change how FooBox looks and behaves. I could write an entire article just on them alone.

You have the ability to change the overall look, captions, social sharing buttons, advanced features with CSS/JavaScript changes, and much more inside.

It even has a Demo area where you can review the changes before you commit to them. No need to click into an article just to see what you did.

The example picture only shows you the “Look and Feel” tab to give you an idea of what you can change. Below is a gallery of the other options you can set with the plugin:

You have the ability to add social buttons to the top of your images.

Built In Social Sharing

FooBox has built in Social Media buttons that display inside of the lightbox. This is especially great for Pinterest. It has all of the popular social networks including Buffer, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg

Facebook  – Since Facebook changed the way their API works – FooBox has taken that into account as well. You will need to setup an API app with Facebook for it to work properly.

Twitter Integration – When people share using the Twitter button. You can put in your user name and even custom #hashtags if you wish.

Display Location of Social Buttons – You can choose how social buttons are displayed. You can have them up on top (as the example shows) on the bottom, or you can have them ‘stack’ on the right or left of the lightbox popup.

Click on the Picture to Play the Video

Easily Embed Videos

I really like this feature a lot. With this you can embed YouTube or Vimeo videos inside of an image (or link). When the visitor clicks on the image the video pops up into its own lightbox. Check out the example on the right to see how it works.

Some Other Examples:

Add a Contact Form Popup

With Click on example link below to see how it works:

Open a Ninja Form by using the Inline HTML Content feature.

Newsletter Sign Up Popup

Sure, it can do that too! It’s pretty neat how it works. I took the Newsletter form example from my article and turned it into a Popup with FooBox. It’s not just limited to Aweber or MailChimp. If you have a Signup form?  You can add it (somewhat) easily into FooBox:

Open a Newsletter Signup Form in FooBox

HTML and iFrames

With this plugin you can also embed HTML and iFrame data too. An example of how this could be used is instead of just linking out to a website’s article. You could link it inside of a FooBox link and then have it display inside of the popup window. This provides the user with the external link information and keeps them on your site. Unfortunately:

It’s Not Totally Perfect

No plugin is perfect. This one has a few quirks just like any other one out there.

I could not get the external iframe content example to work. It could be related to the theme I’m using, any number of plugins that could be in conflict. Or the fact I was probably in need of a nap. 🙂 So you would have to test to see which features work on your own website.

It is not “User” Friendly for the advanced features it offers. The basic setup is fine. The issue I have is if you don’t have any understanding of how HTML and short codes work. You’re not going to have fun trying to setup the examples like I did here.

I Still Love FooBox!

Overall I am very pleased with the plugin. The only thing that would have made it perfect? Making it FREE of course! Unfortunately you do have to pay for this one. For a personal license it is only $27.00 which although might seem expensive for a lightbox plugin? For what it does and the support you’ll get? It is worth every penny! Check out the FooPlugin/FooBox website and see what else it can do.

What do you think? Have you been using FooBox for your websites? What are some of the ways you’ve been implementing it.