WordPress plugin: gallery shortcode and widget
| [Galdget] Free | |||||
 |
| If you want to see some examples before you read the text, here they are: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Various animations | Restaurant menu | |
| or you want to run through the quick “5 minute setup“ | ||
Description
This plugin provides two features, a gallery shortcode and a widget, which slide-show the images and webpages from the list that you define. The list consists of URLs that point to images or web pages, residing either on your blog website or on some other web server on the internet. You can include one or more directories from your web server into the list, when all images and html/php files from the directories will participate in the slide show.
So you can set up galleries on your posts and pages, but also in the widget areas of your blog. They can display images and/or web pages.
Each item in the list (picture, web page, directory) can be set up to appear on a specific page or post, designated by a slug, tag or category, or at specific date, day, hour, so your galleries can display different content each time the visitors come back to your site. These features can be used to set up a scheduled content to appear when certain conditions are met. For example, a restaurant can have a large slide show with today’s menu on the front page, and the menus for the next two days displayed as two separate widgets in the widget area (as shown in the example and tutorial here).
The animation used for transition between the pictures/webpages can be chosen from a predefined set, as shown in the demo page.
[plus+ feature] The frame, that the slide show is displayed in, can be chosen from the list of supplied frames, and new custom frames can be added, as described in the tutorial.
Features
- Gallery shortcode with a large set of options, to be included in posts and pages
- Gallery widget
- Both pictures and web pages can be displayed in the gallery
- Multiple galleries can be set up on the same page/post, with different content and options
- Multiple widgets can be set up, with different content and options
- Gallery content can be post/page/tag/category/date/time… specific
- Each image from the directory can have custom title and link
- User-friendly links setup screen
- Export and import of the links list in TSV format
- Links list can be processed in external applications (OpenOffice Calc, LibreOffice Calc, Excel…) and imported into your site
- Various animations for switching between gallery items
- [plus+ feature] Gallery frame, preset or user defined
Installation procedure
Free version [Galdget] is best installed as any other free WordPress plugin – instructions here.
Plugin settings
When [Galdget] is activated, the item “Galdget” is added to the settings submenu in the main admin menu:
or 
It opens up the URL list setup page, a place where you manage your list of pictures and websites.
While most of the features on the setup page are self-explanatory, there are some which could use a word or two of explanation:
- Plugin version and language code: if you should want to object on plugin behavior, report a bug or provide other feedback, plugin version and language code should be provided. Also, if you are preparing a translation for this plugin to your language, you must know your language code.
- A brief help is provided on the setup page, it might save you some time sometimes. You can send your impressions, suggestions or bug reports from there.
- Items in the list can be reordered by dragging their ordinal numbers up or down.
Explanation of the contents in the URL list
№ is the ordinal number of each item. You can drag the ordinal numbers up or down to reorder items in the list.
URL is the link to the item. It should point to an existing image or web page. It is best to use the images from your blog. You may also use images from other web sites, but keep in mind that they may forbid “hotlinking” at their will, so some day your gallery might start looking bad with 
or 
instead of actual images. When copying images to your blog – try not to break any intellectual property rights though. URL can also be set to something like dir://folder/subfolder, which adds the contents of the directory on your blog to the gallery, instead of single image or web page. It is explained in more detail here.
Scaling % applies to web pages that you include in your galleries, as well as to the images if they are treated as web pages (more on this here).
Duration is the number of seconds that the item will be displayed before switching to the next one.
Group is the number of the group that the item belongs to. Each item in the list belongs to one or more groups (if it belongs to more than one group – you separate them with comma, as in the picture above). Each widget or page/post gallery displays one particular group, as described here. If you want to keep it simple – just use group 0 for all links and don’t bother to read about groups.
Slugs is the list (which may be empty) of the page/post slugs and other useful designators that you can use to set up advanced content/date/time/etc. scheduling for each item in the list. Again, if you don’t want to know about them – just leave this field empty. If you want to set up advanced galleries – read about it here.
+ – are the buttons for adding new and deleting existing items. + appends an empty row after (below) the line it is in, – deletes the current row. Beware of the – in the top row, it deletes the whole list.
Buttons
Add images from media library opens up standard WordPress media manager. You may select one or more images to add to the list, if you want to select more than one – just hold the Ctrl key while clicking on pictures. When you finish selecting them – click on “Use selected images” and they will be added to the list.
Validate performs a basic check of the list, the syntax of the URLs provided and the values of other data. Irregular items are marked with red, duplicates with blue marks. It is here to show you that either your list is correct, or to point out to incorrect parts of it, so you can correct the errors.
Export to tsv exports the current contents of the list to file in “tab separated values” format. You can open this file in text editor (like Notepad++) or spreadsheet application (like OpenOffice Calc, LibreOffice Calc, Excel), edit it, save it and import it back to your URL list, if this is easier for you than fiddling with the setup page.
Import from tsv file does the opposite of the previous – imports the list from a TSV file. You will have the opportunity to review and validate the contents of the file before the actual import, as well as opt to keep or overwrite the values already in the list at the time of import.
