How to Enhance Gallery Layouts with Customizable Gallery Themes

Last updated on Aug 26, 2021 by Gerald Jackson Reader Disclosure

You’ve downloaded the Envira Gallery plugin, created your first gallery, and put up some of your beautiful photos on your WordPress website. Congratulations! Of course, your Envira galleries look great out of the box. But how can you customize your gallery themes for a more tailored look?

Envira Gallery Pro users get access to some nice advanced features. The best of these features includes functions to re-theme a gallery or even add custom CSS to customize galleries manually. 

In this article, we’ll touch on the basics: setting up your Envira Gallery plugin for multiple themes. We’ll also cover where you can use your own custom CSS to take more control over your gallery. 

We’ll talk about:

• Why you should use themes for your Envira galleries.
• What the Envira Gallery Theme Addon is, and how to install it
• What you need to know before getting into customizing your gallery
• How to change your gallery theme
• How to install and use the CSS Addon
• Some great tutorials on how to manually customize your gallery layout

Before we jump into creating customizable image galleries with Envira Gallery, make sure you’ve installed the plugin! Once you’ve downloaded the plugin to your WordPress, we can get started.

What Are Envira Gallery Themes and Why Would You Use Them

When you set up your first image galleries on your WordPress site with the Envira Gallery plugin, they will all have a uniform look. While they’re attractive and useful straight out of the box, their appearance won’t be customized to your site. But, you can change that! 

By applying themes to your galleries, you can accomplish a few things that will help your galleries stand out. You can:

• Differentiate your galleries from the competition’s. It goes without saying, but readers will notice unique looks and designs and remember them in the future. While attractive gallery themes aren’t a replacement for high-quality photography, having a nice theme can strike a fun or professional tone in your site that makes your work pop for potential clients.
  
• Make galleries look unique from page to page throughout your site. Since Envira Gallery allows you to create multiple galleries throughout your WordPress site, it also allows you to set individual themes for those galleries. This means that you can show different themes for different types of galleries or for different kinds of pages, giving you more control over your portfolio’s overall look.
  
• Create galleries whose aesthetics play well with your WordPress theme. If you’re someone who has spent time, and possibly money, finding the perfect theme, you may want your image galleries to match. With the Envira Gallery Theme Addon you can apply and customize gallery themes to suit your WordPress theme for a more cohesive user experience. 

While these features might seem like additional work overall, remember that a top-notch portfolio helps professional photographers put their best foot forward. Setting up customized galleries might take more time up-front, but it’s time well spent!

The Envira Gallery Theme Addon

Your Envira Gallery plugin creates themes using a “base” theme. This is the basic theme that all users, including free users, get out of the box. 

Users who sign up for the Envira Gallery Pro tier or higher can access addons, including the Gallery Themes Addon. This addon provides a new customization function that allows you to configure your gallery with new pre-built themes. 

Using alternate themes requires the Envira Gallery Pro subscription and the Gallery Themes Addon. 

What Do You Need to Know About Envira Gallery Themes?

If you’ve already installed Envira Gallery and decided to work on the look and feel of your individual galleries, there are a few technical things you’ll need to know beforehand: 

1. How addons work, including how to install addons in your Envira Gallery plugin
2. Ways to add new galleries or modify existing galleries
3. How to modify the settings of an existing gallery
4. How to modify CSS (optional)

Installing the Envira Gallery Theme Addon

The Envira Gallery Theme Addon is as simple to install as any other addon. Simply navigate to the Envira addons page by selecting Envira > Addons from your left-hand WordPress vertical menu:

Scroll down until you see the Gallery Themes Addon and click Install. Remember, you’ll need at least the Pro version of Envira Gallery to do this.

Then, click the Activate Slide Button to switch the Addon to Activated:

Setting a Custom Envira Gallery Theme

Now that you have the Gallery Theme addon activated, it’s time to set your gallery theme. Luckily, this process is incredibly simple!

How to Enhance Layouts with Existing Envira Gallery Themes

First, create a new gallery, or open one of your existing Envira Galleries. Then, click on Configure:

Locate the Gallery Theme section and click the drop-down menu. Select one of the themes from the drop-down list.

Scroll back to the top of the page and click the Update button. If you are creating a new gallery, this button will say Publish instead, but it will be located in the same place:

Customizing Envira Gallery Themes with the CSS Addon

The Gallery Themes addon helps you install some pre-built themes for your gallery and works well for photographers who aren’t as technically savvy. If you aren’t interested in getting more involved with the backend of your WordPress portfolio, the Gallery Themes addon can help here, too. 

For photographers that want more control over their gallery, however, Envira also offers the CSS Addon. This addon gives you the tools needed to insert custom CSS code to handle the look and feel of your gallery.

Using the CSS Addon to Customize Envira Gallery Themes

Install the CSS Addon the same way you installed the Gallery Themes addon:

Then, go to one of your existing galleries or create a new one. Select the Misc tab:

Scroll down to the Custom Gallery CSS text box:

Finally, enter any custom CSS here. When finished, scroll to the top and click Publish.

The basics of CSS are beyond the scope of this article. However, if you’re ready to get more technical in managing your gallery, then check out this tutorial on CSS and this guide for custom CSS with Envira Galleries.

What are the Best Gallery Layout Tutorials for Envira Gallery?

The great thing about Envira Gallery is that it makes using themes incredibly simple. As we’ve shown here, installing new themes is just a matter of installing the addon and then choosing your theme. 

However, if you want to take customizing your layout into your own hands, then there are several tutorials to help you get familiar with manual customization:

• If you want to control the look and feel of your gallery, then get into the CSS. Check out this tutorial to learn more about CSS and Envira Gallery.
  
• If you want to build a gallery with thumbnails, then this tutorial will help you use the built-in customization features to create one with Envira.
  
• If you’ve seen those really pretty galleries with different image size layouts, then you’ve seen what’s called a “justified grid” layout. Follow this tutorial to build on with Envira Gallery.
  
• If you’ve seen attractive masonry galleries that maximize vertical space and want to create one of your own, read this tutorial on masonry galleries in WordPress with Envira Gallery.

Conclusion

Image galleries already add a sense of style and professionalism to your site. By theming and tweaking your galleries, you can make your work and your portfolio stand out to prospective clients… all while adding your own sense of style to your website. 

If you found this interesting and you want to explore what’s available with Envira Gallery, then consider upgrading to Envira Gallery Pro. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to learn the latest Envira news and tutorials on topics like Adobe Photoshop, digital photography and more.