Displaying photos beautifully on a website can help engage visitors and allow them to visually connect with your content. One popular way to showcase photos online is through an image gallery or photo album. While you can build a basic gallery using WordPress core features, using a dedicated photo gallery plugin provides you with more advanced functionality, customization options, and better performance. In this article, we’ll look at how to easily create a responsive photo album gallery in WordPress using a plugin.
Why Use a Plugin for Photo Galleries?
Here are some key reasons why using a plugin is the best way to create an image gallery in WordPress:
- Plugins provide you with robust gallery features like lightboxes, slideshows, pagination, sorting, and more. These would require complex coding to build from scratch.
- Top gallery plugins are designed for performance and speed. They typically compress images and only load the necessary images on each page.
- You get access to dozens of professional gallery designs and skins to match the look you want.
- Photo gallery plugins allow you to add meta data like titles, captions, alt text to images for better SEO.
- Advanced gallery plugins integrate with leading photo hosts like Flickr, SmugMug, Google Photos, and Instagram.
- Plugins handle responsive design so your gallery looks great on all devices.
- Dedicated support and regular updates are provided by the plugin company.
Using a specialist gallery plugin saves you time and money compared to developing complex galleries yourself. The good news is there are both free and premium WordPress plugins to choose from.
Factors to Consider When Choosing a Gallery Plugin
With so many WordPress gallery plugins available, here are some factors to consider when deciding which one to use:
Types of Galleries Supported
Think about the types of galleries you need. For example:
- Image Galleries – Display standard image files like JPG, PNG, GIF
- Photo Galleries – Designed for sharing professional photography
- Video Galleries – Showcase videos from providers like YouTube, Vimeo etc
- Social Galleries – Pull images directly from social media
Choose a plugin that supports your desired gallery types.
Gallery Features
Consider what features you need:
- Lightboxes – Display larger versions of images in overlays
- Slideshows – Auto play images
- Mobile responsiveness – Adaptive to different devices
- Social sharing – Share on social media
- Pagination – Split across multiple pages
- Watermarking – Brand images
- Albums – Organize into sub-galleries
The more features a plugin has, the more flexibility you’ll have.
Design Customization
Look for a gallery plugin that provides professional designs and layouts to match your brand. Ideally you want styling options through:
- Themes/skins – Change overall look and feel
- Colors – Customize colors
- Spacing/sizing – Set spacing and sizes for gutter widths, margins etc
- Thumbnails – Choose thumbnail styles and sizes
This allows you to achieve the visual look you want without coding.
Ease of Use
Review how easy the plugin interface and settings are to use. Can you quickly:
- Add images from your media library?
- Create new galleries and albums?
- Customize the appearance?
- Embed galleries on posts/pages?
Simpler plugins allow you to start showcasing your photos faster.
Performance
A high quality gallery plugin will be optimized for speed through features like:
- Image compression
- Lazy loading
- Pagination
- Caching
This ensures your galleries load quickly for visitors.
Support and Documentation
Check what help resources are available like:
- User documentation
- Tutorials
- Forum support
- Email/chat support
Good support can save you time if you need help.
Now that we’ve covered how to choose a plugin, let’s look at the process of actually creating a gallery in WordPress.
Step 1 – Install a Photo Gallery Plugin
First, you need to install a gallery plugin. For this tutorial, we’ll use Envira Gallery which is a popular free WordPress gallery plugin. To install Envira Gallery:
- Go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashboard.
- Search for ‘Envira Gallery’
- Click ‘Install Now’ on the Envira Gallery plugin.
- Activate the plugin once installation completes.
Envira Gallery provides all the features needed for beautiful responsive photo galleries in WordPress.
Step 2 – Create a New Gallery
Now that Envira Gallery is installed, we can start creating galleries:
- Go to Envira Galleries > Add New in your dashboard.
- Give your gallery a name and click Create Gallery.
- You can now upload images from your computer to the gallery directly on this screen.
- Once your photos are added, click Save Gallery.
It’s quick and easy to create new galleries with Envira this way. You can create as many separate galleries as needed.
Step 3 – Customize Gallery Settings
Envira Gallery provides dozens of settings to control your gallery design and functionality. To customize settings for a gallery:
- Edit the gallery you created.
- Expand the different settings panels like General, Gallery, Image, Mobile etc
- Configure options like gallery layout, margins, lightbox, captions, mobile columns etc.
- Click Save Gallery to apply your settings.
Review each setting section to get your gallery working exactly as you want.
Step 4 – Embed the Gallery
Once you finish customizing your photo gallery in Envira, you need to insert it into a post or page:
- Edit the post or page where you want the gallery.
- Click the Envira Gallery button above the editor.
- Select the gallery you created.
- Choose your display settings – Link to post, columns etc.
- Insert the shortcode.
The gallery will now display as part of your published content!
Step 5 – Manage Images Within the Gallery
Once a gallery is created, you can continue managing images within it:
- Edit the gallery.
- Drag and drop images to reorder them.
- Delete images you don’t want.
- Select images and bulk edit their titles, captions, alt text etc.
- The gallery will update when you click Save after making changes.
Continue adding new photos over time to keep your galleries fresh.
Conclusion
Using a dedicated photo gallery plugin like Envira Gallery makes it easy to create beautiful responsive gallery displays in WordPress. Follow the process of:
- Installing the plugin
- Creating new galleries
- Customizing gallery settings
- Embedding galleries on posts/pages
- Managing images within galleries
This allows you full creative control over advanced galleries without coding knowledge. Your visitors will love scrolling through your visually stunning photo albums.
Now dive in and start showcasing your best images in WordPress!