HOW TO CREATE A PROJECT GALLERY FOR WORDPRESS BLOG
Today I show you How to create a project gallery for WordPress blog. I switched over to WordPress about a month ago, and I love it. I think I already forgot all about blogger and the how to’s in the blogger platform. WordPress is just great! Today’s post was written to help others who happen to be in the same boat as I was.
When I finished with the transfer from Blogger to WP, I set down and started working on my theme customization and to add my pages to my blog. I do lots of DIY and crafty projects, so I wanted to make sure I can display my galleries in an organized, nice and clean looking grid view to be enjoyable for my readers.
I reached out to fellow bloggers and asked what plugin they use to display their galleries. Few of my friends told me that they use Catablog {plugin}. Taryn at Design Dining Diapers wrote a great post on how to use Catablog to display galleries. I looked into it, and I liked it, you can create a beautiful gallery with that plugin. For some reason, it did not work work for me, though. I wasn’t able to re size my thumbnails from 100 x 100 to 150 x 150. I uploaded my images and displayed them as 100 x 100, but anytime I looked at my gallery, I just hated those super small thumbnails. If you ca make Catablog work on your site, great!Use it!Grab Taryn’s tutorial.
I had to find another way to add my galleries to my pages.
My sweet bloggy friend Tasha, from Designer’s Trapped in Lawyer’s Body suggested me to use the built-in WordPress feature.
I almost flipped when I found out how easy it is to display galleries with the built-in WordPress gallery feature.
Oh my goodness!!
After spending long hours of finding the best plugins to showcase my work, I needed to realize that I don’t need a plugin to create my galleries. I am sure that many people don’t know about this feature in WordPress.
Okay…Are you ready to create your Galleries?
It’s going to be an easy four steps TUTORIAL!
Install the plugin called WP gallery custom links. You will need this plugin to be able to add your links to your images. It’s a very important if you will link your images to your posts. It will give you the option to add custom links to your images in your media gallery. Install this plugin and move over to the next step. If you don’t want to link your images to your images, then you can skip this step, and you will just have a picture gallery displayed.
Next step is to find the page in the Pages list where you wish to display your gallery.
Name your page to ” HOME DECOR PROJECTS” , “PROJECTS”, “RECIPES” or whatever you wish to name your page for the gallery.
Once you created the page that you wish to add your gallery to, click on the ADD MEDIA button.
After the window pops up, click on CREATE GALLERY and from your media folder choose the images you want to add.
Add your custom link { the blog post you link the image to } to each picture. Click on the image and you will see
Title,
Caption,
Alt Text
Description
Gallery Link URL
on the right side of the screen.
Click on each image you wish to include in your gallery. If the image that you want to display is not uploaded into your MEDIA LIBRARY, choose the UPLOAD FILES option.
It will take you to a window where you can add captions to each image.
You will have several options to display your galleries. I chose the grid view for now, but I love the tiled mosaic gallery option as well. I may switch to that when I am in that mood.:-) Pick your favorite display mode and click INSERT GALLERY.
This is what you should see after adding your gallery to your page. Click on UPDATE your page and check the PREVIEW.
Awesome!
You just created a beautiful, clean looking gallery.
It should look like this:
Check out my GRID VIEW GALLERY HERE and the TILED MOSAIC GALLERY HERE and decide which one you like the most.
Tip: if you create your grid view gallery now and if you change your mind in a week or two to display tile mosaic galleries on our site, you won’t need to go to each gallery to change the settings, but you would go to SETTINGS on the left panel on your WP Dashboard, click on MEDIA from the drop down menu and in MEDIA SETTINGS check to box: “ Click to display all your galleries in cool mosaic ” and SAVE SETTINGS.
***UPDATE:The lasest version of WP does not have the option to change te type of grid views***
I hope you found this post helpful. I wish I found a post like this when I made my switch to WP.
That would have made my life easier.
* Update; I am not usint the WordPress gallery option anymore*
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Have a wonderful week dear Friends!
Xoxo~
Hello! I’m so happy I saw this Pinterest post that led me to your blog. I just switched over to WordPress.org after being with Blogger since 2007. I am only 2 weeks into the switch and am feeling overwhelmed. I have no clue how to customize my blog and I don’t want to pay to have it done, so I need tutorials like this one! Right now I have the Lifestyle pro child theme on Genesis. I know there are lots of ways to customize this theme because I’ve seen examples. I’m so glad I finally made the leap from Blogger to WordPress.
