Visual Portfolio builds galleries inside the WordPress block editor. Five layouts, a lightbox, filtering and lazy loading, without touching a theme file.
One block, and the gallery is on the page
Adding a gallery means adding one block. Point it at images, pick a layout, set the columns. The settings live with the post, so a gallery you change on one page cannot alter another.
Reusing the same gallery in several places works differently. Save it once as a Saved Layout, then place it with the Visual Portfolio Saved Layout block. Elementor has a widget with a Saved Layout picker, WPBakery has an element with a Select Layout dropdown, and the Classic Editor gets a toolbar button. Edit the Saved Layout and every place it appears changes with it.
Five gallery layouts
The layout decides how images fall into place. All five read the same gallery, so switching between them is a dropdown rather than a rebuild.
- Tiles place images into a fixed pattern of large and small cells. Good when a few shots deserve more room than the rest. See the tiles demo.
- Masonry keeps every image at its own height and closes the gaps. This is the layout for a mixed set of portrait and landscape shots. See the masonry demo.
- Grid crops everything to one ratio and lines it up. Product shots and headshots read best this way. See the grid demo.
- Justified fills each row to the full width and lets the row heights vary, the way a contact sheet does. See the justified demo.
- Carousel puts the images on a slider with optional thumbnails underneath. See the carousel demo.
Gold Crown
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What comes with every layout
The layout is the only thing that changes between them. Everything below is on by default or one toggle away, whichever of the five you pick.
- A lightbox that opens the full image over the page, with keyboard and swipe navigation. It handles video and audio too.
- Lazy loading, so a hundred-image gallery costs the visitor the dozen images actually on screen.
- Filtering and sorting from the gallery’s own categories, with the filter bar rendered for you.
- Pagination as numbered pages, a Load More button, or infinite scroll.
- Skins and hover effects for the captions, so the gallery matches the site instead of announcing which plugin drew it.
- Column counts set per breakpoint, so the desktop grid does not become a phone grid by accident.
Three places the images can come from
Images. The plain case. Pick files from the Media Library, drag them into order, and write a title, description and link per item.
Posts. The gallery reads a post type instead of a fixed list, and every new post appears in it without anyone editing the page. Filter by category or tag, choose the order, and the featured images become the tiles. The post grid demo shows it running.
Social feeds. The same gallery, filled from an account rather than the site: Instagram, Vimeo, YouTube, or any RSS feed.
Building one, start to finish
- In the post or page, add the Visual Portfolio block.
- Choose the source. Images for a fixed set, Posts for something that fills itself, Social for an outside account.
- Pick one of the five layouts and set the columns and the gap. The preview in the editor is the gallery visitors will see.
The getting started guide walks the same three steps with screenshots, and the rest of the documentation covers every option with its default.
Free and Pro
The free plugin on WordPress.org carries the five layouts, the lightbox, lazy loading, filtering and sorting, and the Images and Posts sources. For a lot of sites that is the whole job.
Pro adds the things photographers tend to ask for next: right-click and drag protection, an age gate, search inside the gallery, image filters and blend modes, client proofing, and the social sources. Pro contains the free plugin, so it is one install rather than two. The free versus Pro comparison lists the split line by line, and pricing is on its own page.
Questions people ask
Will it work with my theme?
The gallery brings its own styles and does not inherit the theme’s post or archive markup, so a theme cannot flatten it into a list. Colours, fonts and hover effects are settings on the block, which is how you make it match a theme rather than fight one.
What happens to page speed with a large gallery?
Images below the fold are not fetched until they are needed, and each tile requests a size cut for the space it occupies instead of the full upload. Pagination and Load More cap how much of a very large gallery reaches the first render at all.
Can I stop people taking the images?
Not completely, and no plugin can promise that. Pro raises the cost of the easy routes: the context menu and drag-to-desktop are blocked, and an age gate can sit in front of a set. Anyone determined still has a screenshot key, so treat it as a deterrent rather than a lock.
