WPThumbs
Themes Plugins By purpose By industry Best-of lists Fix it guides
Free Plugin by Andy Mercer v2.1.0

Featured Galleries

Do you like giving posts a Featured Image? Try out a Featured Gallery. It's like a Featured Images ... except as many images as you want.

Featured Galleries

The facts

Rating
4.7★ from 20
Active installs
3k+
Price
Free
Last updated
2 Aug 2018
Added
Feb 2014
Requires WP
3.8.0
Tested up to
WP 4.9.31
Requires PHP
5.4
Downloads
37,986

Our analysis

AI-assisted

Featured Galleries is a WordPress plugin that allows you to add multiple images to a post in a gallery format, similar to how Featured Images work. It utilises WordPress's built-in Media Manager, enabling users to select and arrange images through a drag-and-drop interface. However, the plugin does not create frontend HTML; this must be handled by your theme for proper display.

This plugin is suitable for developers looking to enhance their themes with gallery functionality. It can be integrated into custom post types and offers options for customizing the Media Manager, but requires some coding knowledge to implement effectively.

Best for: Developers looking to add gallery features to their WordPress themes.

What it does well

  • Allows multiple images in a gallery format
  • Uses WordPress's built-in Media Manager
  • Simple drag-and-drop interface for image selection
  • Can be integrated into custom post types
  • Offers customization options for the Media Manager

Where it falls short

  • Does not handle frontend HTML creation
  • Requires theme integration for functionality
  • Limited information on internationalization support

Verdict

Featured Galleries provides a useful backend solution for managing image galleries, but requires additional work for frontend implementation.

From the developer

Andy Mercer's own description of Featured Galleries, lightly tidied.

Hello Theme Developers!

Have you ever added a Featured Image to a post and thought to yourself, “I wish I could add more than one image this way”? Well, now you can. Featured Galleries mirrors the Featured Images functionality of WordPress. The only difference is that posts get an entire gallery rather than just a single image. These galleries behave almost exactly like Featured Images, and make use of WordPress’s built in Media Manager. Users can select images, define the order, and save the gallery, all through a simple drag-n-drop interface.

Note: This plugin DOES NOT HANDLE THE FRONTEND HTML CREATION. That is left for themes to handle, to allow for maximum flexibility. Featured Galleries just handles the backend/admin interface for creating featured galleries and storing them as metadata. You will need to integrate this into your theme, or use a theme with prebuilt integration.

Quick Start Guide to Integrate Into Themes

For more information, see GitHub Wiki.

I’ve tried to make this as intuitive as possible. Themes can integrate Featured Galleries in the same way they integrate Featured Images. Inside any template file where the gallery should appear, the theme will call the get_post_gallery_ids() function. As long as it is used inside the loop, the function doesn’t need any parameters. By default, it will return an array of image IDs.

Example

Set inside the Loop. This returns all images in the Featured Gallery, as an array, then loops through to display each using an HTML <img> tag.

$galleryArray = get_post_gallery_ids(); 

foreach ( $galleryArray as $id ) {

    echo '<img src="' . wp_get_attachment_url( $id ) .'">';

}

You can also customize the returned value from the function to suit your needs. See the full function documentation page for details.

Custom Post Types

The plugin comes with a filter to easily add Featured Galleries to custom post types. See the fg_post_types documentation page for details.

Customizing the Media Manager

The media manager can be customized in sevearl ways. See the fg_show_sidebar and fg_use_legacy_selection filter documentation pages for details.

Want to Help?

I’d love some help with internationalization. It was working at one point, but drivingralle did that code because I don’t really understand it, and I’m not sure it’s still working.

Read the full description on the official page →

Tagged as

Alternatives

Other plugins for photo galleries.

Smart Slider 3

Responsive slider plugin to create sliders in visual editor easily. Build beautiful image slider, layer slider...

Free 800k+ installs 4.9★ (1,123)
Gallery

Gallery

91

FooGallery is a fast, responsive photo gallery and image gallery plugin with 7 gallery layouts, built-in light...

Free 100k+ installs 4.8★ (986)
Firelight Lightbox

Formerly Easy Fancybox. The most popular WordPress lightbox plugin. Simple, fast, and responsive. Opens images...

Free 200k+ installs 4.8★ (355)
Feeds for YouTube

The Feeds for YouTube plugin allows you to display customizable YouTube feeds from any YouTube channel.

Free 100k+ installs 4.9★ (200)