One gallery with 800 photos is not an archive, it is a scroll. Visitors find things in a big collection the same way they find files on a computer: by folders. This guide shows how to plan that folder tree and build it in WordPress with nested albums.
Start with the tree, not the upload
Before uploading anything, sketch how a visitor would look for a photo. Most archives fall into one of three shapes:
- By place: Travel → Europe → Italy → Rome.
- By time: Weddings → 2026 → June → The Smith wedding.
- By client or project: Portfolio → Branding → Client name.
Pick one main axis. Mixing them on the same level (say, "Italy" next to "2026") confuses people. If you need a second way in, use tags and search instead of a second tree.
Two practical limits help: keep each level to roughly 4–12 items, so a level fits on one screen, and keep most paths to three levels or fewer. Deeper is fine for big archives, but every extra click costs some visitors.
Build the structure in Robo Gallery
In Robo Gallery an album is simply a gallery that contains other galleries. That keeps the model simple: everything is a gallery, and the hierarchy decides which ones are albums.
- Create the galleries for every node of your tree under Robo Gallery → Add New Gallery. Start with the top level, for example Travel, Weddings and Portfolio.
- Open any gallery and find the Album Hierarchy panel. Click Edit.
- Drag galleries under their parents to build the tree. There is no depth limit in v5 PRO.
- Upload photos to the leaf galleries (Rome, The Smith wedding), not to the albums above them. An album can mix photos and sub-albums, but archives stay tidier when photos live at the bottom.
- Put the top album on a page with the Gutenberg block, the Elementor widget or the shortcode shown in the gallery list.
The free version includes up to 3 albums, enough to try the idea. Unlimited and nested albums are part of PRO.
Give every album a cover
A folder of grey tiles tells visitors nothing. In v5 galleries, albums appear inside the gallery as folder-style tiles, and each one can show a cover image. In the album settings you can show or hide the cover, choose the album icon and its colour.
Choose covers the way a magazine chooses a cover: one strong, recognisable photo, not the first file in the folder. If an album holds only other albums (a "cover gallery"), its tiles become a visual table of contents for the whole archive.
Keep a big archive fast
An archive grows; the page that shows it should not slow down with it.
- Upload images at a sensible size: 1200–2000 px on the long side covers retina screens and full-screen lightboxes.
- Show a limited number of images per album and let Load More bring the rest.
- Turn on lazy loading and the gallery cache (Gallery → Options → Cache).
Our guide to fast WordPress galleries goes through each of these in detail.
A short checklist
- One main axis for the tree; tags for everything else.
- 4–12 items per level, three levels for most paths.
- Photos in the leaf galleries, albums above them.
- A real cover on every album.
- Breadcrumbs on, Load More on long albums, cache on.
See the structure in action in the Masonry & Nested Albums demo: a root gallery with 8 albums, each holding 4 more.