The guide.

Whether you’re new to Vimeography or looking to get the most out of it, we’re here to help.

Before you begin

Compatibility

Vimeography is only compatible with WordPress version 3.1+ and with videos that are hosted on Vimeo.com.

Installation

Sign in to your WordPress blog’s administration panel, then go to the Plugins menu option and choose Add New from the menu flyout. From here, you can complete the installation in one of two ways:

  1. In the Search field, type Vimeography and click Search Plugins. Once the results finish loading, you can automatically download and install the plugin by clicking on install.
  2. If you already downloaded the Vimeography plugin from vimeography.com, click Upload (located under the top header which reads Install Plugins). From here, click Browse and choose the vimeography.zip file that you downloaded from vimeography.com, and complete the installation by clicking Install Now.

Once you’ve completed these steps, you can start using the plugin by activating it on your blog’s Installed Plugins page by clicking on the Activate link under the listed Vimeography plugin. Easy, right?

Creating Galleries

Vimeography can retrieve and display up to 60 videos from 4 different types of Vimeo sources: usernames, channels, albums and groups. Entering a username as your source would retrieve the videos uploaded by a specific user, while entering a channel, album or group as your source would retrieve the videos contained in the respective channel, album, or group.

For this example, let’s say that your Vimeo username is unexit, and you want to show the videos that you’ve uploaded to your Vimeo account as a portfolio in a Vimeography gallery.

  1. Go to the Vimeography menu option and choose New Gallery from the menu flyout.

You’re now presented with a small form to fill out, which requires 2 things: a title and a source URL.

  1. Give your gallery a title. It can be anything you want, but for our purposes, call this one My Portfolio.
  2. In the field labeled show the videos from, enter http://vimeo.com/unexit (or, your actual Vimeo username URL) and click Create Gallery.

Bam! Unless someone forgot to oil the machine, Vimeography should have worked its magic and successfully created your first gallery. Nice work!

At any time, you can repeat this process and create another gallery to showcase your collection of videos. Vimeography allows you to create unlimited galleries, so don’t be shy!

Changing the appearance

At this point, you should see a preview of your gallery with your videos being displayed inside of it. Your gallery is ready to be placed on your blog as is, but if you’d like to change the way your gallery looks, then adding themes is the way to go.
All of your installed themes are listed underneath your gallery preview. To use a different theme for your gallery, simply click on the theme’s thumbnail below your gallery. Your gallery will be automatically updated to use your new theme selection.

Advanced settings

Vimeography offers just a few advanced settings to give you a little more control over how your gallery works.

  • The limit setting allows you to define the number of videos that you’d like to show inside of your Vimeography gallery. You may want to adjust this settings if you’d only like to show the last 5 videos from your Vimeo source. The default for this setting is 20 videos; you may choose to retrieve up to 60 videos from your Vimeo source. If you are looking to get more than 60, check out Vimeography Pro.
  • The refresh setting allows you to determine how frequently your gallery should reload the videos from your Vimeo source. You may want to adjust this setting according to how frequently your Vimeo source is updated. NOTE: the shorter that you set your refresh setting, the longer that your site and gallery will take to load.
  • The featured video setting allows you to enter the ID of the Vimeo video that you would like to display as the first video in your gallery. This is useful if you have a favorite video, demo reel, or an introductory video that you want to place at the forefront of the gallery, but that may not have fallen into chronological order while being handled in your Vimeo source. If the video that you set as the featured video already exists in your Vimeo source, it will be removed from its position in your Vimeo source and brought to the beginning of the gallery.

These advanced settings are optional and do not need to be adjusted in order for your gallery to work properly.

 

Displaying Galleries

Vimeography works by using WordPress shortcode. If you’re unfamiliar with shortcode, don’t worry! You don’t need to learn anything intimidating in order for Vimeography to work.

Inserting on a page/post

Now that you’ve made your first gallery, let’s put it to use by showing it on a new page.

  1. Go to the Pages menu option and choose Add New from the menu flyout.
  2. In the toolbar of the page content editor, click the button. The Vimeography gallery helper appears.
  3. From the dropdown box, select your gallery’s title and click Insert Gallery.

Double-Bam! You’ve just inserted the gallery onto your page. You can see the gallery in action by clicking Preview under your page’s Publish settings.

If you’re comfortable using shortcode, you can also insert a gallery by typing [vimeography id="#"], where # is replaced by the ID of your Vimeography gallery.

Inserting in a theme/template

If you’d like to insert your gallery somewhere other than a post or a page, you can use the WordPress function do_shortcode();

Editing Galleries

Vimeography galleries can be edited or modified at any time by going to the Vimeography menu option and choosing Edit Galleries from the menu flyout. This page lists every gallery that you’ve created with Vimeography and gives you the ability to change gallery settings, make gallery duplicates, or completely remove your galleries.

You can access an existing gallery’s settings by clicking on the gallery’s title in the gallery list.

You may want to make a copy of a gallery so that you can use it as a working template for a new gallery. To do this, move your mouse over the gallery title, then choose Duplicate from the gallery options that appear below the gallery’s title.

If you’re becoming a gallery hoarder and need to do some spring cleaning, you can delete a gallery by moving your mouse over the gallery title, then choosing Delete from the gallery options that appear below the gallery’s title. Note that this will not delete any of your actual videos from your Vimeo source. Remember: once a gallery is gone, it’s gone for good – no mulligans!

Using Themes

The real power of Vimeography lies in its ability to customize a gallery’s appearance by using themes. Think of themes as an outfit for your gallery; by using different themes, your gallery will be presented in a unique and stylized manner which best fits your videos, flair, or blog design.

Vimeography comes with a few default themes for you to choose from, but you can also browse the official Vimeography theme collection to find one that suits you best.

It is currently not possible to change the way a theme looks, but don’t worry – it’s on our to-do list.

Installing a theme

Once you’ve found and downloaded a theme, you’ll need to add it to your Vimeography plugin before you are able to use it.

  1. Go the the Vimeography menu option and choose My Themes from the menu flyout.
  2. Inside the blue box at the bottom of the page, click Browse to locate the theme file that you downloaded, then click install theme!

Triple-flip Bammy! Your new theme is installed and ready to be applied to any of your galleries.

Creating your own theme

If you know how to use the interwebz and PHP, you may also be interested in creating your own theme. We’ll have a guide written up on this soon, but feel free to dig into the source code of the provided default theme to get an idea of what themes are composed of.

Extending Vimeography

Vimeography Pro

Coming soon!