Alexander’s galleries are full of the island’s birds, foxes, bison and coastline, and every one of them doubles as a print shop. When a visitor falls for a photo, they can order it as a print right there, and the order goes to the lab automatically.

Alexander expected building that store to be the hard part. It turned out to be simpler and quicker than expected, which left more time for what matters most to Alexander: photographing the island.

I asked Alexander to walk us through the whole journey: how Island Moose started, why the shop lives inside the galleries, how the first test prints turned out and what advice Alexander has for photographers who want to start selling prints.

Meet Island Moose: Wildlife Photography from Catalina Island

When I asked how Island Moose started, Alexander went back more than ten years, to when photography was still a hobby. Moving to Catalina Island is what made it serious.

“Living on Catalina opened my eyes to the incredible photographic opportunities all around me,” Alexander says. “From the island’s unique wildlife to its beautiful landscapes, I began noticing moments and scenes that were just waiting to be captured.”

Over time those photos grew into a collection of birds, deer, foxes, bison, squirrels and landscapes. Island Moose started as the place to share it: “a way to showcase my photography and share my unique perspective on Catalina’s wildlife and natural beauty.”

Here’s the homepage of Island Moose, which opens with one of the island’s ravens.

Birds, deer, foxes, bison and squirrels each get their own collection, and landscapes have their own page too. So a visitor who loves foxes can go straight to the foxes. All the screenshots in this post come from the live Island Moose site.

Why Island Moose Sells Prints from Its Own Galleries

When Alexander started researching how to build the site, one of the biggest priorities was clear. Print orders had to be handled and fulfilled automatically, “with as few manual steps as possible.”

Just as important was keeping buyers on the site. “I wanted visitors to be able to explore my galleries, choose their favorite photographs, and order prints directly from my website without being redirected to a separate storefront.”

That point matters more than it sounds. With a separate storefront, someone who falls for a photo has to follow a link, find the same image again and finish the order on a site that doesn’t look like yours. Every extra step is a chance for them to change their mind.

On Island Moose, the shop lives inside the gallery. Click a photo and it opens in the lightbox with the purchase options right beside it.

Visitors pick a product and a size, add it to the cart and check out, without leaving the photo they fell for. Behind the scenes, Imagely handles the checkout and sends the print order to the lab.

“Imagely offered the combination of gallery management, e-commerce, payment processing, and automated print fulfillment that I was looking for,” Alexander says. “It allowed me to focus more of my time on photography rather than managing orders.”

Setting Up the Island Moose Print Store

One thing that genuinely surprised Alexander was how the setup itself went.

From creating galleries and configuring print products to connecting payment gateways, the process was straightforward. I initially expected building an integrated photography store to be much more complicated.

Alexander Debia, Island Moose

Each collection on Island Moose is a regular Imagely gallery. Here’s the Birds page, where the photos sit in a clean grid under a short description of the collection.

Prices don’t have to be set photo by photo. In Imagely you build a pricelist once and apply it to a whole gallery, so the whole collection gets the same products and sizes.

The prints themselves are made by White House Custom Colour (WHCC), the professional lab built into Imagely. You don’t need your own WHCC account, because orders go through Imagely to the lab. That’s one less account and one less login to manage.

If you’d like the step-by-step version, our guide to selling photography prints with automated fulfillment walks through the whole setup.

What the First WHCC Test Prints Showed Island Moose

Before selling to anyone, Alexander wanted to see the prints in person and ordered test prints from WHCC.

My first test orders through WHCC turned out beautifully, honestly better than I expected!

Alexander Debia, Island Moose

Alexander went in with something specific to check. “The prints were clean, the colors were well-balanced, and the overall quality was impressive. They weren’t overly bright or excessively soft, which was something I was particularly interested in evaluating.”

The bigger lesson was about materials. The same photo can look different on different papers and finishes, and seeing that in person will shape how Alexander curates the galleries and recommends print options.

“Understanding those differences will help me make better decisions when curating my galleries and recommending print options to customers.”

That’s why I’d suggest ordering a few test prints of your own before you open your store. You’ll know exactly what your customers will unwrap, and you’ll talk about your prints with a lot more confidence.

Alexander adds: “Seeing my photographs transformed into physical prints was incredibly rewarding, and it gave me greater confidence in the products I’m offering through Island Moose.”

Results: What Island Moose Has in Place Today

Here’s what Island Moose has running with Imagely today:

• A print shop inside every gallery. Visitors order from the lightbox without being sent to another site.
• Print orders that go to the lab automatically. Orders reach WHCC without Alexander copying anything from one system to another.
• Payments taken on the site. Buyers can pay by card or with PayPal at checkout.
• Prints checked in person. The test prints confirmed the color and quality before any customer orders one.
• More time for photography. With orders handled, Alexander’s time goes to shooting and marketing instead of admin.

Next up is turning visitors into buyers, and that takes a different kind of work.

The Next Challenge for Island Moose: Getting the Print Store Found

Here’s the part that’s easy to underestimate, and Alexander put it better than I could.

I’ve also learned that building the store and getting people to discover it are two very different challenges.

Alexander Debia, Island Moose

Island Moose is “still in the early stages of growing an audience and generating sales.” So much of Alexander’s energy now goes into search engine optimization, social media and finding creative ways to reach people who love wildlife photography.

You can follow along on Instagram and TikTok, where Island Moose shares more of the island’s wildlife.

This is where an all-in-one setup pays off. When the store runs itself, your time goes to marketing and to new photos, not to copying orders from one system into another.

“Having the technical foundation in place means I can spend more time working on those challenges and, most importantly, continuing to photograph the island.”

Advice from Island Moose for Photographers Starting to Sell Prints

When I asked what Alexander would tell a photographer about to start selling prints, the answer was about nerves, not settings.

My advice to other photographers would be not to let the technical side of selling prints intimidate you. Getting your galleries and storefront running doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking.

Alexander Debia, Island Moose

If you’re about to open your own print shop, these are the lessons from Island Moose worth taking with you.

None of these need a developer, and most of them you can do this week.

FAQs About Selling Photography Prints with Imagely

Island Moose shows that the store can be the easy part, and that getting found is the work that comes next. Be sure to check out our post on SEO tips for photographers when you’re ready for that part.

Don’t have Imagely yet? Get started today!

For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.

