How to create a photography portfolio website in WordPress

Plan a small menu before you edit the design: Home, Portfolio, About and Contact are usually enough. Create one portfolio page for the main index, then decide whether each project will have its own page or whether several galleries will sit on one page.

Choose a photography-focused theme or a block theme with strong image layouts. With a block theme, you can edit the header, footer, navigation and templates from Appearance → Editor; classic themes use different controls. WordPress documents these as two different theme approaches.

Go to Pages → Add New and create Home, Portfolio, About and Contact. Add a short introduction and one clear call to action on the home page, such as an enquiry button. Keep the About page focused on your location, specialties and working process.

To make Home the first page visitors see, set it as the static front page under Settings → Reading. You can select a separate page for blog posts if you plan to publish shoots, advice or project notes.

Export web-ready copies rather than uploading the original camera files. Use consistent crops where a grid requires them, keep file names readable, and upload only the strongest images for each project. A smaller, edited set usually looks more professional than a page containing every exposure.

Upload images through the Media Library or directly inside the editor. Add useful alt text to each image when it conveys information, and use captions where a location, subject or client project needs context. WordPress’s Image and Gallery blocks support captions and image details.

Edit the Portfolio page, add a Gallery block, and choose images from the Media Library or upload them. Set the column count, spacing, image size and crop from the block settings. For individual projects, create a separate page and add one Gallery block for that project, with a short description above it.

This manual route is genuinely fine for a small portfolio and does not require a plugin. The drawback is that the native Gallery block is mainly a grid: advanced client proofing, password-protected galleries, filtering, complex masonry layouts and specialised lightboxes may require a theme or plugin. The common Friday failure is linking images to attachment pages by accident, which sends visitors to a plain media page instead of showing the photograph at full size. Check the link setting and preview every gallery.

Give every project a clear title, short introduction and featured image. The featured image is often used by the theme on the portfolio index or home page, so set one from the page or post settings sidebar. Keep project names specific, such as “Lake District elopement” or “Autumn editorial portraits”, rather than using “Gallery 1”.

Add Home, Portfolio, About, Contact and any key project categories to the site navigation. Block themes use the Navigation block, while classic themes may use Appearance → Menus. Test the menu on a phone, because a desktop navigation that wraps or hides the contact link is easy to miss.

Preview the site on a phone and desktop before publishing. Check that images are sharp but not unnecessarily large, galleries open in the intended way, captions are readable, and the contact form or email link works. Browse the Portfolio page on mobile using a normal connection; large galleries can become slow when every original-size image is loaded at once.

Once the site is live, keep the portfolio selective and update it by replacing weaker work rather than continually adding more. If you need client galleries, drag-and-drop layout controls or a more polished photography-first presentation without assembling several separate tools, a theme such as Snapster is the faster route. Its focus is customisable galleries, responsive layouts and drag-and-drop editing, so you can start from a designed portfolio structure instead of building every section yourself.