The majority of websites have at least one image gallery. If you’re in charge of a website, you need to know how to create galleries on WordPress.
It might seem daunting, but it’s really not! Creating a WordPress image gallery is not as difficult as you may imagine. With WordPress, you spend less time building galleries and more time choosing your favorite images. This article is a step-by-step guide on how to create galleries with WordPress.
It also considers the Gutenberg way of making photo galleries, which lets you pick and choose the best ones for you.
Additionally, the article also looks at nine great ways to enhance your WordPress with gallery plugins. These can help you do anything… From easily showing off your artwork to adding new features to display posts from your social media accounts and more.
Let’s go!
How to Create an Image Gallery in WordPress
You may be able to get by without needing a plugin if you’re using WordPress in its native form. This provides a basic solution for those that want to keep it simple.
For example, you may want to create an image gallery on your blog.
Create or update a post or page in the WordPress editor and make sure to follow the instructions given below.
A step-by-step guide to creating an image gallery in WordPress
Fill Your Image Library
To add new images to your WordPress site, first log in to your WordPress dashboard.
Navigate to the ‘Media > Library’ tab. After that, click the ‘Add New’ button at the top.
Then, click on ‘Select Files’ to open the local file explorer. Here you can select the images to upload.
You can speed up the process by uploading multiple images all at once. This means that WordPress will update on your progress with each upload, showing you the progress of each image.
Manually add your previously uploaded images to your WordPress image galleries
To insert a picture in this step, click the ‘Add Media’ button, like you would when inserting a single image. A list of available options will appear on your screen.
This popup shows options to:
- Create a gallery
- Create a media playlist
- Get images from the media library
Once you select to create a gallery and then click the ‘Media Library’ tab that appears on the right, you’re almost there.
Choose the photos you want to work on from the ones you previously uploaded. Add these to the created gallery.
Then, left side of the menu, click, ‘Create Gallery’.
If you would like to add more images, go to the ‘upload files’ tab. Now select the pictures you want to upload to your gallery and click the ‘Create A New Gallery’ button.
Editing An Image Gallery In WordPress
If you want to edit a gallery before attaching it to your WordPress post or page, simply follow these steps.
To edit your gallery, select the pencil icon. You’ll notice that this brings up a box with different editing options and settings:
1. Drag and drop the images to change their order. To push the first image to the last position, drag and drop it below the last position.
2. Add a detailed caption to each image. This will make them more relevant to your audience.
3. You can also add image properties by clicking on individual images when editing.
4. The ‘Gallery settings’ tab has even more options:
- Random order of images
- Select the ‘Link To’ preference
- Choose the number of columns
- Altering image sizes
Once you’ve edited your WordPress image gallery, click ‘Insert Gallery’. This will provide a preview of your edited gallery.
Unfortunately, WordPress does not let you re-use your galleries on other pages, at least for now. If you want to copy a gallery, then you have to follow the same steps.
Thankfully this won’t take long because the images are already up on your server.
Using the Gallery Widget in WordPress
Apart from images, you can add a WordPress gallery widget to your posts and pages. This can sit right either in the sidebar or at the bottom of each post.
Adding the widget is simple. Just visit the ‘Appearance > Widgets’ tab, select ‘Gallery’ click & drag to the desired place on your sidebar or footer and voila!
One of the best features of this widget is that it lets you select between your photos. You will also get an option that allows you to add a caption for your gallery.
How to Create a Gallery in WordPress with Plugins
Setting up an image gallery in WordPress is quick & easy. It’s perfect for a simple website.
However, not everyone is a fan of this option because you miss out on lots of great features you can use to make your galleries in WordPress with plugins.
Here are 2 examples:
- These galleries aren’t reusable, so to embed them elsewhere you have to start from scratch.
- They also do not include any customization options to manage the layout of your gallery.
So, to improve your WordPress galleries and get more features, use plugins! The extra features and functionalities are a perfect way to create a more professional gallery.
Essential Grid WordPress Plugin
You can create a photo gallery in WordPress with the help of the Essential Grid plugin. Whether you need to share images, articles or videos, it lets you create stunning galleries/grids to house all kinds of content.
For example, you can include:
- Images
- E-commerce products
- Videos
- Social media streams
- Audio
- Post Content
Essential Grid offers so many useful features. Images are an integral part of a WordPress site. No wonder some believe there is not better way to create an image gallery than with Essential Grid.
Some of the many benefits include:
- Boosting your Google rank
- Fast and responsive designs
- Drag & drop builder
- Plug & play templates
- Impressive grid layout
- Easy export and import
Add Essential Grid to Your WordPress Website
If you have purchased Essential Grid, log into your member dashboard. You can find it here: https://account.essential-grid.com
You can get a copy of the plugin from there to install. Download it by clicking the purple ‘Download’ button on the right of the ‘Essential Grid’ bar.