The post How Island Moose Built a Wildlife Print Shop with Imagely (Customer Story) first appeared on Imagely.

WordPress gallery pagination fixes that by splitting one big gallery into numbered pages. Visitors see a tidy first page and choose when to see more.

This tutorial is for photographers who want their biggest galleries to stay easy to browse, and the whole setup works on a free plugin.

What Is WordPress Gallery Pagination?

Gallery pagination shows a set number of photos at a time, with numbered page links underneath. A gallery of 120 photos set to 24 per page becomes five pages your visitors can step through.

It suits galleries people browse with care, like a client picking favorites from their wedding. Each page stays short enough to take in, and the page numbers show visitors how much is left.

Scroll loading is the other option. It shows a first batch of photos and adds more as the visitor scrolls, which feels closer to a social feed.

Our image optimization guide for photographers compares pagination, lazy loading and infinite scroll side by side, if you want the longer version.

How to Create a WordPress Gallery with Pagination in Imagely

I’m using Imagely, the WordPress gallery plugin built for photographers, for this tutorial. Pagination is part of the free plan, so you can follow every step below without paying for anything.

Step 1: Open the Gallery You Want to Paginate

In your WordPress dashboard, go to Imagely » Galleries and open the gallery you want to split into pages.

If you haven’t built one yet, creating your first gallery only takes a few minutes, and you can come straight back here.

Step 2: Choose How Many Images Per Page Your Gallery Shows

Click the 02 Customize step at the top of the gallery editor. Under Choose Layout, pick Thumbnails, then open Customize Gallery Look.

Find the Images per page field and type the number of photos you want on each page. The default is 24, and 0 switches pagination off, so every photo shows on one page.

Imagely saves your changes automatically, so there’s no Save button to look for on this step.

Any number works. I’d suggest a multiple of your column count, though, so the last row on each page stays full. With three columns, 6, 12 or 24 photos per page all line up neatly.

Step 3: Keep AJAX Pagination Turned On

Just below sits Enable AJAX pagination. It lets visitors move between pages without the whole page reloading, and it’s on by default.

AJAX is the method that swaps in the next set of photos. Your visitor clicks 2, and the new photos appear right where the old ones were.

If you switch it off, clicking a page number opens that page at its own web address instead. I’d leave it on unless you need that.

Step 4: Choose What the Lightbox Shows in a Paginated Gallery

The Add hidden images setting decides what happens when a visitor opens a photo in the lightbox. With it on, the lightbox can step through the whole gallery, not only the photos on the current page.

The trade-off is page load. Imagely’s own help text warns that this option increases it, and it’s off by default.

I’d leave it off for very large galleries. It’s worth turning on when visitors will want to flip through everything in one go, like a short portfolio.

Step 5: Add the Paginated Gallery to Your Page

Open the page or post where the gallery should appear and add the Imagely block. Keep the GALLERY tab selected, choose your gallery from the dropdown, and click INSERT.

There’s nothing to set in the block itself. The pagination you chose comes along with the gallery, and our guide to adding galleries to a page or post walks through the same steps with more screenshots.

What Visitors See When Your Gallery Has Pagination

On the front end, a row of numbered page buttons sits under the gallery. The current page is highlighted, with arrows for the previous and next page, and long runs of pages collapse into an ellipsis so the row stays short.

Here’s an 18-photo landscape gallery set to six photos per page, which gives it three pages.

Click 2, and the next six photos load in place of the first six. With AJAX pagination on, the page itself doesn’t reload.

This is Imagely’s default styling, and your theme can restyle the buttons to match the rest of your site.

Shorter pages help most on phones, where a long gallery means a lot of thumb-scrolling. A client can work through a full shoot one page at a time instead of scrolling one endless page.

Which Imagely Layouts Support Gallery Pagination

The Images per page field appears on four Imagely layouts. Here’s each one and the plan it comes with:

• Thumbnail Gallery (free): the classic grid, and the layout used in this tutorial.
• Film Gallery (Starter and up): each photo sits in its own frame, for a more finished look.
• Thumbnail Grid Gallery (Plus and up): a grid with more control over how thumbnails display.
• Blog Style Gallery (Plus and up): photos in a single column, one after another.

Other layouts, like Masonry, Mosaic, Tile and the slideshows, show a gallery in their own way and don’t split into pages. When pages matter for a gallery, one of these four layouts is the one to pick.

For most client galleries, the free Thumbnail Gallery covers everything. Thumbnail Grid or Blog Style with pages can give a portfolio a more curated feel.

How to Animate Page Changes in Your Gallery Pagination

Pagination animations add a short transition each time a visitor changes page. The new set of photos animates in instead of simply appearing, which gives a client-facing gallery a more polished feel.

Animations come with Imagely Plus and above, alongside the Thumbnail Grid and Blog Style layouts above.

You can switch them on for one gallery with the Animate Pagination toggle in Customize Gallery Look. To set them for the whole site, go to Imagely » Settings » Image Animations and turn on Animate paginations under Pagination Animations.

From there, you pick an Animation style, with Flip in X as the default. The Animation duration (ms) and Animation delay (ms) fields start at 1500 and 250 milliseconds.

Here’s what flip and fade transitions look like on the front end when a visitor changes page.

Our docs on animating gallery pages show where to switch them on for a single gallery, and the gallery animations announcement shows more examples.

Scroll Loading as an Alternative to Image Pagination

Some galleries feel better as one long scroll. In Imagely, the alternative to numbered pages is the Mosaic Gallery’s scroll loading, which our plans page calls Infinite Scrolling.

The Mosaic Gallery comes with Imagely Starter and above. In its settings, turn on Enable “lazy” image loading, then set Images to display at start and Images to load when scrolling.

Visitors get a full first screen of photos, and more arrive as they scroll. Our guide to lazy loading images explains how that works.

I’d pick pages for galleries clients work through carefully, and scroll loading for a portfolio people skim.

How to Set Default Gallery Pagination for New Galleries

If you want every new gallery to start with the same pagination, set it once at Imagely » Settings » Layout Settings and select Basic Thumbnails.

You’ll find the same Images per page and Enable AJAX pagination fields there. New galleries start from these defaults, and a gallery’s own setting still overrides them.

If you ever want to start over, the Reset to defaults link puts these fields back to their original values.

