Are you looking to create an image gallery in WordPress?
An image gallery lets you add photos in rows and columns. This allows you to display more photos in less space while also making it easier for users to browse them.
In this article, we will show you how to easily create an image gallery in WordPress that makes your photos look even better.
Why Create an Image Gallery in WordPress?
WordPress makes it super easy to add an image to your blog posts and pages. You just need to add the image block and upload your image.
However, if you are adding multiple images, then all those images will appear one after another. It doesn’t look great, and your users will have to scroll a lot to view them all.
By creating a gallery, you can display images in a grid layout with columns and rows. You can show thumbnails for your pictures, and users can click on them to see the full image.
This way, you will be able to show more photos in less space, and it will look a lot more professional.
WordPress actually comes with a built-in gallery feature for quickly creating photo galleries. The new WordPress block editor includes a Gallery block to let you make a WordPress gallery in just a few clicks.
You can also use WordPress image gallery plugins to create even more robust galleries with more features.
In this tutorial, we will show you both methods to make a photo gallery in WordPress.
Let’s start with the default WordPress gallery block.
Method 1. Create an Image Gallery without a Plugin
WordPress comes with a built-in feature that lets you create a gallery. This feature is very basic and does not have many options, but it gets the job done.
Here is how you would create an image gallery in WordPress without using a plugin.
First, you need to edit the post or page where you want to add the image gallery. On the post edit screen, click on the Add New Block icon and select the Gallery block.
This will add the Gallery block to your WordPress editor where you can click on the ‘Upload’ button to upload photos from your computer. You can also select from previously uploaded photos in the media library.
If you click on the Upload button, then you can generally upload one photo at a time. However, you can select and open multiple images with Ctrl key pressed on your keyboard.
After you have uploaded all the images, you can add captions to your images. Simply click on the photos, and you will see ‘Write caption…’ option where you need to enter the caption.
If you select the Media Library button, then you will be able to choose images for your gallery all at once. As you select images, you can also enter the image alt text, title, and caption from the attachment details panel on the right side.
Select the images you want to add and click on the ‘Create a new gallery’ button at the bottom right corner.
Next, you will see ‘Edit Gallery’ page where you can add/review your image captions. Once done, click on the ‘Update Gallery’ button at the bottom right corner.
After that, your post edit screen will open with the gallery block settings panel on the right side. Now, you can choose the number of columns for each row, enable or disable the Crop images option, and choose where to link your gallery images.
From the Link to options, you can choose None if you want your users to only view your photo. This option disables clicking feature for your images.
If you select the Media File option, then the images will be clickable, and the image file will open when clicked. Similarly, the attachment page will open if you select the Attachment Page option.
Once you are satisfied with the settings, you can publish the post and preview the gallery on your live website.
For example, here is how the image gallery appeared on our demo website.
Wasn’t that quick and easy?
It looks pretty too. However, if you create image galleries regularly, then you will soon notice that it lacks certain essential features.
For example, your images will either be not clickable or open in a new page. If you link your gallery images to the media file or attachment page, then the users will have to click on the back button to view the gallery again.
It is not user-friendly, and your gallery’s appearance depends on your theme. In most cases, you get just one very generic style.
You can’t organize your galleries into topics, albums, tags, etc. Your gallery is not stored anywhere and if you needed to add the same gallery again, then you’ll have to recreate it.
If you want to add more professional looking image galleries on your site, then you should use the next method.
Method 2. Create an Image Gallery Using Envira Gallery
For this method, we will be using the Envira Gallery plugin. It is the best WordPress image gallery plugin in the market.
Envira allows you to easily create fully-responsive, beautiful, and modern image galleries in WordPress. It is super fast and comes with many features like lightbox popup, easy image navigation, drag and drop builder, and professional gallery templates.
Let’s get started.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Envira Gallery plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit the Envira Gallery » Settings page to enter your license key. You can get this key from your account on the Envira Gallery website.
After verifying your license key, you can head over to Envira Gallery » Add New page to create your first gallery.
First, you need to provide a title for your gallery and then click on ‘Select files from computer’ button to upload your images.
You can also select files from your WordPress media library by clicking on ‘Select files from other sources’ button.
Once you upload the images, they will appear in the Gallery section.
You can click the pencil icon on an image to add caption, title, and alt text for each image.
Next, you need to click on the ‘Configuration’ tab.
From here you can change your gallery settings like the number of columns, image lazy loading, title and caption positioning, margins, heights, thumbnail sizes, image dimensions, etc.
After that, you need to click on the ‘Lightbox’ tab.
The lightbox popup allows users to enlarge images and browse them without ever leaving the page.
The default settings will work very well for most websites, but you can review the options and change them if you like.
Next, you can click on the ‘Mobile’ tab to configure your gallery settings for mobile devices. It allows you to choose image dimensions for mobile devices, enable or disable lightbox, and more.
After that, you can review more options like gallery slug and add custom CSS from the ‘Misc’ section.
You can now publish your gallery which will make it available to be added anywhere on your WordPress site.
Next, you need to edit a post or page where you want to display your gallery.
On the post edit screen, click on the Add New Block icon and select the Envira Gallery block.