Then, install the plugin into your WordPress installation. Head to your WordPress site’s administration backend and visit ‘Plugins > Add New’ in the left sidebar.
Select ‘Upload Plugin’ and click on ‘Choose File’ or ‘Browse’. Now, tap on ‘Install Now’ to install Essential Grid.
Once you completed the installation, ‘Activate Plugin’.
Once you have completed that, go back to your WordPress site’s sidebar menu and click ‘Ess. Grid’. This will lead you to the plugin’s overview page.
When it comes to Essential Grid, 50% of your work is about the content, while the other 50% is about making a layout that’s easy to follow through. The Essential Grid plugin can show content from a variety of sources, such as:
- WooCommerce Products
- Social Media
- Multimedia
- WordPress Post
- Images & Photos
Discover a few ways to make designs with Essential Grid below.
Image Gallery Animations
With animate grid items, you have the option to specify how they move:
- Appear
- Filtered or sorted
- Hovered status
After you set up this just the way you want it, you have to decide how you want these items to behave on this grid. Here are some settings from the ‘Grid Settings’ part:
- Smart Loading
- Media Playback
- Layout
- Pagination
Filtering, Sorting, Navigation
Essential Grid allows you to enjoy a better browsing experience on your website by splitting up the grid into several pages.
Responsive Layouts
You can set up your grids, responsive layouts and variations for different screen sizes.
Creative Customization
With Essential Grid’s powerful Item Skin Editor you can innovate and customize the grid skins.
Pre-built, ready2useTemplates
The plugin includes a variety of templates so you can create your grids in no time. With a template, it’s as simple as choosing one and supplying the content/source that you want to put into your template.
Just a few ideas of what you can use Essential Grid for:
Blog posts overview
Display your portfolio of projects or items
Showcase unique products
Share YouTube channels or playlists
Display videos
Share your Instagram
Other WordPress Gallery Plugins
The rest of this article talks about some additional plugins that you can use to create an image gallery in WordPress.
NextGEN Gallery
This plugin is available for free and premium. The two main gallery styles offered with this version are slideshows and thumbnails.
It also has two album styles, compact and extended. All of these come with the ability to control the following:
- lightbox effects
- controls
- style
- transitions
- timing
- size
You can add more features to the plugin by getting the premium version. These come in a variety of different gallery types, like:
- Image deep linking for lightbox galleries
- E-commerce functionality
- Image protection
Envira Gallery
Do you have advanced WordPress experience? Or maybe you’re a beginner who needs some help getting started.
Regardless, the Envira Gallery plugin can work for you.
The drag and drop interface is great for all types of users. This means that you can add and edit your images without needing to know any code.
At Envira Gallery, the author team focus on giving our customers a simpler way to create and configure galleries that are perfect for their needs. This is why they added features like:
- Social media sharing
- Slideshows
- Multiple WordPress gallery templates
So, if you want an easy-to-use WordPress gallery plugin, Envira Gallery might be the one for you.
Modula Image Gallery
For a user-friendly plugin that can create exciting photo and video galleries, try modula.
This plugin is totally customizable, so you’ll be able to use it the way you want. You’ll have total control over how your gallery looks.
For example, you can use the image custom grid to control and resize an image. You can adjust its height, width, and aspect ratio.
To do this, switch to the “custom grid” gallery. From there, click on each photo in your row and drag it into the right place.
Photo Gallery by 10web
Here’s another leading gallery plugin for WordPress.
The free version of their software lets you build basic galleries. Premium designs are more engaging and will increase customer satisfaction, like the ‘Masonic Arrangement’.
With this gallery plugin, you can create an unlimited number of image or video galleries. You can also use images and videos in the same album
WordPress lets you add only one gallery type widget to your site. With this plugin, you can use a lot of different widgets so it’s great if you want to improve your site.
FooGallery
FooGallery lets you make a gallery that suits your needs.
The free version has a bunch of themes that you can customize, including hover effects, borders, loading icons and more.
You can then create and sort albums to keep better track of your assets.
Have your gallery on your website by using a Gutenberg block or shortcode. FooGallery features a drag-and-drop interface for arranging your images.
By installing a free plugin from FooPlugins, you get 6 new gallery templates. They’re responsive and include:
- A Masonry Grid
- Thumbnail galleries
- Lightbox variations
Jetpack
If you have a self-hosted WordPress plugin, this free plugin will add WordPress.com features to it.
Tiled Galleries module lets you showcase your images and display them in one of three layouts, including a rectangular or square mosaic or a circular grid.
