How to Add a Gallery to Your WordPress Website in 2024 (Guide)

Last Updated on April 4, 2024 by Leave a Comment

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How to Add a Gallery to Your WordPress Website in 2024 (Guide)
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Adding a gallery to your WordPress website allows you to showcase many photos. Whether you’re looking for your standard grid gallery or a unique masonry gallery experience, learning how to add a gallery to your WordPress website is always a good idea. In this tutorial, we’ll work through two ways to add a gallery to your WordPress site: with the Block Editor and one of the best gallery plugins available, the Envira Gallery Plugin.

How to Add an Image Gallery Using the WordPress Block Editor

To begin this tutorial, we’ll learn how to add a gallery using the default WordPress block editor. This process will work with most WordPress themes that have compatibility with the Block Editor.

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Setup Your Gallery Page

Login to your WordPress website. Then, hover over the Pages menu item. Then, click Add New.

Add a new gallery page to your WordPress website

After giving your page a title, Click the black plus icon in the content area of the Block Editor. This will open up the available blocks. In the search bar, enter β€œgallery.” The Gallery Block will present itself. Click on the Gallery blockΒ to add the block to your page.

Add gallery block

Once your Gallery Block has been added to your page, we can move on to adding photos.

Customizing and Populating Your Gallery Block

With your Gallery Block in place, you have two options for populating your gallery. You can upload new photos directly from your hard drive. Or, you can choose photos already available on your website through the Media Library. For our tutorial, we’ll choose photos from our Media Library. To do this, click on the Media Library link in blue.

Add photos to your photo gallery

This will open up your Media Library for you to select your photos.

Select your gallery photos

Select your chosen photos, then click the blue Create a new gallery button. Now, you can add a caption or edit each photo in your gallery. Finally, click the blue Insert Gallery button to add your gallery to your page.

Add completed gallery to page

Now that your Gallery Block is populated, you can use the block settings column to make aesthetic changes to your gallery. You can change the column number, crop images, and link individual images to various places on and off your website.

Style your Gallery Block

Once you are happy with your gallery, you can save your page. Feel free to add more galleries or individual images using the image block for more creative layouts. To learn more about how to use the Gallery Block in your next WordPress project, check out our post, How to Use the WordPress Gallery Block.

While the Gallery Block is a simple and efficient way of adding an image gallery to your WordPress site, it does have some drawbacks. For example, you can’t use it to showcase your product photos, nor can it be customized deeply. This is where reaching out for a plugin may be more helpful. Plugins provide robust features when it comes to expanding the native capabilities of WordPress. This can be seen in how much more functionality you receive when working with a plugin for a gallery.

How to Add an Image Gallery in WordPress Using a Plugin

As with most WordPress plugin types, there is a wide selection of gallery plugins that you can choose from for your next project. We’ve even compiled a list of the most popular gallery plugins! While there are many options, we’ll work with the flexible Envira Gallery plugin for our tutorial.

Envira Gallery is a robust gallery plugin that beautifully manages videos and photos. A key feature of this plugin is its powerful drag-and-drop interface. Additionally, it integrates beautifully with WooCommerce, and social media and has a slew of templates that you can use to style your gallery. Deep linking, watermarks, and right-click protection are features you can experience with Envira Gallery. If you’re looking for a solid plugin to handle your image galleries, Envira Gallery should be your top pick.

Install & Configure Envira Gallery

After creating a new page on your WordPress website, hover over Plugins. Then, click Add New. In the search box, type in Envira Gallery. Then, activate the plugin by clicking the blue Activate button.

Install Envira Gallery plugin

After having the plugin installed, you’ll now notice that there is a new menu option. This is where all your galleries will be created.

The new Enivra Gallery menu item

Let’s look at the Envira Gallery dashboard and create our first gallery!

Creating Your First WordPress Gallery with Envira

To create your first gallery, hover over the Envira Gallery menu option. Then, click Add New.

Add your first Envira Gallery

Next, give your gallery a title by clicking within the Add Title textbox.

Give your gallery a title

Under the native Envira Gallery tab, you can upload new photos from your computer or select files from other sources like the Media Gallery. Click the green Select Files from Your Computer button to upload new photos. Click the grey Select Files from Other Sources button to add files from your Media Library.

