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Chapter 15. Working with Image Galleries

You've seen how WordPress makes it easy to upload and insert images into your posts, but what if you have a lot of images for a single post, say, the pictures for that Jamaican travel package. It would be nice to just show thumbnails of each picture and then have people click them to see the larger version. WordPress lets you insert an image gallery into your posts with just the click of a button.

The term gallery can be a little confusing. What we're talking about is the built-in gallery system that comes with WordPress. Don't mistake it for the many gallery plugins available to add on to WordPress. On top of that, while the gallery for a post is a list of all media that were uploaded through that post, the gallery you insert into a post only displays the image files. Still with me?

To avoid confusion, I'll use the term image gallery to refer to the set of thumbnails that appear in the post, as opposed to the gallery tab that's part of the upload/insert popup window.

Creating an Image Gallery in a Post

Start by going to the Upload/Insert menu and clicking the image icon. If you're inserting a image gallery I'm assuming you have more than one image uploaded, so you'll see a Gallery tab with the number of files in the gallery listed in brackets (that total, remember, is all media, not just images).

Click the Gallery tab and as in Figure 15-1 you'll see all your images with thumbnails and the Show link.

Below the list of media files you'll see the ...