How to Create and Edit WordPress Galleries

Create Gallery

One pretty slick feature of WordPress is the ability to create a gallery of images for any page or post. All it takes is a few basic steps.

1. Create a new page or post (“ADD NEW“).
2. Click the “ADD MEDIA” button (above the default editor menu options).
3. Click “CREATE GALLERY” (in the left sidebar).
4. You are now given two options:
   (a) Select images in your media library (you’ve already uploaded these).
   OR
   (b) Upload new images. Check to make sure that the newly uploaded images are actually selected so that they will be placed into the new gallery.
5. Click “CREATE A NEW GALLERY” button (bottom-right corner of your screen).
6. Choose your Gallery Settings (right sidebar).  I usually select Thumbnail for the size, but experiment and see what you prefer. Linking to the Media File will reveal an enlarged version of the thumbnail when the user clicks on it.

Lightbox

For me, the power of galleries is enhanced by integration with a lightbox plug-in called “Responsive Lightbox“. The default configuration automatically adds a lightbox to WordPress image galleries. With this installed, when the user clicks on a thumbnail in the gallery, larger versions of the images appear in an overlay above the existing page/post. The user can then easily navigate to the next image without having to go back to the underlying page and click on the next thumbnail. Of course, the user can just as easily return to the underlying page by clicking on the large “X” in the upper-right corner of the screen.

Edit Gallery

Once a gallery exists, you will probably need to edit it on occasion. Editing includes changing the captions, reordering the image sequence, deleting images, and adding new images.

1. THE key step is to first select the gallery by clicking on one of its images in the WordPress editor.
   
2. Click on the pencil icon (the “x” deletes the gallery, so don’t click on that unless you actually want to remove the gallery from the past/post!).
3. You’ll be brought to the “EDIT GALLERY” window where you can do any number of edits you want. In the left sidebar, there is the “ADD TO GALLERY” option. That brings you to Step #4 above, in the Create Gallery description, where you are given two options:
   (a) Select images in your media library (you’ve already uploaded these).
   OR
   (b) Upload new images. After uploading, be sure to select the images you’re putting into the gallery.
4. After adding the new images, click the “UPDATE GALLERY” button in the bottom-right corner of your screen.
5. You’ll return to the WordPress page/post editor area. The final step is to click the “UPDATE” button at the top of the right sidebar, which will update the page/post.

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