Guide

Before you Begin

Compatibility

Vimeography is only compatible with WordPress version 4.7+ 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 25 videos from 4 different types of Vimeo sources: usernames, showcases, channels, and groups. To show more than 25 videos, check out the section on Vimeography Pro.

Entering a username as your source would retrieve the videos uploaded by a specific user, while entering a showcase, channel, or group as your source would retrieve the videos contained in the respective showcase, channel, or group.

For this example, let’s say that your Vimeo username is davekiss, 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/davekiss (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. You can learn more about Vimeography themes in the Using Themes section.

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 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 URL 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.
  • The Number of Videos setting allows you to set how many videos should display inside of your gallery. The maximum number of videos is 25 videos. If you’d like to show more than that, check out Vimeography Pro, which allows unlimited videos.
  • The Max gallery width setting allows you to limit how wide the gallery should be allowed to display. Normally, a gallery will expand to fit the container it is placed inside, but if you’d like to shrink the gallery to be even smaller than its container’s width, you can set a percentage or pixel-based value here and the gallery will respect that setting.

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 Error: a Vimeography gallery with an ID of "0" was not found., 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 default theme for you, but you can also browse the official Vimeography theme collection to find one that suits you best.

You can customize the way a theme looks by using Vimeography Pro, which gives you controls for sizing, colors, spacing and other aspects of your theme.

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. If you already downloaded the Vimeography theme plugin from vimeography.com, visit the Plugins page and click Upload (located under the top header which reads Install Plugins). From here, click Browse and choose the .zip file that you downloaded from vimeography.com, and complete the installation by clicking Install Now.

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

Vimeography Pro is an add-on extension plugin that allows you to get the most out of your Vimeography galleries. Once Vimeography Pro is installed, your galleries are upgraded and allow you to show unlimited videos, use Vimeo portfolios, display hidden videos, have more advanced theme appearance controls, sort your videos, and soon will allows for inline galleries, playlists and more!

Compatibility

Vimeography Pro is only compatible with WordPress version 4.7+, Vimeography version 1.1.2+ 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. If you already purchased and downloaded the Vimeography Pro 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, make sure to activate it on your blog’s Installed Plugins page by clicking on the Activate link under the listed Vimeography Pro plugin. You’ll want to keep the basic version of Vimeography installed as well, as the two plugins work with one another to create your enhanced galleries. Easy, right?

Connecting your Vimeo account

In order to access all of the premium features that Vimeography Pro offers, you’ll need to connect your Vimeo account. This connection will allow Vimeography Pro to communicate with your Vimeo account and get access to all of the neat features Vimeo provides, like sorting and pagination. Think of it as a VIP pass to your Vimeo videos.

We’ve created a tutorial video that explains in detail how to connect your Vimeo account. You can watch this video, titled “Installing Vimeography Pro”, on the tutorials page.

Showing Unlimited Videos

Once you have Vimeography Pro installed, your gallery will show unlimited videos by default. Your theme provides paging controls to access every video from your Vimeo collection.

If you’d like to restrict the number of videos that should display in your gallery, enter the number of videos in the “Number of Videos” field under the Gallery Editor menu. Entering a value of “0” will show ALL of the videos in your Vimeo collection.

Sorting your Videos

Vimeography Pro adds options to choose the order that your Vimeo videos should appear in your gallery. You can choose from any of the following options:

  • date added
  • number of likes
  • number of comments
  • number of plays
  • alphabetically
  • duration
  • use my sort from Vimeo

Manually Sorting your Videos

To manually choose the order your videos appear in, select “use my sort from Vimeo” from the option box and click update. Then, head over to your Vimeo account and visit the Vimeo collection that you are using as the source for your Vimeography Pro gallery.

From here, you’ll need to go to the settings page for your Vimeo collection by clicking on the Gear icon. On your settings page, click the Videos tab.

You should see an option that reads “always arrange by:” and a dropdown box offering the different ways you can sort your videos. Select “Manually“, which should be the last option in this dropdown box.

You now have control over the order the videos should appear in. Click and drag the thumbnails around to place them in the order that pleases your heart. Once you are done, remember to click “Save Changes.”

The last step is to refresh your Vimeography gallery by clicking the refresh button under the “Settings” section of your Vimeography Pro Gallery Editor.

Using Advanced Appearance Controls

Vimeography Pro adds new controls for every Vimeography theme that provide for greater customization of the way your theme appears. These controls vary by theme, but include controls for thumbnail sizing, spacing, border thickness, and more.

The new controls are added to the bottom of the appearance editor on the Edit Galleries page.

Vimeo Pro Support

Vimeography Pro adds support for Vimeo Pro Portfolios. Instead of creating showcases or channels to show off your work, you can now create portfolios to hold your commercial work and display them on your blog.

In order for this to work, you must be opted-in to the community pass feature and your videos must be public.

Displaying Hidden Videos

If you’d like to hide your videos on Vimeo but show them on your site, you can add your videos to a public album, but set the video privacy settings to “Hide from Vimeo.”

Vimeography PRO currently requires videos to either be Public, Hidden from Vimeo, or Viewable with a Private Link. Password protected or private “only me” videos will not work.