We’re often asked, “What is the difference between a ‘Page Template’ and a ‘Shortcode’ Gallery?” and we’ll explain.
When we originally released KingSize WordPress back in 2011, the template only supported one method for creating the Galleries you see within our template today. That was through the use of a custom page template. Back then, custom post-types were slowly making their impact but we were already so close to releasing we kept with the page template method anyways.
As time progressed, we realized the importance and the many benefits of using a custom post-type for creating your galleries. That namely being the ability to use those Galleries throughout the website in multiple instances.
Let’s compare the two so you can see:
1. Gallery Page Templates:
- Can only be used on that specific page.
- Currently only supports drag and drop ordering.
- Our galleries were only unique to pages.
- Couldn’t include your galleries in blog posts.
2. Custom Gallery Post-Type:
- A shortcode is used to call the gallery created.
- A shortcode can be used multiple times.
- More than one gallery can be on a single page/post.
- You can insert galleries into Posts (Blog/Portfolio).
- Shortcodes allowed you easy to use options/values.
While many of the features a shortcode contains can be achieved through the use of more write-panel options, the whole idea behind a shortcode is to “lighten the process”, so things are in short, simple and precise. By a popular demand from our buyers, with the release of KingSize WP version 4.0+ we decided to include the new post-type.
You can learn more about both options here:
WordPress 3.5 – How to create Galleries with Page Templates
WordPress 3.5 – How to create Galleries with Shortcodes
WordPress 3.4 – How to create a Gallery (outdated description)
A few other resourceful articles in our blog are:
Galleries vs. Portfolios
How to create a Portfolio
For further buyer support, we encourage you to visit our Buyer Support Forums at http://www.denoizzed.com/forum – registration is required. If you have troubles with registering please read the link labeled as “How do I Register / Help” and it will walk you through the step by step process of registering your support account.