FAQs About WordPress Gallery Pagination

Splitting a big gallery into pages keeps it easy to browse, however many photos you deliver. Be sure to check out our post on making your WordPress photo gallery mobile-friendly to get the rest of your galleries ready for phones.

Don’t have Imagely yet? Get started today!

For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.

The post WordPress Gallery Pagination: How to Create an Image Gallery with Pages first appeared on Imagely.

That matters, because the other route people take to “free Pro” is a download site offering the paid plugin for nothing. Those copies can put your whole website at risk, along with every photo on it.

The free path gets your galleries live on your own site today. It also shows you what the paid plans would add, so you can decide on Imagely Pro with nothing on the line.

Is There an Imagely Free Trial?

Yes, and it never expires. Imagely, the WordPress gallery plugin for photographers, has a free version called Imagely Lite. It’s a full gallery plugin you can use on a live site for as long as you like.

You don’t sign up, you don’t enter a card, and there’s no countdown. When you open the License screen in the free plugin, it simply says “You’re using Imagely Lite – no license needed.”

One detail trips people up. On WordPress.org, the free plugin is listed under its original name, NextGEN Gallery (full title: Photo Gallery, Sliders, Proofing and Themes – NextGEN Gallery). It’s the same plugin, from the Imagely team, and it’s the one to install.

What the free version won’t do is unlock the paid features for a while and then take them away. If you want to test those, the paid plans come with a refund window, which I’ll cover in the upgrade section.

What the Free Version of Imagely Includes

The free plugin is more than a demo. You can build a complete portfolio with it and publish it on your real site.

Imagely Lite gives you all of this at no cost:

• Four gallery layouts: Thumbnail, Slideshow, ImageBrowser (one large photo at a time) and TagCloud, which shows your image tags so visitors can click through by subject.
• Two album layouts: Compact and Extended, for grouping galleries by client, trip or project.
• A built-in lightbox: click a thumbnail and the photo opens large, with arrows to the next one.
• Watermarking: add your name or logo as a text or image watermark, with control over size, opacity and position.
• Automatic backups: Imagely keeps a copy of each original you upload, so you can recover it later.

There’s no cap on how many galleries you create, either. You can also upload by drag and drop or from your Media Library, and tag your images to keep a big archive tidy.

The free lightbox is clean and quick. It shows the photo against a plain background with arrows, a close button and a photo counter, and it can show the image’s description as a caption.

If you want to compare it with the other lightbox styles, our guide on adding a lightbox to WordPress walks through the free and Pro options side by side.

Watermarking is the free feature people least expect. It lives under Imagely > Settings > Watermarking, and it can stamp new uploads automatically or be applied to a whole gallery at once.

Our tutorial on watermarking photos for free covers every setting on that screen.

What Imagely Free Doesn’t Include

The paid features fall into four plans: Starter, Plus, Pro and Ultra. Each one includes everything in the plan below it.

This is roughly what each step up adds:

• Starter (1 site): two more gallery layouts, Film and Mosaic. Film gives thumbnails the look of slide film, and Mosaic packs images into a Pinterest-style grid.
• Plus (3 sites): the rest of the layout library, including Masonry, Tile and Filmstrip, plus the Pro Lightbox, hover captions, image protection, social sharing, photo comments and frontend search.
• Pro (5 sites): the business tools. That means client proofing, selling prints and digital downloads, automatic print fulfillment, Adobe Lightroom sync and 96+ photography theme designs.
• Ultra (25 sites): everything in Pro, with multisite support for agencies and anyone running many websites.

Support also changes with the plan. Free users get help through the WordPress.org support forums, Starter and Plus come with Standard Support, and Pro and Ultra get Premium Support.

You don’t have to guess which features are paid. The free plugin shows paid settings greyed out, and clicking one opens a short upgrade prompt that names the feature.

That makes the free plugin a decent preview of the paid one. You can see exactly where image protection or client proofing would sit in your setup before spending anything.

Why a “Free” Imagely Pro Download Is a Bad Idea

Search for a NextGEN Gallery Pro free download and you’ll find sites offering one. These are usually “nulled” copies.

A nulled plugin is a paid plugin that someone has altered so it runs without a license, then shared for free. You have no way of knowing what else they changed in it.

Security company Sucuri explains that nulled themes and plugins can carry hidden backdoors, which are secret ways for an attacker to get into your site later. Sucuri also says malware is often concealed inside them, and some inject spam links into your pages.

For a photographer, that’s a lot to risk. Your website holds your portfolio and your client galleries, and a hacked site puts all of it in someone else’s hands.

There’s a practical problem too. Imagely delivers its paid features through a license key, and that key is also what brings you updates. A copy from a download site never went through that check, and as Sucuri points out, nulled software gets no updates or support from the original developer.

An outdated plugin is a security risk of its own. The free version avoids that because it updates from WordPress.org like any other plugin.

How to Install Imagely Free in WordPress

Installing the free plugin takes a couple of minutes and happens entirely inside your WordPress dashboard. You don’t need to download a file first.

Go to Plugins > Add Plugin and type NextGEN Gallery into the search box. Look for the listing called Photo Gallery, Sliders, Proofing and Themes – NextGEN Gallery, with the green Imagely icon.

Click Install Now, then Activate. A new Imagely menu appears in your dashboard sidebar, and that’s where everything else happens.

Create Your First Free Imagely Gallery

Open Imagely > Add New Gallery and give the gallery a title. Then drag your photos into the upload area, or pick them from your computer or your Media Library.

Once the uploads finish, the next steps let you customize how the gallery looks, including which free layout it uses. I’d start with Thumbnail for a portfolio, since it shows the most of your work at a glance.

Add Your Free Imagely Gallery to a Page

Open the page or post where the gallery should go, click the + button and search for the Imagely block. Choose your gallery from the Select Gallery list, click Insert, then update or publish the page.

Preview the page and click a photo to check the lightbox. Our full guide to creating a WordPress image gallery goes deeper on layout settings if you want to fine-tune it.

How to Upgrade From Imagely Free to a Paid Plan

Plenty of photographers stay on the free plan for good. The time to upgrade is when a specific feature would change how you work.

Common moments are when clients need to pick their favorites from a shoot, when you want to sell prints from your galleries, or when you want a layout like Masonry. Those land in different plans, so it’s worth matching the feature to the plan first.

