Back in April I wrote about the developer blind spot, and how real users found the gaps I couldn't see after 25+ years of building for the web. I promised an update with the most requested improvements. Today I'm excited to say it's here, and it turned into a lot more than I planned.
Bulk Uploads, Finally
The number one request was bulk uploading, so that's where I started. You can now drag and drop as many images as you like into a gallery at once. Anything you fill in, like the description, keywords, author or license, is applied to the whole batch. Each image is clearly marked if it still needs schema details, so you can fine-tune them one by one later.
The free version on WordPress.org now has multi-image uploading too. Uploading one image at a time was the single biggest frustration I heard about, and fixing it in both versions was the right call.
Pro users get one more time-saver: a Choose from Media Library button. If an image is already in your WordPress Media Library, you don't need to upload it again. Pick it, and its title and caption carry over automatically.
Video Got a Lot Better
This is the part I'm most excited about. Video was the area I knew had room to grow, and this release covers a lot of it.
- YouTube Shorts: Shorts links now work, including the share links you copy straight from the YouTube app. Even if you paste a regular YouTube link to a Short, Schema Gallery checks and recognizes it as a Short.
- A dedicated Shorts layout: The new Shorts / Vertical Video gallery style shows tall 9:16 tiles and plays videos in a vertical player, the way vertical video is meant to be watched.
- Vertical video in Masonry: Shorts placed in a Masonry gallery now show as tall tiles that fit in alongside your photos.
- Vimeo support: "Coming Soon" is officially gone from the features page. Vimeo videos, public and unlisted, now work just like YouTube, with full VideoObject schema.
- Gallery Import: Not a video feature, but one I'm just as excited about. If you're coming from NextGEN Gallery or FooGallery, you can now bring your existing galleries over in a few clicks. Images, titles, descriptions, tags and order all come with you, and every image gets validated schema. Your original galleries are never touched.
Every video still gets validated schema markup. That's the whole point of Schema Gallery, and none of these features cut corners on it.
What's Next
None of this happens without the people who took the time to tell me what was missing. Every feature in this release traces back to a real user's feedback, and I'm grateful for every message.
Update today and give it a try, and keep the feedback coming. The next round of ideas is already on the list.