Tags are labels you assign to individual items in your Galleries. Once assigned, tags work across the plugin in several ways: they power the Gallery’s filter bar so visitors can browse by tag, they appear in the Lightbox info panel, they can drive a tag archive page that collects every item sharing a tag, they feed into the Gallery search, and they contribute to SEO by surfacing descriptive keywords in the page markup.
Tags in FotoGrids are shared across all Galleries. A tag you create on one item is available to assign to any other item in any Gallery — you are building a site-wide library of tags, not creating per-gallery taxonomies.
How tags are stored #
FotoGrids stores tags in a dedicated database table (fotogrids_tags) rather than using WordPress taxonomies. This gives precise control over usage counts and keeps tag, people, and location data in one consistent structure. Tags are connected to items through a separate join table (fotogrids_item_metadata).
Adding tags to an item #
- Open the Gallery editor and click the item you want to tag.
- In the Item Edit modal, click the Tags tab.
- Start typing a tag name in the input field. If matching tags already exist in your library, they appear as suggestions below — click a suggestion to apply it without creating a duplicate.
- To create a new tag, type the name and press Enter (or click Add).
- To remove a tag from this item, click the ✕ on its tag chip.
- Click Save Changes.
Tags are not case-sensitive. “Architecture” and “architecture” are treated as the same tag.
Tags and filtering #
When the Gallery’s Filtering setting is enabled and Filter by Tags is turned on, FotoGrids generates a row of filter buttons above (or below) the Gallery — one button per tag that appears on at least one item in that Gallery. Visitors click a button to show only items carrying that tag.
See the Pagination and Filtering articles for configuration details.
Tags in the Lightbox #
When the Lightbox info panel is enabled and the Tags info block is included in the active info blocks list, tags assigned to an item are listed in the info panel when that item is open in the Lightbox. See Lightbox: Info Panel for how to enable the info panel and configure which blocks it shows.
Managing your tag library #
Tags are managed from FotoGrids → Library → Tags. The library screen shows every tag across your site with its usage count — how many items currently carry it. From there you can rename a tag, delete it, or bulk-delete unused ones.
Renaming a tag updates it everywhere instantly — every item that carries the tag reflects the new name without any re-saving. Deleting a tag removes it from all items that carry it, but does not delete the items themselves.
Tags with a usage count of zero are safe to delete and can be cleaned up at any time.
