NextGEN Pro is one of the few gallery plugins with its own custom tables. Galleries live in wp_ngg_gallery, pictures in wp_ngg_pictures, and albums in wp_ngg_album. Settings (Pro Lightbox theme, display type defaults, watermark options) live in the ngg_options row of wp_options. The default NextGEN admin shows galleries, pictures, and albums as separate paginated screens, each with a fixed set of columns and limited filtering. Pro display types like NextGEN Pro Lightbox, Slideshow, Mosaic, Film, and Tile leave traces in the settings blob and in shortcode usage, but there is no way to filter or audit which display type each public page is using.

SleekView reads the custom tables directly. For galleries: name, path, picture count, last modified, default display type, and Pro lightbox toggle become first-class columns. For pictures: filename, alt text, description, tags, sort order, view count (when the stats addon writes it), and exclude flag. For albums: a flat list of galleries with the album cover and sort order included. Saved views like pictures missing alt text, galleries set to Pro Lightbox but with fewer than 5 images, or albums older than a year load with one click.

Inline edits route through NextGEN's REST and AJAX endpoints where they exist, with direct table writes as the documented fallback for fields NextGEN does not expose. Picture sort order, alt text, description, tags, and exclude flag all become editable from the row. wp_ngg_pictures stays the source of truth and any cache layer NextGEN ships with refreshes the way it would from the plugin's own gallery editor.

NextGEN Pro is one of the older gallery plugins on WordPress and one of the few that runs on real custom tables rather than serialised postmeta. That schema choice has paid off for big photo and licensing sites for over a decade because joins and queries against wp_ngg_pictures stay fast even at 50,000 rows. The default admin never caught up to the data layer underneath, so picture-level audits, display-type rollouts, and album coverage reviews still feel like clicking through 2010-era screens.

SleekView closes that gap by exposing the three custom tables as one configurable, filterable, inline-editable workspace. Photo agencies handling licensing and tagging at scale need every picture queryable and every gallery's display type visible at list level. Editorial teams need view counts and Pro Lightbox usage side by side to plan features.

Accessibility leads need every picture missing alt text in a single saved view. That is what a real list view on top of wp_ngg_gallery, wp_ngg_pictures, and wp_ngg_album finally gives them.