You can extend the functionality of your Gallery and change its look & feel by installing additional components like modules, themes, colorpacks, etc.
Installing Modules and Themes
Modules and themes are both Gallery 2 plugins.
Installing Plugins
- 'Watch the How To Install Plugins Video (0.7 MB)
- Gallery 2.2+: You can install plugins via Site Admin -> Plugins in the Get More Plugins tab. No need for any manual tasks. And if there is a new version of a specific plugin, you can upgrade just as easy.
- The Plugins tab shows all modules and themes that are already part of your Gallery. Here you can install, activate, uninstall and configure plugins.
- The Get More Plugins tab gives you an opportunity to easily get more modules and themes with a few mouse-clicks. Read the instructions on the Get More Plugins tab.
- Gallery 2.0 / 2.1: Users of Gallery 2.1.2 and older versions (e.g. 2.0) need to follow the manual plugin installation instructions.
User Contributed Plugins
Most user contributed modules and themes are not available through the Get More Plugins page in Site Admin -> Plugins. You need to download the plugin to your computer and then follow the manual plugin installation instructions. But first check if the plugin you want is available through the community repository in the Get More Plugins page in Site Admin -> Plugins.
Plugin Actions
Gallery 2 plugins can be in different states. You can change the state of a plugin in Site admin -> Plugins
- activate - If a module is installed, you can activate it. Active plugins are automatically used by the Gallery.
- deactivate - Deactivating a module disables all features associated with this plugin. But all data associated with the plugin will be preserved, e.g. disabling the comment module will not delete any comments, it will just remove the option to add new comments and it will remove all options to view existing comments. Never remove the plugin folder of an inactive plugin. You first need to uninstall a plugin, else you will face problems on the next Gallery 2 upgrade.
- install - Plugins that are not installed yet can be installed with a click. Installed plugins can store data in the database.
- uninstall - By uninstalling a plugin you delete all data associated with it, e.g. you will lose all comments if you uninstall the comments module.
- upgrade - You need to upgrade a plugin if the version of the plugin in the modules/ or themes/ folder is newer than the version of the plugin that you have installed. Upgrading should be safe, but backing up your data from time to time is recommended anyway.
- delete - By deleting a plugin, you lose all associated data (e.g. all comments when deleting the comment module) and it removes the corresponding folder on your server as well (e.g. it removes modules/comments/).
Installing Other Components
The installation of colorpacks, icon packs, image frames and other components is straight-forward.
As with plugins, you first need to download them, extract the .zip file and copy to the right folder in your Gallery 2 installation.
The 'right' folder is different for each component though.
- Icon packs need to be copied to modules/icons/iconpacks/
- Image frames need to be copied to modules/imageframe/frames/
- Color packs need to be copied to modules/colorpack/packs/
Most of these components have been contributed by other users:
Note: In case you installed Gallery 2 with the Pre-Installer, please see:
How can I upload a plugin via FTP when I used the Pre-Installer? (same applies to other components)
