Gallery layout Free

The gallery layout is the most visual way to show a library. Each document becomes a tall tile that is mostly thumbnail, with a short title underneath and a single action. Use it when the picture is the identifier — covers, posters, drawings, floor plans, artwork, product sheets — and metadata is secondary.

It is a sibling of the grid layout, not a replacement. The grid is a balanced card: image, title, excerpt, metadata and a download link, all readable. The gallery deliberately trims that back so the images dominate.

Gallery or grid?

	Grid	Gallery
Image shape	4:3, part of the card	3:4 portrait, the bulk of the tile
Tile width	From 230px	From 260px
Text	Title, excerpt and metadata	Title (two lines), minimal metadata
Best for	Newsletters, brochures, mixed libraries	Covers, plans, posters, artwork

Choose the gallery when a visitor recognises the document at a glance and reads nothing else. Choose the grid when they need a sentence of context. If they need to compare dates or file sizes across many documents, use the table layout.

Setting it

Set Documents → Settings → Display → Default layout to Gallery (large thumbnails), or set it per library:

[filedeck layout="gallery" columns="image,title,link" category="floor-plans" per_page="24"]

The same option appears in the Document Library block, the Elementor widget, and the Classic Editor’s Document library button.

Where the thumbnails come from

A tile shows the document’s featured image, exactly as the grid does. If a document has no featured image and you are on FileDeck Pro, PDF thumbnails generate one from the first page automatically — which is what makes the gallery worth using for a PDF-heavy library.

Documents with no thumbnail still get a tile. Rather than leaving a hole in the grid, FileDeck draws a neutral plate showing the file type — PDF, DOCX, XLSX. The gallery therefore stays even whether or not every document has an image, though it looks best when most do.

Restricted documents a visitor cannot open show a padlock on that plate instead of the file type. The type, filename, excerpt and thumbnail are all withheld — a gallery never reveals more about a locked document than a table would.

Columns on a tile

The gallery reads the same columns setting as every other layout, but a tile has far less room than a grid card, so it uses fewer of them:

• image is the tile itself.
• title sits below the thumbnail, clamped to two lines so tiles stay the same height. The full title is on the document page.
• excerpt, when included, is clamped to two lines beneath the title.
• type and size render as small metadata.
• link renders the download or preview action.

image,title,link is the cleanest set. Adding many fields works, but it fights the point of the layout.

Columns per row

By default the gallery fits as many tiles per row as the space allows. To pin an exact number, set Grid / gallery columns in Display settings, or pass grid_columns:

[filedeck layout="gallery" grid_columns="4"]

On screens narrower than 700px the fixed count is dropped and tiles reflow, so two still fit side by side on a phone.

FAQ

Do search, filters and pagination work in the gallery?

Yes. Instant search, category and tag filters, sorting via sort_by/sort_order, and pagination all behave exactly as they do in the table and grid. Large libraries switch to server-side paging in the gallery too.

Why are my tiles blank plates instead of images?

The documents have no featured image. On FileDeck Pro, enable PDF thumbnails to generate first-page images for PDFs automatically; otherwise set a featured image on each document.

Can I use the gallery for a mixed library of PDFs and spreadsheets?

You can — spreadsheets will show a type plate rather than a picture. If most of the library can’t produce a thumbnail, the grid or table layout will read better.