The Upgrade to Pro link in the free plugin’s Imagely menu takes you to an upgrade page for Lite users, with a discount applied at checkout. After you buy, your license key is waiting in your Imagely account dashboard.

Then go to Imagely > Settings > License, paste the key and click Activate License & Install Pro. Imagely installs the paid plugin for your plan next to the free one, so you don’t have to download or upload anything yourself.

The free plugin stays installed, so the galleries you built carry on working. And if the paid plan turns out not to fit, Imagely refunds 100% of your money within 14 days, which makes the first two weeks a real trial of the paid features.

FAQs About Imagely Free

The free plugin gives you real galleries on your real site, and the paid plans are there when your work needs more. Be sure to check out our guide on how to create a photography website to build the rest of your site around them.

Don’t have Imagely yet? Get started today!

For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.

The post How to Get Imagely Free: An Unlimited Free Trial That Never Expires first appeared on Imagely.

The one piece that still sent you elsewhere was Stripe, and connecting it meant a trip to your account and a couple of long codes to copy back. Now you sign in once and you are done.

Stripe Payments: Set Up in One Click

Connecting Stripe to your galleries is about as simple as it gets. You pick Stripe, approve the connection, and land back in WordPress with your account linked and ready to take orders.

You can also see that it worked, which matters more than it sounds. The payments screen shows your connected account and the currency you will be paid in, so you are never left wondering whether your store can actually take money.

Setting Up Your Payments

With both your Imagely plugins updated to 4.5.0, go to Imagely → eCommerce → Payment Setup from your WordPress dashboard. Stripe sits at the top of the page, marked as recommended.

One decision before you click anything. Leave Test mode off to take real payments, or switch it on to connect a practice account instead. Whichever you pick locks when you connect, so choose it now: changing your mind later means disconnecting and starting over.

Then click Connect with Stripe, sign in on Stripe’s own pages, approve it, and you land back in WordPress with your account connected and your currency next to it. Check that currency before you move on, because not every payment method works with every currency.

One more stop before you take any money. Open Page Setup and let Imagely create the four pages a sale needs: your checkout, your thank-you page, a cancel page, and the page your clients download from. Each one is marked on screen, so you know you are finished when nothing is left flagged.

That is the whole setup. The eCommerce settings guide has it step by step if you want to follow along.

Practice a Sale Before You Take a Real One

Before you send real clients to your gallery, you can run a practice sale on yourself. Turn on Test mode, connect a Stripe test account instead of your real one, and buy something from your own gallery using Stripe’s practice card number. The order shows up under Imagely → eCommerce → Orders exactly as a real one would, so you get to walk through the whole thing the way your client will, and nothing is charged.

When you are ready to go live, disconnect the practice account and connect your real one. It takes about as long as it did the first time.

Refunds Without Leaving WordPress

When a client changes their mind, you no longer have to go and find the payment over in Stripe. Open the order under Imagely → eCommerce → Orders, choose Refund, and the money goes back to them. The order moves to Refunded right there in your list, and any digital download they bought stops working.

Two things worth knowing. A refund sends back the whole payment rather than part of it. And if a print has already gone off to the lab, refunding the money does not stop the print, so check where the order is with the lab before you refund it.

Get Started with Stripe Payments Today

Selling from your galleries comes with Imagely Pro and Ultra. If you are on either one, update both plugins to 4.5.0 and the new payments screen is waiting for you. And what you earn is yours: while your Pro license is active, Imagely takes no cut of your sales, so the only charges on a payment are Stripe’s own.

Already taking payments? Nothing changes unless you want it to. Your current setup carries on working, so do your PayPal, Braintree and check options, and the payments screen simply offers to reconnect you to Stripe the easier way whenever you feel like it. Do that and your clients pay by card right inside your gallery, instead of being sent off to a Stripe page and back again.

And if you are on the free plugin, take a look at Imagely → eCommerce. It shows you what Pro opens up: Stripe in one click, five more ways for your clients to pay, and a checkout that happens right inside your gallery.

Ready to build out the selling side of your site? These guides cover pricing, proofing and getting paid for your work.

• Print Orders Now Ship to the EU and UK →
• How to Sell Photography Online →
• Selling Prints with Automated Fulfillment →
• Set Up a Client Proofing Gallery →
• 14 Best Places to Sell Photography Online →

Keep exploring guides, photography tips, and product updates on the Imagely blog.

The post New in Imagely: Connecting Stripe Now Takes One Click first appeared on Imagely.

For a photographer that isn’t a technical detail. The client, the location, the two hours you waited for the light: none of that reaches the person scrolling past unless you write it down, and nobody wants to write it down twice.

A caption is the shortest way to hand a viewer that story, and WordPress gives you several places to type one that don’t all behave the same way. It isn’t the same thing as alt text either, even though the two get treated as if they were.

The galleries you published years ago can come over without retyping every photo, on every plan including the free one. Which field your old text sits in decides where it lands, and that turns out to be the whole game.

How to Add Captions to WordPress Images in the Block Editor

The quickest route is the one already built into WordPress. Add an Image block to a post or page, select the photo, and a small toolbar appears above it.

Click Add caption and a text box opens underneath the photo, ready for you to type. Once a caption is there, that same button changes to Remove caption, and it means it: clicking it deletes the text rather than tucking it out of sight.

Captions take basic formatting, so a series name in italics or a link to the client’s site both work. Select the words and a small toolbar appears over them with Bold, Italic and Link. Use that one rather than the Link button on the image toolbar above, which links the photo instead of the text. A line or two is plenty, though: a caption is a label, not a paragraph, and a long one competes with the photo for attention.

How to Set WordPress Image Captions in the Media Library

Typing captions one post at a time gets old fast if you reuse photos. The Media Library stores a Title, Caption, Alt Text and Description for every file you upload, and WordPress automatically displays a caption an image already has. Fill it in once there and it pre-fills the moment you insert that photo somewhere.

There’s a scope difference worth knowing. Alt text set in an individual block’s settings applies to that page only, while alt text set in the Media Library becomes the default everywhere the image appears. That documented rule covers alt text rather than captions, though a caption saved in the Media Library does come along when you insert the photo.

You don’t have to leave the editor to change any of it either. Open the media editor and the Details tab lets you edit Alt text, Caption and Description right there. It’s the fastest place to fix a typo when you spot one mid-draft.

