Joomla gallery is so nuanced. There are many possibilities for your choice. Some functionalities make it easier to work with a gallery for everyone, others help with a narrow range of business needs. We will tell you about the most popular Joomla gallery features among our customers. Why they are needed, how to use them and whether you need them.

Front-end Manager makes photo and video items upload and gallery management easier. If you regularly update content on a website and often upload photos and videos then this feature would be your time saver. You won’t have to go into Joomla! admin panel and browse through its numerous links and sections. Front-end Manager allows you to focus on gallery features with its simple and focused on gallery needs intuitive interface.

Custom Size allows to control photo size without quality loss. A page would load faster and you still have a high quality images as a result. All you need to do is to set top dimensions you may require on your website. After that all existing or newly uploaded images will be automatically resized to set size limit keeping their ratio and stored at the highest quality. At the same time original files are stored on your server allowing you to resize images at any time going up and down in dimensions selecting the best parameters for your website look and performance. It can be helpful for shoes and clothes catalogs, photographers’ or designers’ portfolios.

Tag Gallery allows building a gallery defined by tags through all items stored in a gallery on your website. It can be really handy when you have many photos or videos which can logically go into several galleries, but you don’t want to duplicate them. If you have a wedding dresses catalog you can create a gallery with tags #longdress #silk #ivorycolor and this page would have all images and videos that have these tags disregarding the galleries they are located at.

You can try FREE Light version to use basic gallery features or go straight to Grand version and enjoy the benefits of advanced options described above. If you want to know what other extensions can help you with Joomla photo gallery, reach our support team through your Fastw3b account, please. Describe how you use your gallery and what is your desired work process to let support agents provide you with other tools or suggestions to help with your needs.

Beauty industry websites are all about visual presentation of products and services to the audience. All websites dealing with presentation can be created based on galleries. FW Gallery is a powerful tool for visual presentation. There are many different types of beauty industry websites in the marketplace - spa salons, nail bars, skin care shops, hair design studios, and many more. In this article, we will review a professional and good-looking hair salon showcase created with FW Gallery.

The showcase is dedicated to a specific kind of salon services - hair design.  However, you can use any other beauty industry direction instead of the hair design. If you are offering different range of salon services at one place, then each direction should be configured separately, similar to the hair salon showcase.

We will describe each page of the hair salon showcase, its elements, and business idea behind each element. Make sure to understand that to proceed with creating the same website you need to prepare media content and install FW Gallery to your Joomla platform. To learn how to get started with FW Gallery, review Getting started documentation page.  If you have media content and FW Gallery in place, it takes around one hour to build the same website. The overall process for creating such a website looks as follows:

1. Prepare media content - photos and videos grouped by services.
2. Install FW Gallery to present your services with a clean design.
3. Create required galleries to show service categories and different types of products inside them.
4. Display all images to show services with their pricing, description and related products.
5. Configure the slideshow module to create the atmosphere for each section and/or promote products/services.
6. Configure the latest module to show related products for sale.

Check out our Hair salon guide for more details on configuring Hair salon showcase. Let’s, review the showcase page by page in the sections below.

Page with Salon Services Directions

If you are offering different kinds of salon services at one place, you need to create a page with multiple galleries. Each gallery will represent a specific service direction, for example, manicure, cosmetology, hair design, etc. However, if you are offering a specific service, you can skip this step.
We have created a Beauty industry page to showcase different beauty industry directions. The hair salon showcase is realized via galleries view. Each gallery on this page represents a particular direction of the beauty industry.

Salon services directions

Here you can see the following elements:  

1. Title of the parent gallery. We have created a Beauty industry parent gallery.  If you are creating a website for a beauty salon offering different services at one place, there should be a title of the beauty salon.
2. Description of the parent gallery. The description conveys general information about gallery content. We have provided general information about the beauty industry directions here. You can insert a mission of your beauty salon here.
3. Subgallery. In our showcase, the subgallery represents a specific beauty industry direction. However, you can use a subgallery for each particular service type offered at your beauty salon.
4. Subgallery video preview. Preview cover is an effective promotion tool. We have placed a video on the preview cover of the hair salon gallery to add more dynamics to the page. But there is a possibility to use the image as gallery preview cover.  You can use both types on preview covers for different galleries on one page to make it look more entertaining.
5. Subgallery title. We have specified the title of the showcase here. You can specify the type of services offered at your salon.  
6. Subgallery description. We have placed general information about services offered at the hair salon. You can also specify some general information about each service type or its price.