Add photos to your gallery from your hard drive of the Media Gallery

Under the External Gallery tab, Envira Gallery allows you to use photos from your Instagram feed within your gallery. This is a premium option that you can utilize when you upgrade to the premium version of the Envira Gallery plugin.

Envira Gallery and Instagram integration

For this example, we will select photos from within the Media Gallery. To do this, Click the grey Select Files from Other Sources button under the Envira Gallery tab. Then, scroll through your media gallery. To select multiple images, press the CTRL button while selecting the photos you want to add to your gallery.

Bulk select images for your gallery

Once you’ve added your photos, you’ll notice that they show in the Gallery tab.

The Gallery tab within the Envira Gallery plugin

Once you’ve uploaded photos to your gallery, click on the green Publish button. This will make your gallery live and generate a shortcode you can use throughout your WordPress website to showcase your gallery. You’ll also have a code snippet generated if you want to input your gallery into your template files.

Saved Envira Gallery

Next, let’s add our gallery to our page.

Adding Your Envira WordPress Gallery to Your Page

Eniva Gallery comes with a block that we can use to add our gallery to our pages and posts. To do this, click the black plus icon. This will bring out the pop-out with your various blocks. In the search bar, enter Envira. This will bring up the Envira Gallery’s block. Click on the block to add it to your page.

Add your Envira Gallery to your website via Block Editor

Click the dropdown menu once you’ve added your block to the page. Then, select the gallery that you’d like to add to your page.

Select your gallery from the Envira Gallery

With your gallery selected, you can use the native block editor sidebar to edit your gallery’s settings. Or, you can click the edit button icon which will allow you to edit your gallery’s settings within the Envira Gallery dashboard.

Edit settings via the Block Editor or the Envira Gallery dashboard

Now that we’ve added our gallery to our page let’s look at some of the customizations we can make.

Customizing Your WordPress Image Gallery

These features can be edited within the free version of the Envira Gallery plugin.

The Config Tab

The Config tab allows you to control aspects of your gallery, like the number of columns, image dimensions, and lazy loading settings.

The Config tab of the Enivra Gallery plugin

The Lightbox Tab

The Lightbox tab gives you all the settings you need to adjust the lightbox to match your needs and requirements for your gallery.

Envira Gallery's lightbox settings

The Misc Tab

Change your gallery’s title and slug, and add custom CSS classes to have deeper control over your gallery’s appearance.

Miscellaneous options within the Envira Gallery plugin

Mobile, video, social, tags, and pagination settings are all a part of the premium feature set that you can expect from Envira Gallery. For a complete list of all the features that the premium Envira Gallery plugin provides, check out this exhaustive list.

A strong gallery plugin like Envira Gallery makes adding an image gallery to your WordPress website straightforward. Using a plugin to add galleries to your WordPress site is a sound choice and leaves all the heavy lifting of managing your photo and video assets to your plugin. Now, let’s look at some other popular gallery options you can consider for your WordPress website.

Other Popular WordPress Gallery Options

There are multiple ways to add a gallery to your WordPress website. From using the Block Editor to a plugin, we’ve highlighted a few other ways that make adding an image gallery to your WordPress website easy for anyone to handle.

NextGEN Gallery (Imagely)

Nextgen Imagely gallery plugin

With more than 32 million downloads, NextGEN Gallery is one of the most downloaded WordPress image gallery plugins for a reason. Available in both a free and premium version, this gallery plugin gives you all the tools you need to make the best gallery for your site. With eCommerce integration allowing you to sell your photography, photo proofing for professional photographers, and a slew of premade templates and styles, NextGEN Gallery does it all. Automatically resize your images, add watermarks, and manage albums and galleries. For another plugin option for your WordPress website, check out NextGEN.

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10Web Photo Gallery

10Web Photo Gallery

10Web Photo Gallery is another WordPress plugin with drag-and-drop functionality, easy gallery management, and rave reviews. A key feature of this plugin is its spotlight on image SEO, which you should look out for if search engine optimization is key to your website’s success. Of course, this plugin comes with multiple styles and layouts, mobile responsiveness, and social sharing capabilities allowing your website visitors to show your beautiful galleries to their networks.

Get 10Web Photo Gallery

Modula

Modula Gallery Plugin

Modula is a Gutenberg-compatible gallery plugin, meaning that it adds Filters, password protection, sliders, and more are all part and parcel of using this unique plugin for your next image gallery. While other plugins may focus on themes and styling, Module has a proprietary solution that combines image optimization with a blazing-fast CDN. Say hello to better site performance, even with a heavy library of photos!