One field trips people up constantly. The title attribute sits under Advanced, and it isn’t a caption or alt text. WordPress’s own guidance notes that many devices and browsers don’t display this text at all, so anything you need a visitor to actually read belongs in the caption instead.

How to Add WordPress Gallery Captions With the Gallery Block

The Gallery block gives you captions at two levels. The gallery as a whole can carry one, and then, because every image inside a Gallery block is really its own Image block, each photo can carry a caption of its own too.

Two settings change what a visitor can do with those photos. Enlarge on click switches on WordPress’s built-in lightbox. Link images to attachment pages sends a visitor to a page holding the image along with its caption, description and a comment field, which suits work you want people discussing shot by shot.

Between the two, you can caption a handful of photos in an afternoon without installing a thing. The strain shows up once the archive grows past what you can label by hand, one page at a time.

WordPress Image Captions vs Alt Text vs the Title Attribute

These three get used interchangeably, and they really shouldn’t be. A caption is visible text that every reader sees alongside the photo. Alt text is written for screen readers and search engines, and a visitor who can see the photo never reads it.

That difference matters more than it sounds. Alt text is what carries the accessibility weight, because it’s the text a screen reader announces in place of an image someone can’t see. A beautiful caption sitting under the photo does nothing for that reader if the alt text is empty.

Captions give every visitor context: who, where, which series. Alt text describes the photo to someone who can’t see it. Filling in one is never a substitute for the other, and treating them as the same box is the most common thing we see go wrong on portfolio sites.

How to Add Captions to WordPress Gallery Images That Stay With the Photo

A caption held on the photo itself survives every layout you build after it. A page caption only ever exists on the page you typed it into, which is fine for one blog post and limiting for a portfolio.

Imagely, the WordPress gallery plugin, stores that text with the image inside the gallery rather than on one page. Build the same gallery into a second layout, drop it into an album, open it in a lightbox, and the caption is already there without you retyping a word of it.

How to Add WordPress Gallery Captions to a Single Photo

Open the gallery, find the photo you want to label, and click the three-dot ⋮ menu on it. Choose Edit Details, which is the menu item that opens the text fields rather than the rotate and crop tools.

The panel opens headed Edit Image, and it is where most people go looking for a Caption field. There is no field called Caption. You get Alt Text, a Description and Tags, and the Description is the one that renders as your caption.

So the words you want a visitor to read go in Description. The screen reader text goes in Alt Text, and Tags takes free-form keywords separated by commas. Click Save Changes and that text is stored with the photo from then on.

All three fields are yours on the free plan, and what you type is saved with the photo rather than with the page. The same gallery can go into an album or a second layout later and the words come along.

A visitor sees that description without you paying for anything. On the free plan, clicking a photo opens Imagely’s default lightbox and your description appears along the bottom of the image. So the free version does not stop at storing the text: it shows it.

Letting visitors search that text is a Plus feature. Frontend Search, on Plus and above, adds a search bar to a gallery and can look through image tags, alt text and descriptions, so somebody can find the one shot they came for instead of scrolling through four hundred.

How to Add a Description to a Whole WordPress Gallery

There is also caption-style text that belongs to the gallery rather than to any one photo. Step 3 of the gallery setup flow, the one labelled Settings, holds a Gallery Title and a Gallery Description. The Extended Album layout shows one gallery per row with those descriptions on display, and that layout is free as well.

It describes the gallery, not the individual photo. “Ravello, spring 2026” works beautifully at that level, and it is no substitute for captioning each photo.

How to Add Captions to WordPress Galleries You Already Published

If you have years of posts with galleries buried in them, retyping every caption isn’t going to happen. Convert Galleries exists for this exact job, and it’s included on every plan including the free one.

It converts the WordPress Gallery block and classic shortcodes, and only those. Third-party gallery plugins aren’t touched. For the galleries it does handle, alt text and image descriptions carry across, and your original is backed up before anything changes.

One detail is worth five minutes before you convert a decade of galleries. Your Media Library caption does not become the Imagely caption. The conversion fills Imagely’s Description from WordPress’s Description field, and it reaches for your caption to fill in alt text, ahead of the alt text sitting in your Media Library. So if you want your old captions to show up as captions, copy them into the Description field in the Media Library first, then convert.

You’ll find it under Imagely > Settings > Convert Galleries, and it runs in bulk across all your Posts and Pages at once. The text you had stops being stranded on one page and starts living on the photos instead.

How to Display WordPress Gallery Captions on Your Site

The free lightbox caption covers the basics. What Plus changes is where and when the caption appears, which matters more than it sounds for a portfolio: a visitor has to click before they see anything at all.

Hover Captions for WordPress Gallery Images

Hover Captions come in on Plus and above. A visitor moves their cursor over a thumbnail and an overlay fades in with a title line and a description line underneath, with social sharing icons if you want them.

It’s the closest thing on a website to the way photographers label prints at a show. The image stays clean until somebody shows interest, and then the story appears.

WordPress Gallery Captions in the Lightbox

The other place captions earn their keep is full screen, shown the moment the photo opens instead of waiting for the visitor to look for them. Head to Imagely > Settings > Lightbox Effects, open Lightbox Configuration, and set Lightbox Library to Pro Lightbox, which is a Plus feature. Switch the library over first, because the caption setting below only does anything once Pro Lightbox is the one running.

Then turn on Display captions initially. The caption bar is then open the moment the photo does, carrying a title line above the description, so a visitor reads the caption the second the photo opens rather than hunting for a button. Leave it off and that text sits tucked below the frame behind a chevron.

If your lightbox isn’t set up yet, our guide on how to add a lightbox to WordPress covers the rest of the configuration. Captions and the lightbox are worth setting up in one sitting, because that’s where most visitors will read them.

What to Write in a WordPress Image Caption

The fields are the easy part. Knowing what to put in them is where most portfolios stall, usually somewhere around photo six.

The display hands you a shape to work with. Hover Captions renders a title line and a description line, which happens to be exactly how photographers already label work: a short name, then the specific detail.

Imagely’s own example reads “India / Taj Mahal and its reflection in pool”. Place first, subject second. Swap in whatever your practice already uses, whether that’s the series name and the location or the client and the shoot date.

For a wedding archive that might be “Ravello / first look on the terrace”. For a commercial set, the client and the product. The pattern matters more than the wording: label first, detail second, consistent across the gallery so the captions read as a set instead of a scatter of notes.