Clicking on it will add the Envira Gallery block in the post editor. Now you can search a gallery by its name or find it by clicking on the dropdown arrow icon.
After that, the plugin will load your gallery in the post editor.
Next, you can review your gallery settings one more time from the block settings panel on the right side.
You can now save your post and preview it to see the gallery on your live website.
Clicking on any image in the gallery will open it in the lightbox popup. You can browse images in the lightbox by pressing the left and right arrow keys on the screen or on your keyboard.
Your gallery will look equally great on mobile as well. Users will be able to tap on an image to enlarge it and swipe to view the next or previous image.
We hope this article helped you learn how to create an image gallery in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to fix common image issues in WordPress.
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Is there an easy way to make all photos in the gallery the same size so it looks uniform? I’m creating the gallery for a non-profit newsletter.
Thank you, stacey
With the default gallery as long as you enabled the crop images they should be uniform in size.
This post is so nice as you publish.Thank’s a lot
Glad you like our content
Hi I understood all that and thank you very much. so can you give me an idea how I can make a gallery appear by clicking on a photo.?
I want when some one click on a photo and then the gallery will appear.
with worpress
Help me please
For what it sounds like you’re wanting, you may want to take a look at Envira Gallery and the album feature
Thanks for putting this amazing piece of content together! I ended up using the a gallery plugin because it was super easy to set up
Glad you were able to get your image gallery set up
Hi, I have been managing a gallery on my site for years, but am only realizing now that it seems as though WP will only allow me to share 100 photos at a time. Is there a way to display more? I have a Premium plan.
Thanks!
Thank you for this helpful article. I make galleries all the time on my desktop computer, but I am hoping to blog from the trail this summer while backpacking the Colorado Trail and will be using my phone to do so. Is there any way to create galleries using the WordPress mobile app? I have been experimenting with that and can’t seem to figure out how to do so.
Thank you!
I’m using th wordpress gallery creator. When I create a gallery with 3 columns in 2 rows of pictures, it looks good. But when I click on Preview, it shows me what my webpage will look like but it has the pictures all on top of one another and not in the 3 columns & 2 rows like I wanted.
How can I repair this?
Could you use this to display for sale items with the buy now button that I get from paypal?
It would depend on how well the gallery plugin is coded, if there is lazy loading then it could speed up that specific page but overall you would want to take a look at how plugins affect your site speed here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-wordpress-plugins-affect-your-sites-load-time/
How can I display a single image and link it to a slide show in a new window?
– I don’t want 12 thumbnails on the page – just one image the says ‘See the gallery’
Yes!! Great tutorial! This saves me from having to revert to site origin builder when I have already used the reular wordpress editor. Works really well. I wish I would have realized this a long time ago but never reseached it. Thanks for this info.
Steven
Can I great a photo gallery that automatically transitions between 5-10 images automatically once my page has been loaded? I was also hoping to embed this on my homepage. Any help would be great. Thanks.
Hi!
I am trying to add an image gallery that has links to various external pages (i.e. you click on an image and it brings you to that website.) I have determined that this is difficult to do with the WP gallery because they want all the images to go to the same linked page, but I want each of my images to go to a different page. It seems envira is not free. I downloaded gridplus and gridable but am still struggling with how to do this. ideas??
Hi Erin,
You can do this using a WordPress photo gallery plugin.
Hi there! I’m trying to figure out my gallery in WordPress, but when I publish it shows in one single column, but the backend looks normal and how I want. Do you know how to fix this?
HI — I’m trying to update my site and have created a new gallery, but I can’t figure out if I did it in WP or NextGen. I can’t see how to insert it into the project.
I have inserted a video successfully. Can I have a video (on Vimeo) and also a gallery?
thanks,
Robin
great tutorial thanks!
My blogs show as individual thimble images on the front blog page. If you hover over image you see the title. My issue is when you click on my blog page it looks like I have nil blogs as it takes up to 20 seconds for all images to show. Can you have the blogs list as titles rather images? If i hide featured image the boxed appear blank which is worse.
Many Thanks
Loretta
I have a website I want to add gallery to my website.. This gallery will hold GBs of data more than 100GB. Is there any limitation in wordpress for that?
Hi Ali,
You will need to use Envira Gallery’s Pagination add on to display a reasonable number of photos per page.
If I create a gallery, can I then add more photos to the same gallery and somehow update the gallery post page? (I’m posting recipes of food dishes, and as I complete more of them, will want to update the post.)
Hi Vicki,
Yes, you can always edit the Gallery to add or remove images from the gallery.
If I create a gallery using the default WP functionality, but decide later that I’d like to upgrade to more functionality with something you’ve mentioned, can I simply add the plug-in and have it all convert, or will I have to rebuild the gallery from scratch?
Hi Vicki,
Unfortunately this will not be possible. You’ll have to manually recreate those galleries.
Loved the tutorial. Was a stepping stone to creating a custom plugin. After a few tweaks…problem solved
Thank you Wpbeginner,
I am a regular visitor of your site for my new blog.
Whenever I facing any problem for my new blog, I directly open your blog.