Get Modula

Divi

Divi Gallery Module

Divi is a powerful WordPress theme that has a highly-customizable gallery module. Divi’s Gallery Module gives you two orientation options, customizable overlay styles, and much more. Creating a full-width image gallery is a simple process with the Gallery Module, as is crafting unique and eye-catching border decorations that you can use to make your gallery match perfectly with your branding. Furthermore, Divi’s gallery capabilities can be further expanded through finds on the Elegant Themes Marketplace. Plugins like DiviFilter Grid and Divi Masonry Gallery are great additions to your Divi theme to easily create beautiful, eye-catching galleries.

Conclusion

Adding an image gallery to your WordPress website has been made simple. Gone are the days of manually preparing photos in image programs before organizing them by hand online. Creating a basic image gallery with the Block Editor is an easy process that takes a few minutes. For deeper functionality, it’s possible to use a plugin like Envira Gallery or Modula to create feature-rich galleries using photos, videos, and even social media posts. If you’re still looking for a list of gallery plugins that you can test out and review, here are our top gallery plugins for you to research and try.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Before we wrap up, let’s answer some of your most common questions about WordPress galleries. Did we miss one? Leave a question below and we will respond!

What is a WordPress gallery?
A WordPress gallery is a feature that allows users to display images visually appealingly. It can be created using WordPress's built-in gallery function or plugins. Users can customize the gallery layout and image size and add captions or descriptions. The gallery can be added to posts, pages, or custom post types.
How do I add a gallery to WordPress?
You can add a gallery to WordPress using a plugin like Envira Gallery or NextGEN Gallery, or the native gallery block on WordPress. However, the gallery block doesn’t let you add videos and lacks the customizability that most plugins usually provide.
Can I add a gallery without using a plugin?
Yes, to add a gallery to WordPress without a plugin, first create a new post or page. Then, add a gallery block and select the images you want to include in the gallery. After selecting the photos, choose the gallery style and settings. However, the in-built gallery is rudimentary and may offer little customization.
What is the best gallery plugin for WordPress?
The best gallery plugin for WordPress depends on your specific needs. However, Envira Gallery, NextGEN Gallery, and Photo Gallery by 10Web are highly recommended options. Each offers various customization options, ease of use, and compatibility with different themes. You can check out our complete comparison here.
How do I customize my WordPress gallery?
To customize your WordPress gallery, go to the gallery you want to customize, and click on the edit button. You can change the image order, add captions, and adjust the gallery settings, such as columns, size, and link options. You can also use a plugin like Envira Gallery to add more advanced customization options.
Are galleries SEO friendly?
Yes, you can make a gallery SEO-friendly by optimizing image file names, using alt tags, adding descriptive captions, and optimizing the overall page content, which helps search engines understand the context and relevance of the images on the page, improving their search engine ranking.
What is the difference between a gallery and a portfolio?
A gallery on a website is a collection of images or media arranged together for display, while a portfolio is a selection of an artist or designer's best work, often with accompanying text and context. A gallery focuses more on presenting a range of work, while a portfolio showcases an individual's skills and abilities.
How can I make a video gallery on WordPress?
You can use a plugin like Envira Gallery to create a video gallery on WordPress. Install the plugin, create a new gallery, and add your videos. You can customize the gallery layout, add descriptions, and create multiple galleries. Finally, insert the gallery into your WordPress page or post using a shortcode or block.
What are the benefits of using a gallery on my WordPress website?
Using a gallery on your WordPress website allows you to display your images in an organized and visually appealing way. This can enhance your website's overall design and user experience, making it more engaging for your visitors. Additionally, galleries can help improve your website's SEO by providing more opportunities for keyword optimization and increasing the time spent on your website by visitors.
What are some tips for creating a great WordPress gallery?
To create a great WordPress gallery, choose high-quality images, organize them into categories, and use a visually appealing layout. Include captions to provide context and optimize images for the web using compression tools. Try to keep the gallery size reasonable to improve load time and ensure mobile responsiveness. Finally, ensure your gallery is mobile-friendly and easy to navigate for a great user experience.

Image by denayunebgt / shutterstock.com

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