One habit is worth building while you’re in there. The alt text is worth writing in the same sitting as the caption, because you’re already looking at the photo and describing it in your head. Coming back to do it later almost never happens.

How to Caption a Large WordPress Photo Archive

Two things are worth knowing before you start, rather than discovering them at photo 400.

Captions and alt text are written one photo at a time. In Imagely, tags are the only field you can apply across a whole selection at once, so that is the straight answer to the question everyone with a large archive asks.

That changes how we’d plan the work. The galleries that win you clients are worth captioning first: the portfolio sets, the pages you link from your homepage, the collections you send to prospects. Working front to back through a decade of uploads is how people quit in week two.

The second thing is metadata. If your files already carry metadata from your Lightroom workflow, Imagely’s documentation says that information should import on its own, and there’s a Bulk Actions > Import Metadata option to run when it doesn’t. A few spot-checks are worth the minute they take before you assume the whole upload came through clean.

Neither is a reason to skip captions. They’re a reason to caption deliberately, in the order that pays you back soonest.

FAQs About WordPress Image Captions

Captions are the small detail that turns a grid of photographs into a body of work someone can follow. Type them where they’ll stay with the photo, fill in the alt text while you’re already there, and your portfolio starts explaining itself. Be sure to check out our post on how to create a stunning WordPress image gallery.

Don’t have Imagely yet? Get started today!

For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.

The post How to Add Captions to WordPress Images first appeared on Imagely.

International Shipping: Print Orders Now Reach 28 More Countries

Print orders placed through your galleries can now ship to the EU-27 and the United Kingdom, across every print category. Together with the US and Canada, that is 28 more countries where a client picks a size, pays on your site, and the print arrives at their door without you touching a single file.

Nothing changes in how you work. Your galleries, your pricelists and your payment setup stay exactly as they are. Orders still go through us to White House Custom Color, the lab prints them, and now they can ship to an address in Dublin as easily as one in Denver. Printing and shipping stay handled for you, with no extra work and no extra fees on your side.

Everything still runs from the same place: Imagely > eCommerce > General Info > PrintLab Integration, where the card that covers your print costs is already on file.

Two things worth knowing before you switch it on. Import duties are the recipient’s responsibility, and there is a notice at checkout that says so, which is better than a client discovering it from a courier. And shipping is priced per print category plus a percentage of the item cost, so a wallet-sized print and a framed enlargement are not charged the same way.

What This Changes for Your Business

Your client list almost certainly crosses a border somewhere. The couple who moved abroad, the family with grandparents in Cork, the commercial client with an office in Berlin. Every one of those used to turn into the same awkward conversation about exporting files and finding a local lab, usually at the exact moment the client was most ready to buy. Now the album can go to Ohio while the enlargement goes to Dublin, from one gallery and one checkout.

And if you are based in Europe or the UK yourself, this is the part that changes everything. Automated print fulfilment was effectively out of reach, not because you could not set it up, but because the only place it could deliver was North America. Your own clients, in your own city, could not receive a print. Now they can.

Either way it changes what you can say on a sales call. Print sales are often the difference between a session fee and a real order, and “yes, we can ship that to them” is a much better answer than an apology.

Live Lab Status: See Where Every Order Actually Is

Selling a print is one thing. Knowing it is actually being printed is another. Under Imagely > eCommerce > Orders, every order now carries its lab state alongside its payment status, so you are not guessing and you are not emailing anyone to find out.

The lab reads back in plain words: Processing while the order is being prepared, Submitted once the lab has it, Cancelled if it was stopped, or a card confirmation link when a payment needs a second look before anything goes further.

When a Submission Does Not Go Through

Occasionally a submission does not reach the lab. When that happens the order now carries a Resubmit to lab action, so you can send it again from the same screen you spotted it on.

That is a small button doing a big job. A failed submission is now something you can see and fix on the spot, rather than something you find out about later.

Get Started with International Print Orders Today

Both of these are part of print fulfillment, available on Pro plans and above. One thing to check before anything else: this runs on a new print service, so you need to be on the latest version of the plugin. The previous integration has already been switched off, which means that if you are on an older version your print orders are not reaching the lab at all right now. Updating is what turns them back on.

Once you are updated, open your Orders screen and it is all there. And if you have been quietly leaving your overseas clients out of your print pricing, or leaving prints off your offer altogether, this is the release that changes the answer.

It is worth spending ten minutes on your pricelists before you tell anyone. A pricelist you set up for a US-only audience was probably built around what felt sellable at the time, and the sizes and products you skipped are worth a second look now that the people ordering them might be somewhere else entirely. The pricelist applies to a whole gallery in one click, so this is a quick pass rather than a project.

Then say it out loud somewhere your clients will see it. Most people assume prints ship locally or not at all, and they will not ask. A line on your gallery page or in the email you send when a gallery goes live is usually enough to turn a download into an order.

Want to get more out of selling your work? These guides cover pricing, proofing and the print side of a photography business.

• Selling Prints with Automated Fulfillment →
• How to Sell Photography Online →
• Set Up a Client Proofing Gallery →
• 14 Best Places to Sell Photography Online →

Keep exploring guides, photography tips, and product updates on the Imagely blog.

The post NEW in Imagely: Print Orders Now Ship to the EU and UK first appeared on Imagely.

Instagram Galleries: Your Feed, Right on Your Site

Connect your Instagram account and Imagely builds a gallery straight from what’s already posted. No re-downloading, no re-uploading, no keeping two versions of your work in sync.

Setting Up Your Instagram Gallery

First, make sure you’re running NextGEN Gallery 4.3.0, and NextGEN Pro 4.3.0 too if it’s active on your site. That’s the version this ships in.

Head to Settings → Integrations. If Instagram isn’t listed there yet, check the Features tab first, where Instagram has its own toggle to activate. Imagely keeps advanced features tucked away until you switch them on, so this is a common first stop.

Once Integrations is on, connect your Instagram account right from that same screen, through the standard login flow you’d use anywhere else.

Click Configure on that same panel to set how the gallery should look before you ever create one: which account to pull from, how many photos to show, the image size that fits your layout, whether captions show and how long they run, and whether Imagely caches the data. Every setting updates live, so you can fine-tune it in advance instead of guessing.

