Where to Set Up a Gallery: the Block Editor vs. Your Site Settings

Imagely gives you two places to control how a gallery looks. Knowing which one to use saves a lot of confusion.

• The Imagely block, in the page or post editor, controls one gallery on one page.
• Imagely > Settings > Layout Settings, in your WordPress dashboard, set the defaults every gallery starts from.

A setting you change in the block affects only that gallery. A setting you change in the dashboard affects every gallery that hasn’t been given its own value.

Adding a gallery to a page

1. Edit the page or post where you want the gallery.
2. Click the (+) button to open the block inserter.
3. Search for Imagely and click the Imagely block.
4. In the block, choose the Gallery or Album tab, then pick your gallery from the Select Gallery dropdown. To build a new one without leaving the page, click + Create New.
5. Click Insert to place the gallery, or Edit to open the full setup modal first.
6. Publish or update the page.

The three-step setup modal

Clicking Edit opens a modal with three steps. You can move between them with Next step and Back, and everything is saved when you click Update on the last step.

Step 1 – Images

Add, remove, reorder and tidy up the pictures in the gallery.

• Add Images uploads new files.
• Scan Folder picks up images you added by FTP or a file manager.
• Sort Images reorders everything at once – by ID, filename, alt text or date, or inverts the current order.
• Drag any image by its 4-way arrow icon/move handle to place it by hand.
• The ⋮ Actions menu on each image holds the per-image tools: edit details, edit the image, view its metadata, regenerate its thumbnail, set it as the gallery’s preview thumbnail, or Hide Image to keep it in the gallery but off the page.
• Tick images (or All Images) to reveal Bulk Actions – watermark, delete, recover, generate thumbnails, rotate, resize, import metadata, and copy or move them to another gallery.

Step 2 – Customize

Pick the layout and adjust how it looks.

Choose from Thumbnails, Slideshow, Masonry, Mosaic, Tile, Blog Style, ImageBrowser, TagCloud, Film, Thumbnail Grid, Sidescroll, Search and Horizontal Filmstrip. Some layouts require NextGEN Pro.

Below the layout picker are the appearance controls – Override thumbnail settings, Images per page, and options specific to the layout you chose. The Gallery Preview on the right updates as you go, and you can switch it between desktop and mobile.

Override thumbnail settings creates an extra set of thumbnails rather than changing your existing ones. To resize thumbnails you already have, use Generate Thumbnails in step 1.

Step 3 – Settings

Name the gallery and set the rest.

• Gallery Title and Gallery Description
• Link to page – point the gallery at a page on your site
• eCommerce Settings – turn selling on for this gallery and choose its Pricelist (requires Imagely Pro)
• Lightbox Library – which lightbox this gallery opens in

Click Update to save and return to the page.

Site-wide defaults

The modal changes one gallery. To change what every gallery starts with, use your dashboard:

• Imagely > Settings – image handling, lightbox effects, watermarking, image protection and the rest of the site-wide options.
• Imagely > Settings > Layout Settings – the default settings for each layout type.

Two things worth knowing:

Copying a gallery block from one page to another copies the gallery reference, not a separate copy of the gallery. Both pages show the same gallery, so editing it in one place changes it in both. To show the same images with different settings, duplicate the gallery itself.

Changing a global default does not rewrite galleries you have already customized. A gallery that was given its own value in the modal keeps that value.