This article details how to display Media from Google Drive on a WordPress website, what impacts the plugins might have on other components on your WordPress website and a summary of the real life problem and solution.
Recently I helped a client display hundreds of edited entries for a regional arts prize. We needed to display the entries in categories and multiple different galleries on the same and different pages across the WordPress site. Ideally being able to update the contents of the categories/galleries on the fly without the time consuming process of deleting and uploading directly to a WordPress gallery.
Using google drive to host the files was an attractive solution as we have a large 2TB drive that comes with a Google Workspace user account (which we have for Google Cloud features, see more soon on how we utilize an opensource automation droplet on Digital Ocean here: https://www.link.com). I assumed the upload speeds would be sufficient for multiple users to pull the content simultaneously.
How to Display images & galleries from Google Drive on a WordPress Website
We are going to start this guide assuming that your WordPress site has been setup and is live on the sub or custom domain you will be using.
First login to WordPress Admin > Click ‘Add plugin’ > search for ‘Google Drive Gallery’ > Install & Activate the plugin.
Plugin URL: https://wordpress.org/plugins/integrate-google-drive/
Connect your Google Account > Click ‘File browser’ > Sign in with google > Sign in using the authentication popup.
Create Gallery shortcode > Click ‘Shortcode builder’ > Click ‘Add new Shortcode’ button > Follow the plugin’s setup configuration steps.
Add Gallery to page/post > Once shortcode created > Copy shortcode > Click ‘Add new page/post’ > New ‘code’ module (or ‘Custom HTML’ section in default builder) > paste shortcode > publish page.
Test gallery is working > Copy page/post URL & paste in New incognito window to view with cleared cache and check that non logged in users can view the gallery.
Done.
It’s pretty simple, feel free to use the chat to get free support if you are having trouble getting this going.
The plugin has a pro feature which starts at $29 per year, it offers many great features which I look forward to trying out and doing another post/video. For now and for this case the plugin works great for what I need and for what my client needed.
There are other plugins like Shared Files which allow you to host your own files and add them individually.