I hope you can use this to set uo your galleries! If you have any questions, please let me know!
This is awesome! This will come in handy. Pinned to remind me to look into this further.
Hi Devon! Have fun creating your galleries!
Best tutorial I’ve seen on galleries. Love it.
Thanks a lot, Kristie! I am so glad you found it helpful:-) Have a wonderful day!
Hi! I am a super new blogger and terrible with all the techie stuff. There are so many how-to posts out there that are completely a different language to me. I just followed this tutorial to make a gallery on one of my pages, and it was so easy! Thank you so much for sharing!
Megan, I am so glad it helped you to create your galleries! Happy blogging!Have a great week!
Thank you SO very much for this post Aniko! I’ve been wanting to do this for a while but I couldn’t figure it out and you made it so easy, I’m very pleased with the results. Thanks for taking the time to write this:)
thanks for the easy tutorial, it was very helpful! I had to tweak a few think due to my theme page but it all worked out well
I am so glad it helped you to create your gallery! I am very pleased with mine;-) Have a wonderful week!
Hi, again! I do have a question. Is there a way to link a URL to each picture? For some reason, it’s not showing up when I select the pictures for the gallery!
Thanks again for this! I did it! http://thequeenandhercourt.com/projects-and-parties/
Amber 🙂
THANK YOU! If this is less work than Catablog then I am switching. Catablog has been too much to keep up with for me. I’m checking this out ASAP. THanks again.
Catablog did not work for me,however I know it works for lots of others. I hope you will find this tutorial easy. Let me know if you have any questions! Have a lovely day!
Oh my word! Thank you so much for this! I literally have it on my things to do list for my blog (because it is still a teeny tiny blog!)!!
Thanks for taking the time to put a tutorial together!!
Amber 🙂
Oh MY word! You have NO idea how excited I am about this because I literally have it on my things to do list for my blog (as I still have a teeny tiny blog!)!!
THANK YOU for sharing this amazing tutorial! I cannot wait to work on this!
Amber 🙂
Amber- I am glad that you find this tutorial helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions!Have a great week!
Aniko, thank you so much for this awesome tutorial! Creating a project gallery has been on my to-do list, and you have made it so much easier for me to actually get moving on it, now that I see how simple it is. I’m so glad you are loving WordPress— I can never say enough good things about it. Have a great week! 🙂
Great tips! Pinning for future reference! ~Lisa
Thank you for this Aniko! I’ve been wanting to do this but didn’t realize it was so easy. Adding it to my to do list!
I need this plugin!! Thanks for sharing at The Weekend Retreat, Hope to see you back on Thursday.
I think this is exactly what I was looking for! Perfect timing! (I’m hopeful it works with wordpress.com) -kristin @ heart of farm girl
I am stuck on Step 1. 🙁
Does this work on WordPress.com? Or only.org? I need a step 1/2 that explains “Install the plugin called WP gallery custom links”. I have no idea how to install a plugin.
This is awesome Aniko – just what I was looking for. I have just been adding images manually and trying to get them to line up nicely and it doesn’t work! I am so glad to know this now and will be redoing my project pages ASAP!!
I am glad you like it, Krista! let me know if you have any questions…I am happy to help! Have a wonderful weekend!Xo~
I did all 4 steps but haven’t yet made a gallery. Thanks for sharing the tutorial. It was so easy to set up on my blog. I’m really looking forward to making my first one.
As far as I can tell, I can make a gallery and insert it not only on a page but a post as well. Correct?
Absolutely…you can also insert in into your post…where you write your post click on add media there and follow the steps through! Let me know if u have any questions!!
I’ve just skimmed through this but am eager to give it a try – thank you for sharing this. Right now I use InLinkz which works really well, but I want to have control over my stuff!
Barb, I used inLinkz while I was on blogger. I liked it but don’t be afraid to give this a try. Super easy.Let me know if you have any questions!
Fabulous idea for a tutorial, Aniko! And you did a great job of explaining it. It’s such an underused feature. Hopefully now more people will be able to take advantage of it. And thanks for the sweet shout out 🙂
Thanks Tasha for opening my eyes..:-) Hugs!!