Add Google Photos images and galleries with this Elementor integration

Elementor is a powerful page builder but could not be the best when giving you options to show or order your images, this is where WP Media Folder helps you! 

WP Media Folder offers you the option to create multiple galleries with many ways to organize your media and it is also compatible with Elementor and all major page builders.

It could be also hard and tedious the fact of sharing images with your team or between computers to upload them to your WP site, and WP Media Folder offers you the option of sharing them using Google Photos.

You will be able to upload a picture or any other media directly from your phone or any other PC and this picture will be automatically available to import on your site with just a few clicks, not just the media but also your albums, making it possible to create galleries directly from albums and we'll see how to do it in this post

Using WordPress and Google Photos to manage your media

Using WP Media Folder and its Gallery Addon will allow you to use Google Photos to import images or also complete albums and convert them to awesome galleries let's see how to achieve it.

Once connected (you can see how to connect Google Photos in just a few steps here), you'll be able to see a new option in your Media Library called Google Photos.

This new section will allow you to see all the images and albums available in your Google Photos account with the option to directly import them to a specific folder in your media library.

The process of importing is really simple and just takes a few clicks, if you want to import an entire album, you can easily go to the Album and click on Import Album and if you want to just import a selection of images, you can click on them and then, click the Import Selection button.

Clicking on any of the import options will open a pop-up with our folders available in the media library(created with WP Media Folder), you will need to select the folder where you want to upload it or just leave it in the main "Media Library" if you don't want to import the selection or album to a specific folder :)

For this example, the images will be imported to a folder called "dogs album".

When clicking on Import, you'll be able to see a notification in the top right letting you know that the images are being imported, the import will finish when this message disappears.

When the import is done, you can easily go to the folder where you imported them and they'll be there.

The best part of this is that it was done by clicking a few buttons.

But it's not all, let's see how to create galleries based on Google Photos albums using the WP Media Folder Gallery Addon.

When installing the Gallery Addon, a new section will appear in your media library options called Media Folder Galleries.

In this new section, you are going to be able to easily create galleries and manage them using the folder system that looks and works like the one that is added to your Media Library.

In order to import the albums and convert them to galleries, we have to click on +Add New Gallery.

There are two options, the option to Quick gallery from folder that will allow you to select a folder in your media library and generate a gallery based on the images inside the folder.

Then we have the option that we are going to use which is + Create new media gallery, this option will allow us to create a new gallery from the scratch.

Clicking on it will open a pop-up where you can quickly select a theme, type the name of the gallery and also choose if this will be a sub-gallery or a parent gallery.

In this case, we are going to use the Slider gallery and the gallery name is Dogs gallery, after doing this, you only need to click on "Create".

A gallery will be created in the left panel and you are going to be able to see the options for the gallery in the right panel.

At the bottom of the right panel, you can see the Upload images section where are all the options to upload, these options are:

WP Logo: from the media library directly.

Folder icon: Upload media from your PC.

Video icon: add videos embedded from services like Youtube or VIMEO.

Google Photos icon: the option that we will use here is the one that will allow us to import albums or images directly from Google Photos.

Clicking this icon opens a popup with the Google Photos library connected to the site.

We have prepared an album called Dogs for this post, as we want to import a complete album, all we have to do is select the album on the left panel and then, click on IMPORT ALBUM.

You will see a small blue notification letting you know that the import process is being done.

When the message disappears, the pop-up will be automatically closed and the images will appear in the right section of the gallery.

Now that the images were imported to the gallery, we can use all the options from the Gallery manager to customize our new gallery.

Between the options, we can find 3 tabs:

General: Here are the main options with a preview of the images, we can change things like the gallery name, the gallery level(if we want it to be a sub-gallery), if you want to create a gallery based on a folder and the import options.

Display settings & Shortcode: In this section, we can manage all the settings related to the gallery layout, we can define the theme, copy the shortcode, margins, images size, Aspect ratio, number of columns, action on click, the order, and if we want gallery navigation and many other settings.

There are options that could vary depending on the theme that we select if, for example, we select a theme like "Slider", we can define, for example, the transition duration and the transition type.

Preview: This is the section where you can preview the gallery so you don't need to be visiting different pages to check the final view of the gallery.

So as you can see all you need to manage your galleries on one single page and also the option to directly import them from Google Photos! When the gallery configuration is done, all you need to do is save it and proceed with inserting it into your content.

Adding your gallery in Elementor

Now that we have created the gallery all we need is to add it to your content, let's see how easy is to do it using one of the most popular page builders, Elementor.

In order to insert the gallery using Elementor, go to your page/post and click on Edit with Elementor.

Clicking this button will load the Elementor page builder, now let's look for the widget that will be used to add the gallery, for this, type WP Media Folder in the search field.

This will show us 3 options WP Media Folder PDF Embed, WP Media Folder Gallery, and the that we will use the WP Media Folder Gallery Addon.

WP Media Folder PDF Embed: This will allow you to embed a PDF in your content.

WP Media Folder Gallery: This widget will allow you to create a gallery directly from your Media Library.

WP Media Folder Gallery Addon: This will allow you to select a gallery from the Gallery Addon where we previously created the gallery so let's click it.

A left panel will appear with all the gallery options that we had in the Gallery Addon screen with the option to select a gallery, click on it, and select the name of the gallery that should be added.

This will load a preview of the gallery in the right panel so we can also adjust the gallery from this screen with all the options that we have in the Gallery Addon manager but directly from the Elementor page meaning that all we need to do in the Gallery addon manager is add the images! Awesome, isn't it?

Using it in this way you will be able to work on the page directly and be totally sure that the gallery will fit your content so adjust it as you want and finish your page!

What about if we need to add only one image? Would it be something possible to achieve using WP Media Folder?

The answer to that question is yes! WP Media Folder will make it easier to find an image with the use of the media folders and everything directly in your media library.

So in order to add an image, use the normal image widget from Elementor.

Now click on Choose image as you would do normally, the media library will load, and with this, the media folders too.

So click the image, add it as you would do normally and that's all! Finding an image hasn't ever been as easy as it is now with WP Media Folder.

And this is not all, the media folders will load on all the pages where the media library loads making it compatible with almost all the plugins where you can add images in the market ;)

Google Photos integration in video

Start creating the most professional WordPress galleries

Now that you know all the basics, you can start creating galleries with filters and ordering your media with the power of WP Media Folder with the option of a direct import from your Google Photos account as well as do many other things so what are you waiting for? Check the full integration, and get your membership here!