Image galleries are the heartbeat of many a creative custom website design or custom blog design.  You want to showcase your interior design portfolio, artwork, or just create a gallery of your most awesome images.  If Little Blue Deer is your blog designer and you are working from an LBD-designed blog template, it is very easy to add a new gallery (this works for most third-party and default WordPress themes as well).  So, let’s get started!

Step 1

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Pages > Add New

Step 2

You will want to give your page a title.  So name your page.  Remember, the title is also what will show up in the URL when the user navigates to that page.

Step 3:

If your website or blog is set to the default main content/sidebar layout (two columns on a page), you will probably want to make sure that you select the Full-Width layout option.  So scroll down in your page editor to Layout Settings, and click on the Full-Width layout.

Step 4 (optional):

If your blog designer is Little Blue Deer, and your galleries have been specifically styled (eg. special fonts, borders, etc.) for your blog or site, you will want to take one extra step at this point.  In a new browser window, navigate to an existing gallery page (on your live site, not the WordPress dashboard).  At the top of the screen, click on the Edit Page link.

Step 5 (optional):

Scroll down to the bottom of the page editor.  If you have an area titled “CSS”, you will just want to copy any code that is in the peach box.  This is custom code that helps style your web page.  So if your blog designer is Little Blue Deer and your galleries contain special borders or fonts, you will want to copy this code so that you can paste it into your new page (Step 6).  This will ensure that your new gallery retains any special styling that has been added.

Step 6 (optional):

Now, navigate back to the new page you are creating.  Scroll down to the CSS area, and paste the code you have just copied in the peach box.  This will ensure that any styling added by your blog designer will be retained on your new gallery.

Step 7:

Now your new page is set up correctly to add your new gallery.  So click on the Add Media button.

Step 8:

This will take you to the Create Gallery popup.  You can add existing images from your Media Library but if you are creating a new gallery, you will want to make sure you are on the Upload Files tab.  Then click on the Select Files button to upload your images from your computer.

Step 9:

After you have uploaded your images, select the images you want to add to your gallery by clicking on them.  A checkmark will appear next to the images you have selected.

Step 10:

Now simply scroll down to the bottom right corner and click on the blue Create a New Gallery button.

Step 11:

Your gallery has been created.  Now just scroll down to the bottom right corner of the window and click on the blue Insert Gallery button.

Step 12 (optional):

You may want to further edit your new gallery by changing the size of your thumbnails, adding links to your images or adding captions.  If your blog template was not designed by Little Blue Deer, you may want to add the WP Gallery Custom Links plugin.  This plugin will allow you to add custom links to your gallery images.  To edit your new gallery, click on any image in the gallery (make sure you are on the Visual, not Text, tab).  Then, click on the pencil icon that pops up.

Step 13 (optional):

Options to change the format of your gallery include choosing how many columns your gallery will have, and also selecting the size of the gallery thumbnails.  If you have existing galleries that you want to copy, you can go back to Steps 4 and 5, above, to view the settings of an existing gallery so you can duplicate them.  Once you are in the page editor of the gallery whose settings you want to copy, simply go to Steps 12 and 13 to view the existing Column Size and Thumbnail Size settings so you can duplicate them in your new gallery.

Step 14 (optional):

If you want to add a caption or a link to your gallery images, just select the image you want to add a caption or link to by clicking on the image.  If you want to add a caption, enter it in the caption area.  If you want the image to link to a specific page, enter the link in the Gallery Link URL box.  Then just click on the blue Update Gallery button.

Step 15:

You’re done!  Just save your changes by clicking on the blue Update button (if you have not yet published your page, this button will say Publish).  You can always go back to edit your galleries anytime, and you can experiment with setting the thumbnail size and adding links and captions.