Setting up dynamic galleries by category

Thanks for your vote of confidence and your application questions. MLA can give you some help with your needs but I would need more information to give you specific guidance.

You wrote “configure a gallery shortcode that could … act as a feed for a category” The [mla_gallery] shortcode can be used as-is to display Media Library items assigned to one or more taxonomy terms. However, your description implies that you need something more like “display the items that are used as Featured Images in Portfolio Images custom post type items”; is that right?

If that’s right, you could develop a small custom plugin that did the database queries required to find the Media Library items you want and then pass them to [mla_gallery] for display. Something like that would make an interesting MLA example plugin and I would be happy to work with you to develop it.

I would need to know more about the “Portfolio Images custom post type with it’s own taxonomy” you mentioned. Is this provided by a plugin or theme on your site? If so, is it a free plugin/theme I can get a copy of or a premium plugin/theme. I’m sure you understand that I cannot afford to purchase premium components simply to provide MLA support.

You wrote “Would like the gallery images open on click and either use the default WordPress slideshow or integrate a lightbox plugin.” There is no “default WordPress slideshow that I know of, but there are many plugins (and themes) that provide slideshow and lightbox features. I can offer some recommendations if you haven’t already settled on one.

I will leave this topic unresolved until I hear back from you. Any additional information you can provide will help me be more specific. Thanks for your interest in the plugin.

Thanks for your reply, and for your interest in helping out. Is creating a gallery from featured images something you think can be done without building a custom plugin?

I’ve been looking for a solution that would allow featured images to be displayed in individual galleries by category. But I’m not a developer, so building even a small plugin is beyond what I’m able to do.

I’ve created a custom post type and associated a taxonomy for portfolio images using the very useful Custom Post Type UI plugin

However, your description implies that you need something more like "display the items that are used as Featured Images in Portfolio Images custom post type items"; is that right?
Yes, that’s it exactly. Am putting together this site where both an isotope filtered gallery page and individual pages with galleries by category are wanted (not my idea, but there it is). Am using the Isotope-Posts plugin: https://mandiwise.com/project/isotope-posts/, which needs posts with featured images to work. Therefore the custom post type.

Hi — I have convinced the client to simplify. Will be using your plugin to display galleries by category with images pulled directly from the Media Library, not from custom posts. Thanks!

Thank you for your updates with the additional information about the original application and the good news about the new, simplified approach. Thanks as well for posting the links to the plugins you are using; very interesting.

I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if your application changes and you want to pursue a custom plugin for displaying a gallery of Featured Images filtered by post type and taxonomy term(s). As I said, it would make an interesting example and I would be happy to work on it as time allows.