This is a good plug-in for anyone already using Jetpack on the site, it’s effective in the case that you don’t need a lot of features like galleries or carousels.
Also, Jetpack’s Site Accelerator (formally Photon) helps sites load faster. It does this by leveraging WordPress.com’s CDN.
Basically, if your website has a lot of images or doesn’t use a CDN, then this plugin will give you the best performance.
Image Gallery by Robo
With this plugin, you can easily give your galleries that personal touch. You get full control of how they display and how they look.
This plugin comes with a ton of layout options, extensions, and widgets for you to choose.
In addition to that, it has a Gutenberg block. This means you can publish content without the need for a shortcode!
There’s also a premium version of this app, which has more features and functionality. For example:
- Editable themes
- 15 lightbox effects
- Instagram integration
- Social sharing
Gmedia Photo Gallery
If you are looking for a plugin to help you create an image gallery in WordPress then this is a great place to start!
Gmedia isn’t as popular as the other options in this list, but Gutenberg users do seem to enjoy it.
Gmedia Photo Gallery allows you to have four different gallery blocks to support your images. These are:
- Galleries
- Albums
- Categories
- Tags
Gmedia makes it easy to create galleries that look great. You can customize the design and back-end settings by tweaking the few settings within their tool.
But, if you want full control and don’t mind a bunch of settings, give the free version a try.
How To Create a Gallery in WordPress Vs Gutenberg
WordPress’s gallery-adding feature lets you create image galleries for your desired post or page.
In the WordPress editor click the ‘Add Block’ or ‘+’ icon, then click ‘Gallery’. After adding the Gallery block to the WP editor, upload photos from your computer by clicking the ‘Upload’ button.
You can also add old photos to the new gallery if you had uploaded them on your previous photo uploads.
This process is simple, easy, and effective. Using the plugins listed, you can extend WordPress’s native functionality as you please!
However, before you decide on a drag and drop gallery builder for your blog page, you may want to explore other options. So let’s have a look at how we can use Gutenberg to create an image gallery.
How to Create A Gallery in the Gutenberg Editor
1) Uploading Images
To begin, click the ‘Upload button’ and upload one photo at a time. To add multiple images, press and hold the ‘Ctrl’ key on your keyboard, then choose your images.
You can then customize them by adding descriptions, alt texts, captions, and titles. To do this, click on an image and input the details on the right side of your screen.
Then, select them all and click ‘Create A New Gallery’ at the bottom right corner of your site. For added customization, try rearranging the order of the images that appear in the gallery.
You can also use the input provided beneath each photo to caption it. After making your final edits, click ‘Insert Gallery’.
2) Setting Up the Gallery Block
Gutenberg will open up the ‘Gallery Settings’ section for the gallery block to the side of your screen. This section lets you:
- Choose where your images are linked
- Set the number of columns and rows
- Disable or enable the ‘Crop Images’ option
With the ‘Link To’ option, you can enable or disable the clicking feature for your images.
For example, click ‘None’ if you only want your visitors to view the photo. But, if you want the image file to open after they click it, select the ‘Media File’ option.
Likewise, you can enable/disable the ‘Attachment Page’ feature for your images. Here you can choose to let the attachment page open or not when your site visitors click an image.
Once you’re through with the gallery block settings, click ‘Preview’. This allows you to see how the finished product looks.
Pros Of Using Gutenberg only
You can also add old photos to the new gallery if you had uploaded them on your previous photo uploads.
This process is simple, easy, and effective. Using the plugins listed, you can extend WordPress’s native functionality as you please!
However, before you decide on a drag-and-drop gallery builder for your blog page, you may want to explore other options. So let’s have a look at how we can use Gutenberg to create an image gallery.
Cons of Using Gutenberg only
Gutenberg might not work for you. If image galleries are a regular part of your content creation process, you might have to look elsewhere.
Some of the disadvantages of using Gutenberg only are:
- You can’t organize your images into albums, tags, topics, etc.
- No real interactions between the images/items and the website visitor
- Inability to store your gallery (to reuse a gallery you’ll have to recreate it)
- You can’t choose from a range of gallery styles (the look of the gallery is based on the theme).
- Lack of user-friendliness
- To view a gallery again, visitors have to click the ‘Back’ button.
Conclusion on how to create a gallery in WordPress
Now that we’ve looked into gallery creation for WordPress, do you have enough information to make a decision about starting?
Setting up a photo/image/media gallery is fast and easy. All you need to do is handpick some of your favorite pics and in no time you’re done.
There are many good free and commercial gallery plugins for WordPress. The native WordPress gallery is available and good for basic needs, but for more customization use a dedicated plugin.
This article first appeared in a similar form on our sister site, sliderrevolution.com.
HERE is the original text.
