WORDPRESS GALLERY PLUGIN
Galleries your client can run without calling you.
Albums, galleries and a lightbox that a site owner can manage by dragging thumbnails — and that a developer can re-skin with five CSS variables.
WORDPRESS 6.0+ · PHP 7.4+ · NO JQUERY
07 / 12
THE PROBLEM
The gallery is never the hard part. The handover is.
You build the site, it looks right, and then it goes to someone who has to add twenty photos from Saturday's event. Six months later the gallery page is a wall of full-size uploads, or the client has given up and emails you the pictures instead.
Mbica is built for that second phase. Adding images is dragging thumbnails. Ordering them is dragging thumbnails. There is nothing else to learn, and nothing a non-technical person can break.
LAYOUTS
Three shapes, chosen per gallery
The site-wide default covers most of it. Any single gallery can overrule it without touching code.
Grid
Equal tiles, every image cropped to the same shape. The tidiest answer when the photos came from four different cameras.
Masonry
True proportions, staggered into columns. For photographers who will notice if you crop their verticals.
Carousel
One row that scrolls sideways. Useful where a grid would push the rest of the page off the screen.
ALBUMS
Galleries inside albums, two levels deep
Fifteen galleries from a season of events do not belong on one page. Group them into an album and visitors get one cover per gallery, with a breadcrumb back up on every gallery page.
- A cover per gallery, with its image count
- Click opens the lightbox, or goes to the gallery page — your call
- One gallery can appear in several albums
- Shared categories keep a long admin list manageable
07 / 12 · ARROWS, SWIPE, ESC
LIGHTBOX
Built the way people already expect
Arrow keys and swipe to move, Escape to close, click to zoom, a thumbnail strip to jump. Neighbouring images preload, so moving through a set feels instant rather than stuttery.
- Focus returns to the tile that opened it
- Captions and alt text come from the media library
- Dark or light backdrop, site-wide
- Switch it off per gallery if you would rather link out
WHO IT IS FOR
Sites where the pictures do the selling
Mbica earns its place when a site keeps adding photographs after launch, and the person adding them is not the person who built it.
PLACEMENT
A block for them, a shortcode for you
The block previews the real gallery while you edit. The shortcode works anywhere shortcodes run — classic editor, widgets, Elementor, or a template with do_shortcode(). Every gallery and album also gets a page of its own.
- Override layout, columns, spacing per placement
- Render loose attachment IDs with no gallery post at all
limitfor a teaser row that links to the full set
// the whole gallery [mbica_gallery id="12"] // overridden for this placement [mbica_gallery id="12" layout="masonry" columns="4" captions="below"] // six images, as a teaser [mbica_gallery id="12" limit="6"] // an album of galleries [mbica_album id="20" on_click="lightbox"]
:root {
--mbica-ink: #1b1f24;
--mbica-cyan: #18b9d8;
--mbica-wine: #a33b44;
--mbica-mist: #d7eef5;
--mbica-paper: #f1f7f9;
}
FOR DEVELOPERS
Five variables and four filters
Every colour on the front end resolves from those five custom properties. Override them in your theme and the plugin matches the site — no plugin files edited, so updates do not undo your work.
mbica_breadcrumb_trail— add your own stepsmbica_parent_album,mbica_show_breadcrumbmbica_hide_featured_image— the theme's duplicate cover, gone- Columns and spacing arrive as inline custom properties, so a media query can take them over
BEFORE YOU ASK
The questions that actually matter
Will it slow the site down?
The stylesheet and script are enqueued only on pages that contain a gallery, so the rest of the site loads exactly as it did. There is no jQuery dependency and no third-party library — the lightbox is plain JavaScript. Tiles render at a registered image size you choose, not the full upload.
What happens to my galleries if I uninstall it?
Uninstalling removes the plugin's settings and nothing else. Galleries, albums, categories and every image stay in the database and the media library. Reinstall and they are all still there. Your images were never copied anywhere in the first place — a gallery is a list of attachment IDs.
Does it work with my theme and with Elementor?
Yes. Mbica sets no typeface and inherits the theme's own. In Elementor, use the shortcode widget, or build the gallery page in a template and switch off the automatic output. Where a theme prints a featured image above the content, Mbica suppresses it on gallery pages so the cover is not repeated.
Can someone non-technical actually run it?
That is the point of it. Adding, removing and reordering images is dragging thumbnails. Captions and alt text are edited where they already live, in the media library, so they follow the image everywhere it is used. There is a written manual for the handover.
Is it accessible?
Alt text comes from the media library and falls back to the attachment title. The lightbox takes keyboard input, returns focus to the tile that opened it, and the breadcrumb is a labelled nav element. Focus rings are visible and re-skin with the rest.
Hand over a gallery, not a support contract.
Install it on one site, give your client the manual, and see whether the photos stop arriving in your inbox.
WORDPRESS 6.0+ · PHP 7.4+ · GPL