Right now I link photos from a folder on my site. After I upload the photos via FTP. so when making a new blog post, I manually type <img src="site.com/photos/1.jpg"><br> <img src="site.com/photos/2.jpg"><br> <img src="site.com/photos/3.jpg"><br> Code (markup): etc. Is there a more efficient way to do this? I've considered a gallery plug-in, but I'd like to avoid that.. so when the gallery is disabled or doesn't work with wordpress 4 (for example).. my photos still show up. thanks.
You are doing it the hard way plus your particular method will eventually slow your site down too much. Instead you can use one of the many gallery plugins available(just do a search within your WP Admin Plugin Search page) or just install and use the Apture plugin..
You can use any of wordpress gallery plugin to show as much images you want rather then put it manually on the page...
No real easy way other than a plugin... And you shouldn't have problems upgrading to new WP versions unless you change the plugin code. Try Nextgen gallery plugin. I have a couple of tutorials on my blog: http://zhoom.com.au/blog and am happy to answer any questions through this thread.
Yes....its better to create a gallery than to just having the posts in serials....But if you are posting template lists or photographs in some order with content so use that wp-gallery only. More plugins will also slow your site. And to do it quick upload files at once and just post the pictures from gallery whereever you want...