What is a gallery?
A gallery is a group of pictures shown side by side, like photos on a wall. WordPress has a Gallery block built in. A block is one piece of content in the editor, such as text or an image.
Steps
- Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to Pages or Posts. Click Add New, or open one to edit.
- Click the plus sign to add a block.
- Type Gallery in the search box.
- Click the Gallery block.
- Click Upload to pick pictures from your computer. You can select many at once.
- Or click Media Library to use pictures you uploaded earlier.
- Click Create a new gallery or Insert.
Change how it looks
- Click the gallery to select it.
- Open the settings panel on the right. Click the gear icon if it is hidden.
- Set the number of Columns.
- Turn on Crop images to make all pictures the same shape.
- Choose what a click does under Link to. Pick Media File to open the big picture.
- Click a single picture to add a caption below it.
- Drag pictures to change their order.
Publish
- Click Preview to check the result.
- Click Publish or Update.
Fancy effects with a plugin
A plugin is an add-on that gives your site a new feature. A gallery plugin can add a pop-up viewer called a lightbox. It darkens the page and shows the picture big. Go to Plugins and Add New, then search for "gallery".
Tip: Big pictures make your page slow. Shrink them before upload. A width of about 1500 pixels is plenty. A pixel is one tiny dot on a screen. Add alt text to each picture. It describes the picture for people who cannot see it.
Quick recap
- Add the Gallery block in the editor.
- Upload or choose pictures.
- Set columns, cropping and links in the right panel.
- Shrink big pictures first so the page stays fast.