Page with Service Types

This page is a show window of the hair salon. It should be eye-catching and clearly laid out with an informative text message, logo, images, etc. It represents different types of services offered at the hair salon. To show all service types on one page, we use galleries view - one gallery for a specific type of services.

Page with service types

Here you can see the following elements:  

1. Subgallery title. We have entered the title of the showcase here. You can specify the title of service direction.
2. Subgallery description.  Our subgallery description includes:

• Text description. Mission of the hair salon.
• Image. Logo of the hair salon.
• Slideshow module. The slideshow of services to ensure effective promotion.

Specify a general description of the services here. You can also place different elements into the description area of the gallery, just as we did.

3. Subgalleries of the Hair salon subgallery. Each subgallery represents the type of service offered at the hair salon.  Use subgalleries for all types of services you offer for a specific direction.
4. Subgallery image preview cover. We have used images as preview covers for the types of hair salon services. However, you can set either video or image preview covers for the subgalleries on this page. It depends on your media content and vision.
5. Subgallery title. We have specified the title of the haircut here. You can specify the type of services offered at your salon.  
6. Subgalley description.  We have specified an approximate price for a service type here. You can specify what’s included in the services and/or its price.

Page with Hairstyles

This page displays a lookbook of hairstyles done at the hair salon. It is realized via gallery view. The gallery view allows to show beautiful images of the hairstyles. It also provides a reference to the hair care products sold at the hair salon.

Hairstyles lookbook

Here you can see the following elements:

1. Subgallery title. We have specified the title of the service here.
2. Suggallery description. We have used this area for service description and its price.
3. Images included to the gallery. These are the images of hairstyles. You can display the images of looks you have created for your customers.
4. Images titles. We have specified the titles of the hairstyles and their prices here. You can specify the title of the look achieved using your services.

Page with a Single Hairstyle

On this page, we can see a strong association between a single hairstyle and hair care products sold at the hair salon. The page is implemented via a single image view. Single image view provides a detailed view of the product/service you are offering. It also allows to provide more details about the service/product through the elements outlined below.

1. Image title. We have specified the title of the hairstyle here. You can specify the title of the look here.
2. Ratings. Ratings encourage the activity of registered users. We use star ratings, but you can choose between stars, hearts or thumbs.
3. Image section. This section displays the image of the hairstyle. You can display a look achieved using your services.
4. Image description. Except for the hairstyle text description, we have added the latest module with hair care products to create a dependable line between the product and service. You can use the description the same way to provide additional information for a single image view.
5. Slider. The slider allows to access the gallery with other hairstyles right by clicking the image within the slider, without going to the upper level. Use the slider to showcase other looks included to the gallery and simplify navigation.

Creating such a great website with FW Gallery is not difficult at all. If you like the concept of the website, you can create a similar one with your own hands. We have clearly outlined all steps required for creating such a website in our Hair salon guide. Should you have any problems while configuring the website, feel free to ask questions in the comments section at the bottom of the documentation page.

New:

• Gallery description next to the gallery. This feature allows to display description at the right of the gallery. As a result, the gallery and description are placed at eye-level allowing for better readability when long descriptions are added to the galleries. 

• Tags display on the gallery view. Earlier tags assigned to the gallery didn’t display on the gallery page. Now the tags assigned to the gallery are displayed underneath the gallery title.

• Search by ID. To simplify files management via the admin panel, we have added the ability to search for files by ID. 

• Search by tag. We have added a search by tag filter to the files management section so you could search for files by tags via the admin panel.   

• Custom CSS style section. We have added CSS style section in admin panel so the users could edit CSS styles of the component directly via Joomla admin panel.

• Gallery display in a map module. We have added galleries filter to the map module settings. With this filter, you can choose the galleries you want to display on the map.  


Updated:

• Renamed Default design to Fancy. We have renamed Default design to Fancy to avoid confusion with the default option allowing to set priority between menu item settings and global settings
.
• Geotag for a gallery. Now you can assign a geotag to the gallery. A gallery with a geotag is added to the galleries filter, in the map module settings. As a result, this gallery can be displayed on the map.

• Default image setting for a front-end manager. Now, the default cover image can be set for a gallery via the front-end manager.


