New WordPress Gallery Feature: How to Use It

What is the gallery feature?
A gallery is used to display thumbnail images attached to the current post, or attached to any other posts within your blog.

How to use the gallery feature?
The new gallery uses shortcodes. To display a gallery, place the shortcode into a post or page (using the visual or html tab, it works either way).

In the example below, I used this shortcode (you would remove any spaces after/before the brackets [] in actual use).

[ gallery id="887" ]

This shortcode simply means, I’m wanting to install a gallery and use images from my post with the post ID of 887.

In the below example, I wanted to display in 2 columns (the default is 3 columns), in a thumbnail size and linking each image to the image file itself (default is linking to the page on which the image originates).

[ gallery id="865" size="thumbnail" columns="2" link="file" ]

Improvements I’d like to see….

1. Ability to link to images within your media library, not specifically attached to a post. Why not allow for image categories/galleries/albums (much like the NextGen Gallery plugin) and allow us to organize and include images straight from the WP media library using the gallery shortcode.
2. Also allow for inclusion of images from more than one post/page ID to display in a single gallery.

Summary Thoughts
Overall, I think the new gallery is a positive step, but with awesome plugins like NextGen, I think WordPress could do better with this new feature. Plugins are great, but I would love to see more features built into WordPress itself.

To YOUR Success,

Traci

P.S. So what do you think of the new features in WordPress ‘Carmen’ 2.9? What features would you like to see in future versions of WordPress?