Shared Albums for Google Photos vs Simple Google Photos Grid

Embed a Google Photos shared album directly from the source, without uploading copies to your WordPress media library. Add one shortcode, choose a gallery, slider, or carousel layout, and the plugin turns your album into a responsive photo experience for desktop and mobile visitors. It is built for photographers, bloggers, clubs, families, travel sites, event pages, and anyone who already organizes photos in Google Photos and wants to show them beautifully on a WordPress site. Why Install It No duplicate uploads – Keep your photos in Google Photos and show them on your WordPress site. Less gallery maintenance – Update the album at the source instead of rebuilding galleries by hand. A better visitor experience – Give people a responsive gallery, slider, carousel, fullscreen view, or lightbox. Photo and video support – Share mixed albums without splitting them into separate WordPress galleries. Mobile-friendly browsing – Let visitors swipe, tap, zoom, navigate, and enjoy slideshows naturally. Useful presentation options – Show descriptions, dates, counters, buttons, and image details when they help. Built for real albums – Caching, lazy loading, and progressive loading help larger albums stay practical. Why People Use It Google Photos is convenient for storing and sharing albums. WordPress is where your audience is. This plugin connects the two. Instead of exporting photos, uploading them to the media library, rebuilding galleries, and repeating the work after every album change, you can share the Google Photos album once and embed it where you need it. What Happens After Installing The plugin adds its own WordPress admin menu with a friendly Guide page, ready-to-use examples, a live shortcode playground, and the current parameter reference. Start with a sample, paste your own Google Photos share link, preview the result, and place the shortcode where you want the album to appear. Community Inspiration The optional Community Directory helps you discover what other users are building with the plugin. Browse real shortcode examples for layout ideas. Copy a configuration and adapt it to your own album. Rate useful examples and share your own. Add a sample page URL if you want curious visitors to find your site. Community features are optional. You can use the gallery plugin without joining or publishing anything. Community Acknowledgements This plugin has been shaped not only by code, but also by people willing to test early versions, question design decisions, and explain their real-world needs. Their ideas and thoughtful feedback continue to make it more useful and easier to use. Special Recognition Naveen Bachwani (@naveenbachwani) – An early adopter with a sharp eye and analytical mind. His feedback often improved usability while new features were still being designed, before they reached a public release. His many feature ideas, extensive testing, UX feedback, and detailed design discussions have helped shape photo information and descriptions, mobile and Fullscreen behavior, the Community Directory, and the current Lightbox and Fullscreen experience. Personal note: It has been a genuine pleasure working with you, Naveen! Key Contributors Peter Berger (@peterpolow) – Detailed feature requests and patient real-device testing that helped drive video support, Gallery mode, separate inline and Fullscreen controls, and more discoverable button behavior on iPhone and other mobile devices. Ulf (@toonwolf) – Real-world testing and thoughtful presentation requests based on using the plugin for digital signage on a screen in his tennis club cafe. Additional Acknowledgements Valter Bruno (@valterbruno) – The original Lightbox feature request and continued real-world testing of the plugin and its shortcode workflow. Luis (@luisbenitez777) – The request to support mosaic thumbnails in Fullscreen, which became the Fullscreen mosaic feature. Mateusz Starzak (GitHub @matiaspl) – A public fork that inspired the original mosaic feature. GMRobbins (@gmrobbins) – An early usability review that led to clearer onboarding and helped inspire Gallery mode and the carousel-to-single experience. Credits Uses Swiper – MIT License Uses Plyr – MIT License Privacy Policy This plugin does not collect or store any user data for its core gallery functionality. Use of external Google services The plugin fetches public Google Photos album pages from https://photos.google.com and image files from *.googleusercontent.com in order to render the galleries. Only publicly shared album links are supported; the plugin has no access to private albums or any content that is not already available via a public share link. The plugin does not collect, store, or transmit user credentials or personal data. It only caches album HTML and image URLs in WordPress transients for performance, and this cache is stored locally in your WordPress database. Community Directory (optional, opt-in) The Community Directory is optional. Browsing samples loads public examples from sa.janzeman.com. Sign-in, ratings, and publishing are used only when you choose to connect to the community. If you publish an entry, the community service stores the information you submit, such as title, shortcode, description, tags, optional sample page URL, and optional display name. You can delete your community account from the plugin admin page. The community backend does not use cookies, analytics, advertising, or newsletters. Support Bug reports: Open an issue on GitHub Feature requests: Post on the support forum Privacy, account, or sensitive questions: email [email protected] Leave a rating: Review on WordPress.org Buy Me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/janzeman

A simple, no-frills solution to display a Google Photos album on your site using a widget or a shortcode. There is only one layout option: grid. There is only one required attribute: album url. That’s it, that easy. See a demo and read more about the plugin. The code is also available on Github. Notes Your album on Google Photos must be “public”, which means you need to go into Google Photos on the web and set “Sharing options” to on, i.e. “Anyone with the link can see these photos and the people who’ve been invited or joined.” Requires curl or similar to fetch the photo urls. No support is provided. Probably no features will be added. You are free to ask, or to fork. Pull requests accepted. Widget Go to Appearance -> Widgets and a new widget named Simple Google Photos Grid should be available to use. Drag to your desired widget area and configure. Title: Heading of the widget on your site. Default to empty. Album URL: The full URL to your public gallery on Google Photos. URL must use one of the following domains: ‘photos.app.goo.gl’ or ‘photos.google.com’. Ideally should be the short, “shared” link (such as https://photos.app.goo.gl/G8EOLs5YtESchh4g1z). Num Photos to Show: Even numbers probably work best. There’s a maximum number, not sure what it is, but it’s pretty low. Num Photos per Row: How many photos to show per row? Probably some number that works well with Num Photos. Cache Interval (in minutes): How long to cache photo URLs before checking the album on Google again. 0 for no cache. Shortcode Place the shortcode in a post, page or theme. [simple_google_photos_grid album-url=”https://photos.app.goo.gl/G8EOLs5YtESchh4g1″] Available attributes are: – album-url: (required) the url to a public Google Photos album, domain must be one of ‘photos.app.goo.gl’ or ‘photos.google.com’ – number-photos: (optional) number of photos to display, defaults to 4 – number-photos-per-row: (optional) number of photos per row, defaults to 2 – cache-interval: (optional) length, in minutes, to cache the photo urls retrieved from Google, defaults to 15 [simple_google_photos_grid album-url="https://photos.app.goo.gl/G8EOLs5YtESchh4g1" number-photos="6" number-photos-per-row="3" cache-interval="120"]