Gallery addresses you choose, folder and ZIP imports, and a caching fix.
Editable gallery and album addresses
View pages were fixed at /fotogrids/gallery/{slug} and /fotogrids/album/{slug}, changeable only through a filter. Settings → View Pages now takes an editable prefix and one segment per collection type, each with a live preview. Any of the three may be empty, so example.com/{slug} is reachable. The base is validated on save against existing pages and posts, the rewrite slugs of other post types and taxonomies, and the roots WordPress reserves; a collision is rejected with the conflicting owner named rather than saved. Addresses built on a previous base, or ending in a collection ID, redirect to the current permalink.
Add items from a folder or a ZIP
The Add New menu's From Folder and From ZIP entries now work. From Folder browses the uploads directory on the server with breadcrumbs, sub-folder image counts and per-file selection; images already in the Media Library are reused and the rest are registered where they sit, so nothing on disk is copied, moved or deleted. From my computer uploads a whole folder from your machine, and From ZIP imports the images out of an archive.
Per-item SEO checkup
The item editor's SEO tab held four Pro cards and an upgrade button while every field search engines read sat one tab away in Free. It now runs seven checks against the item — alt text, filename, title, caption, description, credit and file weight — grades it Bad, Needs improvement or Good, and gives every failing row a Fix link that switches to the field and focuses it. The Pro badge is gone.
Statistics follows the period filter
Views and Interactions report the selected 7, 30 or 90 days rather than all time, each with a percentage change against the preceding window of equal length; the lifetime figure moves to a footnote, shown only when it differs. Top content tables are sortable, and the donut palette ranks by value.
Choosing a template during setup creates the gallery
The setup wizard's Choose a template card led to the Templates page, whose only action is Apply — and Apply needs a gallery a first-time user does not have. The card now opens the page in a mode where every template reads Use this template and creates the gallery for you.
Freemius SDK updated to 2.13.4
Payment history renders for currencies outside USD, GBP and EUR instead of erroring, and shows the currency you were charged in. Checkout no longer lets query parameters override the checkout context, and a slow licensing call blocks a request for 30 seconds rather than 60.
Frontend URL handling hardened
JavaScript that ships to visitors now validates URLs at the DOM sinks it writes to rather than relying only on the server having escaped them, so the guarantee holds if a filter, page builder or template edit sits downstream.
Build toolchain advisories cleared
Six high-severity advisories in development tooling are resolved. The shipped output is unchanged.
Galleries lost their layout for logged-out visitors
A cached gallery replayed its HTML without the inline custom properties it was built with, so –fg-cols was missing and the grid collapsed to a single column. Editors never saw it, because the cache is bypassed for anyone who can manage galleries. Galleries cached before this release re-render rather than replaying.
Random sorting was frozen by caching
A seeded order was chosen while the page was built, and every cache in front of it stored that one order — so random galleries were identical on every visit.
The offline template set listed 46 templates that could not be applied
When the remote catalogue is unreachable and nothing is cached, the bundled fallback served 46 Pro entries carrying no settings and no thumbnail, which rendered as grey placeholder cards that applied nothing. The bundled set is now 23 gallery and 5 album templates, all with real settings. The Pro upsell is unaffected — it comes from the remote catalogue, not from disk.
Every chart in wp-admin was blank
Library, Statistics and the dashboard widgets all failed to render because the vendored Chart.js bundle threw on load. Rebuilt, and updated to 4.5.1.
The Featured Item layout's Show all images button did nothing when clicked
The button rendered correctly but its click handler never fired.
Missing EXIF fixed, faster uploads, and a System Info tool.
System Info tool
Tools → System Info reports your WordPress, server, database and media environment alongside FotoGrids' own state, ready to copy or download into a support ticket. A second tab lists PHP and browser errors raised by FotoGrids code, plus a read-only tail of the WordPress debug log.
Media tab in the item editor
Every image size WordPress generated for an item, with preview, dimensions, file size and origin, and copy-URL actions. Sizes that were never produced are flagged as Not generated, File missing or Source too small, and link straight to Regenerate Thumbnails.
News & Updates feed and a What's New panel
On the dashboard and in the header. Both can be turned off under Settings → Advanced.
Gallery uploads are much faster
The uploader now uses WordPress' own media uploader. A batch uploads in parallel instead of one file at a time, your site's mime and file-size validation comes with it, and one failure no longer strands the rest of the batch.
Verified against WordPress 7.1
Including its client-side media processing.
Permissions Manager rewritten
It now lists what FotoGrids actually gates, in plain language: tools named rather than shown as capability slugs, and the 26 capabilities WordPress derives from the post types collapsed into four readable rows per collection type. Existing role grants are unchanged.
Statistics remembers the period you picked
The selected range lives in the URL, so a reload or a shared link opens on the same view. "Recent Activity" is now "Recently Viewed", which is what the table always showed.
Import / Export log reads at a glance
Coloured Export and Import pills, one chip per data type, and styled status pills.
Debug Log panel
It always renders now, reports WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG as status lights, and names each channel's FOTOGRIDS_DEBUG_* constant on its row.
Admin fonts down from 748 KB to 241 KB
Poppins as woff2, with JetBrains Mono bundled for monospace surfaces. Both served from your own site.
Tooltips on the link / unlink and device toggles
In collection settings, opening on focus as well as on hover.
The translation template now carries all 1,741 strings
It previously shipped empty.
Direct SQL hardened
Table names interpolated into queries are now prepared or quoted, and WordPress Plugin Check runs on every change before it lands.
EXIF and XMP data missing from large photos
Both were read from the -scaled copy WordPress creates for images over the big-image threshold, and WordPress strips metadata when it makes that file. Camera, lens, aperture, shutter and ISO came back empty for essentially every modern camera photo, and the XMP credit packet with them. Both now read from the preserved original.
Watermark generation running before any image sizes existed
Surfaced by WordPress 7.1's client-side media processing.
An Add-Ons link and empty submenu on the plugins screen
For add-ons that do not exist — along with a Freemius Opt In link that could put your usage-data choice out of step with Settings → Advanced.
Three "Complete Your Setup" steps that could never be ticked
They can now, and the progress bar reaches 100%.
The video embed modal losing per-source drafts
The upgrade modal opening without a close button
The drag placeholder label sitting off-centre
Extra-small buttons rendering at full height
Featured / Share Image metabox alignment
Blank rows for untitled galleries
FotoGrids 1.0 — the first public release.
Eight gallery layouts
Grid, Masonry, Justified, Slider, Image Viewer, Single Item, Featured Item, and Instant Photos.
Video in the gallery
Media Library video files plus YouTube and Vimeo embeds, in the grid and in the Lightbox.
Unlimited albums
Group galleries the way the work is already organised.
Templates
Ready-made ones to start from, and your own layouts saved for reuse.
Immersive Lightbox
Keyboard navigation, autoplay, swipe gestures, and social sharing.
Sorting, on-page filtering, and EXIF details
Order the items, let visitors narrow them down, show the capture data.
Text watermarking and password protection
Mark the images, or put the whole gallery behind a password.
Page builder widgets
Elementor and Divi.
View and share statistics
Which galleries get opened, and which get passed on.
Gutenberg blocks and shortcodes
For everywhere the builders don't reach.
Drag-and-drop reordering
Arrange a gallery by dragging the items into place.
Item details
Captions, descriptions, tags, people, and location.
Lazy loading and pagination
A long gallery stays quick on a phone.
Server-side rendered, SEO-friendly markup
The images are in the HTML, so crawlers see them.
React admin interface and REST API
The whole plugin runs on its own REST API.