With that done, creating the gallery itself is the easy part. Start a new gallery and choose Instagram as the source, right alongside Media Library, TikTok, Dribbble, and Google Photos. It’ll use the account and settings you already configured.

Both single photos and carousel posts come through correctly, so a multi-image post from your feed appears in your gallery exactly as it did on Instagram. Here’s the same account, side by side: what’s actually on Instagram, and what shows up on the site a moment later.

On Instagram

In the Imagely Gallery

Keeping Your Accounts Under Control

If you ever need to disconnect an account, Imagely removes exactly what belongs to it: that account’s gallery, its images, and its access token, without touching any other connected account.

Want to start fresh entirely? One option clears every Instagram account, gallery, and cached image in a single step.

Good to Know Before You Connect

Instagram Galleries support up to three connected accounts and are available on Pro plans and above. You’ll need Instagram app credentials configured in your settings before connecting, and video posts aren’t supported in this first release, though your photos come through beautifully.

This update also brings dozens of smaller delight and bug fix improvements throughout the plugin, all working quietly in the background to make the day-to-day experience feel a little smoother.

Get Started with Instagram Galleries Today

Find it under Add New in your gallery admin, right alongside your other sources. If you’re on a Plus plan or the free version, upgrading to Pro adds Instagram Galleries along with Lightroom sync, client proofing, and the rest of the Pro toolkit.

Want to get even more out of your Instagram presence and your galleries? These guides cover connecting your social content, sharing your work, and making the most of the integrations already built into Imagely.

• NEW in Imagely: Video Galleries + TikTok & Dribbble Integration →
• Instagram for Photographers: From Posts to Paying Clients →
• 10 Best Social Media Plugins for WordPress →
• How to Add Social Share Buttons to WordPress Image Galleries →
• 7 WordPress Portfolio Themes With NextGEN Gallery Integration →

Keep exploring guides, photography tips, and product updates on the Imagely blog.

The post New: Your Instagram Photos Now Sync Straight to Your Gallery first appeared on Imagely.

Imagely 4.2.3 is a focused performance update that reduces what your site loads, speeds up how it loads, and fixes layout issues that were quietly hurting your Core Web Vitals scores.

Why Site Speed Matters for Photographers

The photographers who lose clients to slow websites often don’t know it’s happening. A potential client clicks your portfolio link, the page takes four seconds to load, and they’re gone. Not because your work wasn’t good enough, but because the site didn’t get out of its own way fast enough.

Google’s Core Web Vitals measure things like page stability and how quickly a page becomes interactive. Two common factors affecting Core Web Vitals scores on photography sites: gallery assets loading on pages that don’t need them, and images shifting position after the page appears loaded. Both are addressed in 4.2.3.

Imagely 4.2.3: Faster by Default

This release focuses entirely on loading efficiency: what gets loaded, when it gets loaded, and how much work WordPress has to do before a page is ready. If you’re running an older version, everything below is already waiting for you. Just hit Update.

Pages Without Galleries Stay Clean

In previous versions, Imagely loaded its CSS, JavaScript, and icon files on every page of your site: your About page, your Contact form, your blog posts. Pages with no galleries were still carrying the weight of a gallery plugin they didn’t need.

In this release, those files only load where there’s an actual gallery. If your site has 20 pages and galleries on 5 of them, the other 15 pages got lighter automatically. In our tests, a standard gallery page went from 767 KB down to 189 KB, about 75% lighter.

Your Galleries Only Load What They Actually Use

Not every gallery needs every feature. If you’re showing a simple photo grid, there’s no reason for your page to load ecommerce, proofing, or slideshow code.

This update detects which features your gallery actually uses and only loads what’s needed. A basic grid loads a basic set of assets. If your gallery includes ecommerce, only the ecommerce assets load. The result: lighter pages across your whole site, not just on pages without galleries.

Gallery Data Is Cached Between Page Loads

On busy photography sites, Imagely was doing the same background checks on every single page load, looking up settings that almost never change.

With 4.2.3, those results are saved after the first check and reused on every visit, so your server does less work each time someone loads a page. In our tests, that cut server lookups by roughly 75% on repeat visits. If you have a caching plugin installed (many WordPress hosts include one by default, and free options like SQLite Object Cache work well), Imagely takes advantage of it automatically. No setup needed on your end.

No More Layout Shifts on Masonry, Tile, and Mosaic Galleries

If you’ve used the Masonry layout, you’ve probably seen images shift into their final positions a moment after the page appears loaded. That’s a Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issue, one of the Core Web Vitals metrics Google uses for rankings.

Masonry galleries now reserve space before images render, so the layout is already in place when the page loads. Tile, Blog Style, and Mosaic galleries get the same fix. Masonry galleries inside Elementor and other page builders also render correctly in multiple columns now.

In our before/after tests, the Masonry gallery’s Google performance score jumped 17 points, from 49 to 66.

Third-Party Scripts Are Now Bundled Locally

Some Imagely Pro features previously loaded code from external servers your site doesn’t control. This release bundles that code inside the plugin instead. One fewer external connection on every page load, and a cleaner setup for GDPR compliance if your site has European visitors.

These Changes Add Up to Better Search Rankings

Google uses Core Web Vitals as one of many ranking signals. By reducing unnecessary assets, eliminating layout shifts, and loading only the code each gallery needs, Imagely 4.2.3 helps improve the performance metrics that matter for both visitors and search engines.

Every Plan Gets These Improvements

All of the above ships to every Imagely plan: Lite (free), Starter, Plus, and Pro. Nothing to configure. Update to 4.2.3 from the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard and the improvements take effect on their own.

Want to squeeze more performance out of your photography site beyond the plugin update? The posts below cover image optimization, lazy loading, and compression, all of which work well alongside the 4.2.3 improvements.

• WordPress Image Optimization Guide →
• Lazy Loading for Photography Sites →
• Why Your Photography Site’s Load Speed Matters →
• Best WordPress Image Compression Tools →
• Meet Imagely 4.0: Redesigned →

Keep exploring guides, photography tips, and product updates on the Imagely blog.

The post New in Imagely: Your Galleries Load Faster and Your Pages Stay Lighter first appeared on Imagely.

Imagely 4.2.2 introduces two new addons that reflect that reality: Dropbox integration and Google Photos integration, both available now for Imagely Pro users.

Each one connects a different part of your photography life directly to your galleries.

