Using the New “FooGallery” Photo Galleries

FooGallery is undeniably one of the best and most used photo gallery plugins for WordPress. While the plugin comes with excellent support articles and help available right through your dashboards, this article exists to get you started with just the basics. Here’s what appears on the new “Photos” page after you’ve added some galleries:

Setting FooGallery up for the first time

In the left menu of your blog you will now find a FooGallery Menu item. Once it’s opened, it will expand to show its sub-items. I will refer to these sub-items as the “FooGallery Menu” Here are some steps to get on your way quickly:

1. Create one or more galleries (Collections of pictures)
   1. To create a gallery, find the “Add Gallery” item in the FooGallery Menu (left menu under FooGallery), and click it.
   2. Type a title in the top text field. This title will show up in several places on the public side of your blog and should give the visitor an idea of what these pictures are about, or the event at which they were taken
   3. Click the “Add Media” box and start selecting photos. You can upload new photos by dragging and dropping them from files on your computer, or you can select existing ones from your WordPress Media Library. Clicking the blue “Add Media” button will add them to the gallery
   4. You can add more media at any time, or drag and drop the existing images to rearrange them.
   5. Click the blue “Publish” button when you’re finished.
   6. All your galleries will appear on the “Galleries” page available from the FooGallery Menu
   7. There are many more options to explore for galleries, but the default settings will afford an excellent experience. As you begin, it’s best to use the default settings, and make changes only after you’ve seen and interacted with the default galleries
2. Create an Album (Collection of Galleries)
   1. Click the “Albums” link in the FooGallery menu.
      1. If the “Albums” option doesn’t appear, click “Extensions” in the FooGallery Menu and activate the “Albums” extension.
   2. Click the “Add Album” button toward the top of the screen
   3. Enter a Title. I recommend “Photos Page Album” if you intend to use this album on the photos page. That will make it clear to you in the future what this album is and where it shows up on your site.
   4. Select which galleries should show up. Selected galleries will have a giant check mark on top of them.
   5. As with photos in a gallery, you can click and drag the galleries in this album to put them in the order you want.
   6. Click the blue “Publish” button.
3. Add The Album to your photos page.
   1. Directly beneath the “Publish” button is an “Album Shortcode.” Clicking on the shortcode (which looks something like “[foogallery-album id=”1649″]”) will copy the code to your clipboard. If not, or you don’t trust it, select and copy the code (CTRL+C on a PC or Command+C on a Mac).
   2. From the left menu, click “Pages” and then find your “Photos” page and click on that.
   3. If there is an existing NextCellent album shortcode there, and you are ready to replace it, just delete it (it looks something like [album id=1]).
   4. Paste in your FooGallery album shortcode (CTRL+V OR Command+V OR Right-click > paste)
   5. Click the “Preview Changes” button to see what your new photos page will look like (But be aware that the links to individual galleries won’t work in the preview)
   6. Click the blue “Update” button on the right side.
   7. Toward the top of your screen should be a “Page updated. View page” message. Click on “View page” to explore your new photos page.
4. Adding more galleries to the photos page
   1. Whenever you create a new gallery that you want on the photos page, don’t forget to edit your “Photos Page Album” (If that’s what you named it) and add the new gallery to it.

We are very excited to offer this new plugin and expect that the experience of both you and your users will be made much better as you utilize this tool. You are welcome to comment below if you discover new or exciting ways to get more out of this plugin through settings or extensions.

As always, email blog_support@ntm.org to get help, bug fixes or training from a live human.