Thanks again and keep sharing.
You guys are the bomb! Thank you so much for this easy “WP for Dummies” sort of post! Keep it up!!!
actually i want to know that can i a my website made on wp and export it as a new theme
I have been playing with an image gallery. Once I make the gallery, can I somehow make each image clickable in order to direct people to my posts?
Thanks! I look forward to trying out this plugin.
Can you recommend a plugin that will let me create a gallery of featured images from my posts, by post category? I want users to be able to click the image to view the related post. Thanks!
Your plugin is a life-saver. I am unable to connect to Jetpack because of a issue with the client’s host and the other lightbox plugins I tried weren’t great. WPBeginner always has an answer, thanks for all you do!
Hey Tamara,
Glad you found it helpful
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The gallery seems to default to three images across in my posts, is there any way I could have 4 or 5 images running across in each line?
Never mind…found it!!
Thanks for an on-the-button explanation of the gallery. I must’ve tried a dozen other posts, which were all over the place, before I found this one.
I have a question. Is it possible to bunch the images in a gallery closer together. I’ve tried all sorts and my images remain far apart
How can i display the the images of the gallery along with caption.
I want caption of each image in gallery to be stored in variable
Why are there no spaces between the images on my page and in the beginning of your tutorial you mention a lightbox but you never get to explaining how to make it as you only cover the carousel part.
Where can I find this and how can I get the spaced grid option??
So does things like social media activity now count for SEO?
I was told they help because of the Panda Google algorithm refresh
Added to Digg, someone will like it
Thanks, i have used this method several times…
How do you delete images from a gallery? I have tried every single thing I can possibly think of and followed all the advice given on the internet, but the images are still there on my home page, even though I have deleted them multiple times from the actual gallery. There are no problems with the Media Library, just the gallery that appears on my home page. If anyone can tell me how to get rid of these pictures, that would be greatly appreciated.
How do I separate paragraphs in the galleries?
What gallery are you using for the images posted on this page? Love it
See How to add gallery carousel in WordPress without JetPack
I have created several image galleries which are initially uploaded in alphabetical order – I need to add large groups of additional images from time to time (this is in Word Press dot Com) – Is there anyway to re-alphabetize the entire gallery without being required to “drag and drop” – When adding 100’s of new images that is not an option.
Thanks
Please see our guide on the difference between self hosted WordPress.org vs free WordPress.com blog.
I just discovered this after trying some plug-ins, but the problem I’m trying to address is the same, with this and with the various plugins. Which is how to add a link to the image, so when you click on the image, it takes you to a specific page. Not the media file. Any suggestions? Thanks.
You can link your images to any URL you want. Please see our tutorial on how to add custom links to gallery images in WordPress.
Hi, thanks for the tutorial. But how to make gallery from external images?
You will have to import those images into WordPress first.
I feel really stupid but just created a gallery page….updated with photos and text….simple enough. Why does “image gallery”, “slide show” and all this other stuff show up at the bottom of the page? I cannot figure out how to delete it. newby at web design.
Absolutely well explained, it’s so helpful, I love it. Thank you so much for this video, great work.
HI, Would be helpful to alot of people if you also suggested a free gallery plugin, rather than advertise a paid plugin
Melanie
You should have kept reading. They do offer a pretty cool free plugin to add to the existing WP gallery. A nice looking carousel. Did you see?
Thank you very much for the tutorial.
I have just one question.
I created the gallery and published it, but when i put the mouse over the picture, it show a red square with two small silver squares that says: “view attachment page’ and “view in full size”
How can i remove it? I wanna make it like in facebook, that you just put the mouse over, click and see the carousel.
Is that possible?
I did what you suggest above to create a simple gallery on a webpage. It shows up beautifully. However whenever I click on one of the thumb nail images it says : “image cannot be loaded. Make sure path is correct and image exist”.
Just to clarify, I mean when I click on ANY of the thumbnails in that gallery I get that same error message.
I have been using the built in gallery for wordpress but recently it has stooped resizing so my images are half off the page where you cant see them
Carousel not working in Page – I downloaded “Carousel Without Jetpack” and created my photo gallery as a new Post and also created photo gallery as a new Page, however, carousel works in the post but not the page. Carousel is enabled in “settings” so why cant I get it to work in Page?
Are you using any other plugins that might cause conflict? Try deactivating all plugins and see if this fixes the problem.
Hi I’m a wordpress beginner! My gallery is somehow linked to the homepage…so when clicked the image takes you back to the ‘Home page’ and not to either a lightbox effect or to the image itself. How do I fix this? Catrin
Hi, is it possible to add a lightbox gallery like this in a widget area? Thanks-
Michele
I have a question. I use JQuery plugin for and hovering pin it button. I was wondering if you know of a solution when you click on the photo gallery for carousel mode there is no pin it button. I would I be able to add that button to the gallery?
When someone is viewing my gallery of images with minimal captions, when they click on an image, I would like them to see a larger image with additional information about the image beside or below that large image. I don’t want a gallery of images with all of that information destroying the grid aesthetic. Is this possible? I do not know coding or website jargon – sorry.
This post is so helpful! Many Thanks