Connecting the Places Your Photos Already Live

Every photographer organizes their work a little differently, but one thing tends to be consistent: your photos are spread across more than one storage system. That means getting them onto your website is often an extra manual step. Download, re-upload, repeat.

For many photographers, Dropbox is where professional work lives — finished deliverables organized by client, edited galleries ready to publish, files synced across every device in the workflow.

Google Photos, on the other hand, is often where the more personal captures end up: mobile shots, candid moments between setups, behind-the-scenes content that accumulates automatically from your phone.

Of course, your setup may look different — some photographers use both tools in entirely their own way.

Whatever your workflow, both integrations solve the same problem: the gap between where your photos already are and where you need them to be.

Activating the Dropbox and Google Photos Addons

Both integrations are built-in addons included with Imagely Pro.

To enable them, head to Imagely → Features in your WordPress dashboard. You’ll see cards for both Dropbox and Google Photos — click the Activate button on each one to turn them on.

Once both addons are active, you’re ready to start using Dropbox right away.

Google Photos requires one additional step to connect your account first — more on that below.

Dropbox Integration: Add Photos Directly from Your Dropbox

With the Dropbox addon active, the option shows up wherever you add images to a gallery.

Open any gallery in Imagely and click Add Images.

Alongside the standard options like Media Library and Video Links, you’ll now see a Dropbox button.

Clicking the Dropbox option opens a prompt with a Choose from Dropbox button.

From there, you’ll see a popup where you can connect to your Dropbox account and select your images.

Simply confirm your selection and they’ll be pulled directly into Imagely.

Google Photos Integration: Connect Your Library to Your Galleries

The Google Photos integration works similarly to Dropbox, but it requires a one-time account connection before you can start importing.

Once connected, the Google Photos option will appear every time you add images to a gallery — no further setup needed.

Step 1: Connect Your Google Photos Account

After activating the Google Photos addon, go to Imagely → Settings → Integrations. You’ll now see the Google Photos panel.

Simply click the Connect button to start the authentication process.

A new browser tab will open where you’ll sign in to your Google account.

Select the account associated with the Google Photos library you want to connect to Imagely.

After that, Google will ask you to grant Imagely permission to view selected photos and videos from your library.

Click Allow to complete the connection and return to your WordPress dashboard.

Step 2: Add Photos from Google Photos to a Gallery

With your account connected, Google Photos is now available as an image source in any gallery.

Open a gallery and click Add Images — you’ll see Google Photos listed alongside the other options.

Selecting Google Photos opens the Google Photos picker, where you can search your library, browse albums, and choose exactly which photos you want to import.

Select up to 2,000 items at a time, click Done, and they’ll flow straight into your Imagely gallery — ready to display.

Start Importing from Dropbox and Google Photos Today

Both the Dropbox and Google Photos addons are available on Imagely Pro. If you’re already on Pro, make sure your plugin is updated, and head to Imagely → Features to activate them now.

If you’re on a lower plan, upgrading to Pro unlocks both integrations alongside the full suite of professional gallery features.

Will these new integrations change the way you manage photos for your website?

Let us know in the comments below! For more on what’s new in Imagely and how to get the most from your galleries, check out these guides:

• NEW in Imagely: Video Galleries + TikTok & Dribbble Integration
• NEW in Imagely: Google Analytics Tracking for Your Galleries
• How to Create a Stunning WordPress Image Gallery (Tutorial)
• How to Create a Photography Website: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.

The post [NEW] Import Photos Directly from Dropbox and Google Photos first appeared on Imagely.

But once you publish, you’re flying blind. Which gallery gets the most views? Which photos actually get clicked? Which images drive print sales?

Imagely’s new Google Analytics 4 integration answers all of it automatically, with no code and no custom event setup required.

See What Visitors Actually Do Inside Your Galleries

The Google Analytics Addon connects your Imagely galleries directly to your GA4 property. Enter your Measurement ID, choose which events to track, and save.

That’s it — gallery views, image clicks, downloads, and eCommerce events start flowing into Google Analytics automatically, with no developer needed and no custom event code to write.

How to Set It Up

Head to Imagely → Features in your WordPress dashboard, find the Google Analytics Addon, and click Activate.

Once it’s active, navigate to Imagely → Settings → Integrations, where you’ll see the Google Analytics card waiting for you.

Click the small arrow in the Google Analytics panel to expand its settings.

You’ll need your GA4 Measurement ID. This looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX and lives in your GA4 account under Admin → Data Streams.

Simply paste it in, then toggle on the events you want to track: gallery views, image clicks, image downloads, add to cart, and purchases.

Once you toggle each switch, you should see a small green pop-up in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, confirming that you’ve successfully enabled tracking for that event.

After that, your galleries start sending data to Google Analytics.

What Gets Tracked

• Gallery Views. Every time a visitor loads one of your galleries, an event fires in GA4. You’ll see which galleries attract the most traffic — whether that’s your wedding portfolio, your landscape work, or your client proofing galleries.
• Image Clicks. Every click on an individual image fires an event with the image name and the gallery it came from. Pull up your GA4 Events report and see exactly which photos capture attention — and which ones get scrolled right past.
• Image Downloads. When a visitor downloads an image, Imagely tracks which file they saved and which gallery it came from. If you offer free downloads or run a stock section on your site, this tells you exactly what your audience values.
• eCcommerce Events. If you sell prints or digital downloads through Imagely, standard GA4 eCommerce events fire automatically — add to cart, purchase, and full transaction details. These show up in GA4’s Monetization reports, so you can see which images drive the most revenue and where visitors drop off in your checkout flow.

Get Started with Google Analytics Tracking

Google Analytics tracking is available on Imagely Pro and Ultra plans. Update to the latest version and head to Settings → Integrations → Google Analytics to get started.

Did this help you understand how your gallery visitors engage with your work? Let us know in the comments below! For more tips on growing your photography website, check out these guides:

• NEW in Imagely: Video Galleries + TikTok & Dribbble Integration
• [BIG NEWS] Keep Visitors Engaged with NEW Gallery Animations!
• Why To Use Google Tag Manager & How To Set It Up
• How to Start Selling Photography Prints with Automated Fulfillment
• How to Set Up a Client Gallery for Online Proofing in WordPress

For more photography tips and WordPress tutorials, check out our blog.

The post NEW in Imagely: Google Analytics Tracking for Your Galleries first appeared on Imagely.