Insert an image gallery in WordPress – .com

In today’s tutorial we are going to see how to insert an image gallery in WordPress in a simple and easy way, without using any extra plugin.

What is a photo gallery?

First of all, let’s clarify concepts. What exactly is a photo gallery? Well, neither more nor less than a mosaic of several images.

The images that make up the mosaic are individual (not like the image you can see above, which is a single image of small images)and normally when you click on them you can see the image in a larger size, although sometimes the link simply directs you to another page.

How do I embed a photo gallery in WordPress?

Well, you are in luck, because this is very easy and simple, since WordPress allows you to create, manage and insert image galleries without the need for any plugin.

By the way, if you want to know more about what WordPress allows us to do, I recommend that you take a look at , in which I tell this and more through video tutorials Real time.

Ok, so let’s get to the topic. What we must do if we want to insert a photo gallery in a post, page or any other content that we are creating, is to click on the “Add object” button, as if we were going to add an image normally:

But next, instead of selecting one image from our image library, we’re going to select several of them. We are going to do this by holding down the shift key while clicking on several of them. To know that we are doing it right, we have to look at the check mark that is left at the top right of each thumbnail:

In this case we have selected 8 images. Although only the second image in the second row is marked in blue, we can see how they are all marked. So, now we just have to click on the “Create gallery” link that we have at the top left:

By clicking on that link, we will see how the thumbnails of all the images selected below appear. There we can take the opportunity to rearrange them if we want.

When we have the desired order, we click on the “Create a new gallery” button, and we will see the following screen, where we can remove some images if we have rethought it, reorder them by dragging them, as well as put a short description on them:

gallery settings

Next, we can choose and modify some gallery settings. We have these options at the top right:

We have 4 possible settings. The first is “linked to“. There we must choose the behavior when clicking on the image:

• attachment page It will take the user to a WordPress page where there is only the image with its information. I do not recommend its use for nothing.
• Media file will take the user to see just the image on a new page. I don’t recommend it either, and then we’ll see how to improve it.
• None it just doesn’t do anything, the image just isn’t clickable, and we just have a tile.

The next setting is the number of columns. We simply choose how many columns we want for each row, and that’s it.

The third setting refers to the order. It is true that we have selected on order before, but if we want now we can modify it with this option, so that each time the page loads it is displayed in a different order.

And finally we have the size, where we can choose between Miniature, Medium, Large and Full Size. Obviously, this refers to the dimensions of the images that will be displayed. Sometimes there may also be other sizes, added by some themes or plugins. We simply select the one we want, click on the “Insert gallery” button and that’s it. The gallery will appear in our editor:

This is just a preview, so don’t worry too much about it if it doesn’t look exactly how you want it to, as sometimes it can look a little different than how it will actually look. For that, it is best to see the entry on the web.

At this point, if we now want to change something, we just have to hover over the gallery and click on the pencil icon to return to the previous screen.

We can even include more images to it, with the link on the left “Add to gallery”, and selecting the ones we want to add.

Thus, we can modify the settings whenever we want. Once we have it ready, we can publish the entry, and see how the result looks on our website. For example, this is how it looks like 4 columns with the TwentyTwelve theme:

Well, in principle, everything would stay here. We already have our gallery operational, without depending on any plugin. But of course… It’s not perfect.

we can go further

Although the WordPress gallery functionality is very useful, it has certain limitations. For example, the behavior they have when clicking, the limited appearance that we can give to the slides, or even its usability.

But no problem! For that we have some very light plugins that will significantly improve the use of these galleries. We’ll see in tomorrow’s tutorial. Believe me, you will be surprised what we can achieve with a few small changes 😉