Bug fix:

• Tags display in menu item settings. Fixed tags display in menu item layout settings. Earlier the tags added for a new gallery didn’t display in menu item layout settings

• Tags order. Synchronized the order of the tags between the front-end and back-end. 

• Batch upload via the front-end manager. Batch upload didn’t work for the front-end manager.

• File description. Fixed the file description display in the below position.

• Video cover upload. It was impossible to upload a video cover for a gallery.

• Magnifier display. Fixed magnifier display in the lightbox.


In this version, we have improved the product with several new features and a set of updates and bug fixes. Video gallery cover has become one of the most prominent features of this release. Let’s review its benefits and all other changes below:

• Gallery video cover with preview.  Earlier you could use only images as preview covers for your galleries, now you can also use videos as preview covers. The video is automatically played on hovering. Video preview cover allows to animate your galleries enabling your customers to quickly scan through the gallery content. This feature is particularly helpful for businesses using catalogs and portfolios to showcase their products and services.

Documentation reference: Galleries.

• Beauty design. A new Beauty design with new fonts and green/spa colors is a sound solution for beauty industry websites. Now you have more options for styling your galleries.
• Option defining the length of gallery/image preview description. Now you can set the length of the gallery/image preview description. This feature allows to save screen space and improve web page usability. It is particularly helpful when a gallery/image description is too long.

Documentation reference: Displaying settings.

• Lightbox for all designs. Lightbox allows to view images on the same page without leaving it. Thus, the user receives information faster and doesn’t have to take extra actions. Now Lightbox is available for all designs - Palaroids, Pinterest, Classis, Default, and Masonry.
• New full image preview lightbox script. The previous lightbox script cropped images and had glitches on responsive views. We have replaced the script to ensure better visual presentation and good user experience.
• Removed formatting from gallery preview description.In order to improve the readability of the gallery preview image, we have removed formatting from gallery preview description. Now the description on the gallery preview image is displayed as plain text.
• Default gallery cover parameter. We have added this parameter to make it possible for you to choose a gallery cover from the images that are already present within the gallery. Thus, you don’t need to upload it manually every time you need to set a gallery cover.

Documentation reference: Galleries.

• Slideshow/latest module display via file/gallery description.We have added the ability to insert a slideshow or latest module into the image description. This feature is particularly helpful if you need to provide additional information to the image/gallery.  
• Download button for a menu item. This feature allows for more flexibility. For example, if you use FW Gallery not as a photo gallery, but as a tool to promote your products and services, you might not need a download button on all pages. So now, if you don’t need the download button to be present for all galleries, you can easily disable it where it is needed.
• Files counter for a menu item.If the number of files is not required to be displayed for a particular menu item, you can disable/enable the parameter on the menu item level.
• Safari optimization. We have optimized the component for Safari to ensure smooth Safari experience.
• Watermark display. We have resolved the problem with watermark text display over the images.
• Comments display.It was impossible to disable comments via menu item settings. Now you can work with comments on both levels -  menu item and default gallery configuration.
• Latest module optimization for a lightbox. We have fixed the problem with Latest module layouts display within the lightbox. Now all layouts work fine with lightbox.
• Links display in gallery preview description.We have resolved the issue with incorrect links display within the gallery preview description.
• Show backlink option for default gallery settings. It was impossible to set show backlink option via default gallery settings. Now it is available in default gallery settings.
• Bellow gallery description display.We have fixed the problem with the below description option. Now you can place a description underneath the gallery.
• Gallery preview display in Masonry. We have aligned the gallery preview image for Masonry format.
• Files ordering.We have added files ordering buttons in the files section.
• Language files update. We have updated language files to fix some missing translations.  

Get familiar with FW Gallery documentation to find more information about our product. Please use the comments section at the bottom of each documentation page to comment and suggest improvements that will make the product experience better.

Based on our customers’ requests and trends research in the Joomla sites development, we have improved the product for both site administrators and visitors. Version 4.8.0 contains numerous design and and functionality updates making our product more flexible and configurable to any taste.

So, first things first.

New design for galleries and files by default. This allows you to make your work with an admin panel of the site even more convenient and productive. Previous default design is still available as Classic option. In total FW Gallery has 5 design options and customer can switch designs in gloabal settings or individually on a menu item via Options tab.

Detailed layout for for every design. Each design has its own display style for galleries and files, which can be selected in accordance with a gallery purpose. Depending on a design selected and fields display chosen selected design will remain consistent.