Save presumably speaks for itself, it saves the current list to your blog. Keep in mind that this also means that the content of the list will be instantly available to the galleries and displayed to your blog visitors, so please don’t save “temporary” variants which are not complete or may contain something that you don’t want to show to your blogs visitors. 
left of the Save button means that the list has changed since it was last saved, but it does not mean that you should save it immediately. Please remember that what you save is instantly visible on your blog.
Load last saved loads the list as it was last saved, in case you are not happy with your recent edits. You will have the opportunity to review the contents before the actual load, as well as opt to keep or overwrite the values already in the list at the time of load.
Load prev. saved loads the list as it was saved before you last saved it, in case you are not happy with changes that you last saved.
Load prePrev. saved loads the list as it was saved before you saved it before you last saved it, in case you get lost in your edits and saves. Please bear in mind that you can always loose track of your edits more than the above three buttons can reverse. It is better to click on “Export to tsv” more often, than on “Save”.
Widget setup
Up to now, you should have created and saved your list of URLs for the gallery. The next thing to do is display it to your blog visitors. One of two ways to do it is to set up a widget. You do it in the WordPress administrator panel, under Appearance/Widgets menu,
or 
There you should be able to find “Galdget” widget and drag it into one of the sidebars your theme supports. Yes, you can drag multiple copies of the widget into one or more sidebars.
Once the widget is dragged into the sidebar, it becomes a widget instance. For each instance you can tweak the following parameters:
Title is the line of text that will be displayed above the widget instance. The exact formatting of the title depends on the WordPress theme you are using.
Group determines a group that widget instance displays. In the URL list setup process, each link to image or web page was assigned to a group, and here we choose which group a particular widget instance will display.
Height is the height of the widget instance in pixels. The width of the widget instance is determined by the WordPress theme and the place (widget area) where the widget instance appears. Height is on you to set up. If you want to have a rectangular widget instance – you set the height to 0 and it will automatically be set to the widget instance width. Otherwise you set your desired height in pixels here.
Random order determines the order of displaying the URLs from the list. When “off” they are displayed in order as they appear on the list, when “on” they are displayed in random order.
Buttons drop down determines which, if any, command buttons are displayed when the mouse hovers over the widget instance. It has the following options:
- All, start/stop enabled: displays the buttons for “previous” and “next” item in the list, “start/stop items rotation”, “open link” and “open link in new window”, 5 buttons in total.
- Navigation, start/stop disabled: displays the buttons for “previous” and “next” item in the list, “open link” and “open link in new window”, 4 buttons in total.
- None, open link on click: no buttons, the widget instance is clickable, click opens current item, Ctrl-click opens current item in the new tab (note: Ctrl-click is a browser feature).
- None, no action on click: no buttons, the widget instance is clickable.
Please note that the items rotation is paused while the mouse hovers over the widget instance, and continues when the mouse goes out (if not stopped by “start/stop” button).
Image URL display determines how the links to images are displayed. Links to web pages are displayed inside an iframe, scaled by the “Scaling %” as set in the list setup. However, for displaying the images there are three more variants, which makes the following 4 in total:
- Default (as page URLs): iframe, with “Scaling %”.
- Scale to fit into widget area: each image is scaled proportionally so that it fits into the widget instance area, the whole image is visible and there may be some empty space left above+below or left+right of the image.
- Scale to fill the widget area: each image is scaled proportionally so that it fills the whole widget instance area, some parts of the image may not be visible, i.e. top+bottom or left+right ends of the image.
- Stretch to fill the widget area: each image is scaled unproportionally – stretched to fill the entire widget instance area.
Animation is the way the gallery contents – images and web pages – are rotated, i.e. put on the screen and removed from it. There are 15 different “animations” available, and they are better understood if seen than if described in words, so please visit the animation demo page.
URL is optional URL or your choice. If you set it – the clicks on the widget will not open the item that is currently displayed in it, but the provided URL instead.
Display web pages when embedded is a bit complicated to explain, so it also has a separate page.
Shortcode
Gallery shortcode is available in page or post edit screens. You can put one or more gallery shortcodes in each post or page, at your will. The text for the shortcode can be typed (or copy-pasted) into the text, but it is easier to use the shortcode button
which is available in “Text” editing mode (not available in “Visual”). It will produce a shortcode with the default values for all available options, something like:
[galdget width=400 height=400 align=center group=0 random=no buttons=all images=default animation=rnd embedded=no]
All you have to do is change the values of the options to suit your choice. You can put more than one shortcode on one page/post. Also, as we did at the top of this page, you can embed multiple shortcodes into a table or some other structure to arrange them horizontally and/or vertically.
As a handy help for working with the shortcodes, in the lower right part of the screen, a full set of option values is displayed in a box, so you can see which values are eligible for, e.g. buttons, images, animation and other options:
Each option in the shortcode have its counterpart in the widget setup, so the options will not be explained here. Please refer to the widget setup above for details.
Donations
While donations are not necessary for further development of Galdget and other plugins (for each free plugin, most often, there is a premium one), they are very welcome. We highly appreciate your will to help, even with the smallest amounts.
Before you decide to make a donation, you may want to review the premium version, [Galdget plus+], and decide to buy it instead of donating here.
You should not worry if you don’t donate, though. We would be happy if you use our plugins.