Jetpack has lots of different modules that do all sorts of fun and interesting things to supercharge your self-hosted WordPress site. Not everyone uses all of these modules, though — with so much good stuff, it’s easy to miss something. To help you discover all the great things you could be doing with Jetpack, we’ll be highlighting the most-overlooked modules and the modules we get asked the most about. First up: Tiled Galleries!
Are you tired of plain old thumbnail galleries? Are row after row of tiny squares getting you down? Do you spend tons of time using photo editing software to create more interesting layouts for your images? Well have no fear, Tiled Galleries are here! Jetpack lets you display images in a variety of bold, elegant layouts with just a few clicks.
To insert a gallery into a post or page, the first thing you need, of course, are some images. Do you want to showcase your recent trip to New Mexico? Or maybe that new puppy you got? Any collection of images can be turned into a Tiled Gallery, whether you uploaded them to your site weeks ago or are just uploading them now.
Then, make sure that you’ve enabled the Tiled Galleries module in Jetpack. Activate it by going to the Jetpack page in your dashboard, and click the blue “Activate” button on the Tiled Galleries card.
Next, you’ll want to insert a new gallery into your page or post. To add a gallery, click on the “Add Media button,” and then on “Create Gallery” on the top left. You can then either upload new images or select images that are already in your media library. Choose the images you want, then click on the “Create a Gallery” button on the bottom right. Once you’ve created the Gallery, you can drag-and-drop the pictures to put them in the order you want them to appear in.
Now the fun part: choose the layout style that you want for your gallery, in the “Gallery Settings” area on the right, and let the Tiled Galleries module work its magic. You can have:
Square Tiles
or Circles
and my favorite, Tiled Mosaic
Great pictures, aren’t they? And they look smashing in the Tiled Galleries. Jetpack takes care of all the cropping and arrangement, and your site visitors can click any tile to pull up the full image.
I hope this inspires you to turn your regular Thumbnail Galleries into stylish Jetpack-powered Tiled Galleries!
Do you have any questions about Tiled Galleries? Is there a particular Jetpack module you’d like to learn more about? Let us know!