Combined Galleries and Single Gallery menu layouts to avoid further confusion. Now there is only one Gallery Layout which can show top level galleries in no galleries is selected.

Information display customization option for galleries and files. This allows to optimize your work with albums of a specific gallery and single files. The following options are available:

• display gallery information under thumbnail or over it on hover;
• display file information under thumbnail or over it on hover;

Individual layout selection for a menu item on the site:

• grid selection - the number of objects in the bar and on the page can be set for the site menu item;
• global settings of galleries and images can be redefined for the site menu item;
• gallery can be set by selecting multiple galleries per one menu item.

An option to create a gallery by selecting tags assigned to single files. This approach saves a lot of time by the fact that the pictures do not need to be added again or moved between folders manually.

A new layout for one file with a other gallery files slider. Files slider also is available on Lightbox and  can be turned off if it is not useful for the purposes of a site.

The ability to view files in a Lightbox rather than on an individual page. This allows the user to take fewer actions and receive information faster without waiting for the new page loading and without creating new tabs.

Improved design and display settings for the Slideshow module. The admin panel design has become visually more pleasant, and the module design itself has been updated (thus, the slideshow option has changed, the opportunity to add the image name, the date has appeared).

Optimized the design and display settings for the Content Plugin, which allows you to work more efficiently with images in articles (adjust the image position to the text, customize the galleries inside the article).

Updated Google Images (old Picasa) Import plugin. We renamed it into the Google Images Import Plugin and added the possibility to download images from both the Gmail account and the Picasa account.

... and many manu more. Please read the Changelog on top of  FW Gallery Grand products page for the full updates list and read FW Gallery Documentation to see how new features work.

It's time to try the updated gallery!

Websites that contain a lot of visual/media content have their list of characteristics, tasks, and difficulties that developers may face with. The best feature of a good Joomla gallery website is a high-quality user-friendly implementation. Because of its peculiarities, a large number of image files, such a resource can be “heavy”, load slowly and be displayed incorrectly. The key point here is to provide a user with the most positive experience managing gallery website. This can be achieved in particular through the use of responsive Joomla gallery components.

Joomla Gallery Plugin FW Gallery Light and Its Main Functions

Responsiveness. The name speaks for itself, so the main function and the main advantage of responsiveness is an ability to be displayed correctly on any devices, adapting to the viewport.

Improved upload options. With FW Gallery  Joomla gallery component, it is possible to upload photos easily and quickly, using drag&grop or mass selecting them in a file manager.

Multi-level galleries. This function allows the user to build galleries of several levels in order to make the content more structured and organized.
Rotation of images. From now on you should not worry about photos rotation. Even if a photo-orientation didn’t get rendered correctly you can fix it manually at any time.

Galleries and photo layout settings. A set of various parameters for displaying images and galleries adjusting sizes and information you want to show.

Default gallery image picture will be selected from already uploaded pictures to find the most spiritual image for a gallery content or create Joomla gallery carousel.

A possibility to apply a watermark. Both the client and the user can be confident in the authenticity of the images.

A possibility to view sub-galleries for quick navigation while preserving the adequate size of photos and without loss of quality.

Share buttons. Each user of the site will be able to share any photo in one click.

Advanced features for clarifying details. Now each gallery can get a name, a creation date, and a hashtag. The privacy of this data is easily regulated.

Extended item settings. This means the ability to save specific viewing parameters for each of the photos, as well as assign the data (name, creation date, hashtag) to each image. With the frontend function, the visual content updating is even easier since you do not need to touch an admin panel anymore.

Who Can Benefit from Joomla Gallery Extensions

The decision to create Joomla gallery with FW Gallery Light will be reasonable for:

• designers and photographers to most effectively show their creativity and competence;
• cafes and restaurants so that potential guests can familiarize themselves with an attractive and detailed menu;
• photo models with diverse work experience;
• builders who already have successfully completed projects;
• companies that want to be closer to their customers and for this purpose take photos of their production processes from the inside;
• and everyone else whose work results can be demonstrated visually.

On a Concluding Note

Thus, this Joomla gallery extension is a free download and a fairly convenient and practically universal tool that can be useful to develop solutions in many areas. Its main advantages are responsiveness and multi-functionality. In fact, this saves time and labor costs and also allows you to organize your images online, resulting in an excellent responsive design.