WordPress already has a built-in feature for creating and inserting photo galleries inside your posts, pages, custom post types etc. This tutorial is about a free plugin that extends default WordPress gallery feature and enables you to create re-useable photo galleries which you can edit anytime and keep them saved and easily accessible. Hence, now there is no need of creating same galleries again and again or digging inside your old content to copy old gallery shortcodes.
[heading size=”17″]Step-1 Installing Rocket Galleries[/heading]
Rocket Galleries is the new WordPress gallery manager plugin which uses native WordPress gallery functionality but all in new style. To start, install and activate the plugin. Upon activation the plugin adds a new post type ‘Galleries‘ from where you can easily create and manage your photo galleries.
[heading size=”17″]Step-2 Creating New Galleries[/heading]
Visit Galleries -> Add New page and use ‘+Add Images‘ button for adding images to your gallery with same old WordPress add media thickbox. When you’re done adding image, click ‘Save Gallery‘ button. You can create and save as many galleries you want, just like posts.
[heading size=”17″]Step-3 Displaying Galleries[/heading]
For displaying a gallery, you can use any one from the following three methods:
Shortcode Generator: The plugin provides you a shortcode generator in visual & text editor present in add new post pages. Create a new post or open any old post for editing.
You will notice an ‘Add Gallery‘ button right next to ‘Add Media’ button, click ‘Add Gallery‘ and select a gallery to insert from the dropdown.
Manual Shortcode Insertion: You can manually insert the shortcode [rocketgalleries id="x"]replacing x with the ID of your photo gallery. Photo gallery ID is visible in first column of Dashboard -> Galleries -> All Galleries admin page.
Using PHP Code In Theme Template File: For inserting a gallery in your theme, use the following code to the appropriate theme template file replacing x with your gallery ID.
<?php if ( function_exists( "rocketgalleries" ) ) { rocketgalleries( x ); } ?>
[heading size=”17″]Step-4 Managing Galleries[/heading]
All galleries created via this plugin can be managed fromDashboard -> Galleries -> All Galleries admin page, you can edit them, delete them, duplicate them or perform bulk actions from this page. Also you can reset the plugin anytime to its default settings from Dashboard -> Galleries -> Settings page.