Create a Custom WordPress Gallery

Most people know you can use the standard WordPress gallery shortcode to make a gallery in a post or page, but the styling of it is at best, basic. Celestial takes advantage of the Cleaner Gallery plugin by Justin Tadlock, in combination with the WordPress shortcode…and a little bit of Celestial styling.

Part 1 – Get the Cleaner Gallery plugin

1. Go to Plugins >> Add New
2. Search for “Cleaner Gallery“, click install, then activate
3. Go to Appearance >> Cleaner Gallery
   
4. For the following settings we will set them as:
   1. Display: Thumbnail
   2. Images should link to: Full
   3. Uncheck the Load Cleaner Gallery Stylesheet
   4. Select an image script to use with your galleries: Lightbox
5. Click “Update Settings“

Part 2 – Create Your Galleries

1. Create a post or page for your gallery (or open an existing post or page you want your gallery in)
2. Switch the editor to the HTML (Text) view and add the WordPress shortcode:
   

   

   

   

   

   
   
3. Switch back to the Visual view on the editor at which point you should now see something like this:
   
4. Click on the gallery area and then click the “edit” image icon.
5. Start adding photos by uploading a set, add captions if you wish, and alt tags
6. When you save and publish your gallery page, you won’t see the images in the editor, but you will on the front of your site.
   

NOTE: To view the images in a lightbox, refer to the “Add a Lightbox to your website” setup tutorial which uses the Lightbox Plus plugin. With the Cleaner Gallery, a popup window will look like this: