The words Gallery and Slideshow are interchangeable on WordPress, so think of them as the same thing. There are two ways to build your gallery: The SNO Way and the WordPress Way. Building galleries and slideshows the SNO Way is our recommend method for creating slideshows and galleries. This method offers the best integration throughout your site.
Galleries the SNO Way require you to upload photos directly from your desktop to the story you want to display them on. The main visual difference between the two methods is that the SNO Way will display the gallery at the top of your story, while the WordPress Way allows you to display the gallery in the body of the story.
Another benefit of the SNO Way is that it lets you display your gallery in the SNO Photo Gallery Widget anywhere on your homepage or non-homepage sidebar.
The SNO Way
Slideshows are built by uploading multiple photos to a story. Follow the steps below to make a slideshow that goes with any story.
- Once you have all of your images ready to go, create a new story and click "Set Featured Image" in the bottom right corner of the page.
- Toggle to the "Upload Files" tab in the top left corner of the screen once your Media Library opens up.
- Click on "Select Files" and the select all of the images that you want to add to the gallery from off of your computer at one time. You'll essentially be doing a bulk upload.
- Once all of the images have been uploaded to the website and you can see thumbnail previews of them, click through each one to add the caption and photographer credit. You can also drag them to reorder them at this point if you need to.
- Click "Set featured image" in the bottom right corner.
- In the middle of the actual story page, go to the "Featured Image Location" field, and change it to "Slideshow of all attached images."
- Click Update/Publish. Once you’ve done the steps above, you can use the SNO Photo Gallery widget to display this gallery in additional locations on your website.
The WordPress Way
Another option is to build a WordPress Gallery. These will look the same as the SNO Way, but allow you to choose from images already uploaded to your media library. They also let you display the gallery within the body text of your story.
Building galleries with WordPress lets you select photos that are already uploaded to your site. However you cannot display these galleries on the homepage or in widget.
WordPress Galleries are built by selecting multiple photos to display on a story. Follow the steps below to make a gallery that goes with any story.
- When adding/editing a story, click on the Add Media button above the main story box.
- In the window that opens, select Create Gallery from the left.
- Upload and select the images that you’d like in the gallery.
- With each image you select, use the boxes that appear to the right to enter a caption and photographer.
- When you are done adding the pictures, click the Create new gallery in the bottom right corner.
- It is recommended that you also add a Featured Image to this story so that an image will be displayed on the homepage of your site, but select “Do Not Display” for the Featured Image Location option.
- Click Update/Publish.
Gallery Design Options
Whether you've built your gallery using the SNO Way or the WordPress Way, it will always look the same. The look and feel of the gallery is controlled in the SNO Design Options -> Galleries.
Whatever you choose in Galleries Options will be uniform across your site for all galleries/slideshows; you cannot set design options on a per slideshow/gallery basis.
The Gallery Options include various visual settings, such as Dark or Light color scheme, the color of your arrows, and whether or not you'd like a row of thumbnails once you click on the gallery, as well as where you want that row to exist.
You also have two basic presentation options to choose from: Overlay or Inline.
- Overlay: The Overlay option displays the first image in the slideshow with an indication that it's a gallery of photos. Once clicked, an Overlay pops up on your screen and you can toggle through all the images in the gallery.
- Inline: The Inline option displays the first image in the gallery as well, but also has a row of thumbnails you can see before clicking into the gallery. You can scroll through the row of thumbnails and click on each to toggle to that image before an Overlay window pops up. You can also choose if the row of thumbnails is shown above or below the main image. Inline looks much like the SNO Photo Gallery widget does on the homepage, but contained within a story. Finally, you can choose to activate auto-scroll so that your gallery scrolls your images like a slideshow.
Standalone Photo Gallery
If you would like to build a standalone slideshow without a story, you still need to create a new “story” as a container for that slideshow. All you need to do is have a headline — you don’t actually have to have a story. Follow the steps below to make a slideshow:
- Once you have all of your images ready to go, create a new story and click "Set Featured Image" in the bottom right corner of the page.
- Toggle to the "Upload Files" tab in the top left corner of the screen once your Media Library opens up.
- Click on "Select Files" and the select all of the images that you want to add to the gallery from off of your computer at one time. You'll essentially be doing a bulk upload.
- Once all of the images have been uploaded to the website and you can see thumbnail previews of them, click through each one to add the caption and photographer credit. You can also drag them to reorder them at this point if you need to.
- Click "Set featured image" in the bottom right corner.
- In the middle of the actual story page, go to the "Featured Image Location" field, and change it to "Slideshow of all attached images."
- Click Update/Publish.
You can assign this “story” to a new category such as Slideshows and then add this new category to your navigation bar as an easy way for your readers to find your standalone slideshows. Also, once you’ve done the steps above, you can use the SNO Photo Gallery widget to display this as a gallery on the homepage.
Changing the Order of Images in a Gallery
To change the order of images within a gallery, go to the Edit Story Page of the slideshow story. Click on Add Media, choose Uploaded to this post from the dropdown menu. Then just drag and drop the photos into the order you want them. Click anywhere outside of the white photo organization to refresh and save. Click the black X in the top corner. Click the Update button on the Story Page.
Adding Images from the Media Library to a Gallery
If you've already uploaded your images to your media library and don't want to have to reupload them to your story to create a slideshow, you can attach them in another way. Go to your Media Library and change it to List View. Find the images you want in your slideshow and click "Attach". It will then ask you which story you want them to be attached to. Complete the process until all your images have been attached to your story. Go back to your story and change the Featured Image Location dropdown to "Slideshow of all attached images". Click Update/Publish.
You can check to see which pictures have been uploaded to the post by clicking on the Add Media button while editing a story and then choosing "Uploaded to post" from the dropdown menu. Pictures displayed here are the ones that will be in the slideshow. If you don’t see any, you’ll need to upload them to the post again.