Change the way wordpress outputs images or image galleries

Question

The title is the short version of the question. Here's what I need in more details...

If the answer is not so simple, I would be glad if you can point me to the right direction with a tutorial or to the codex and where I can ready more about this.

Inside the WP loop, and "maybe" before using "the_content();", how can I tell wordpress to go to the database, loop/query through each one of the images inserted on that post/page, in such a way that I'll have full control of how those images will be displayed.

I need something that will be easy and intuitive for the client to update (with new images), and I consider easy and intuitive when you only have to click the "add media" button, upload some images and add them to the post/page.

At the same time, I need more control on how those images will be displayed to show all them like so:

<a href="link-to-full-img-size-01"><img href="img-01-thumbnail" /></a>
<a href="link-to-full-img-size-02"><img href="img-02-thumbnail" /></a>
<a href="link-to-full-img-size-03"><img href="img-03-thumbnail" /></a>
<a href="link-to-full-img-size-04"><img href="img-04-thumbnail" /></a>

And each anchor link will also have a rel="shadowbox[page-title]".

I've done this before, and something even more complex than this, but it's far from being easy to maintain (at least for clients).

I'm thinking about creating a custom-post-type with some different taxonomies. Then I create a new post, linked to a given taxonomy, use it as a bucket for all the images for that taxonomy, and than import it all inside another page-template, but I still don't know how to control how the images will be displayed.

Hope the question and description is clear enough. Thanks!

Answer 1

After some research, I came up with a solution that worked for me.

It's nice because it's not using the WP Gallery (you don't need to insert a gallery into your post/page to make it work).

It's awesome because you can do whatever you want inside the "images loop".

Note: the 'preview' in $size='preview' is a custom size I created using add_image_size( 'preview', 120, 120, true ); inside my functions.php file.

And here's what I came up with:

(... inside a new page.php ...)

<?php do_atomic( 'open_content' ); ?>
<?php $imgs_args = array(
        'numberposts'   => -1,
        'order'         => 'DESC',
        'post_mime_type'=> 'image',
        'post_type'     => 'attachment',
        'post_parent'   => $post->ID,
      ); $imgs = get_children( $imgs_args ); ?>
<?php if ( have_posts() ) : while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

(...)

<?php the_content(); ?>
<?php if( $imgs ) : ?>
    <div class="showcase">
    <?php foreach( $imgs as $img ) : ?>
    <?php /* Setting Sizes */
        $preview_size = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $img->ID, $size='preview' );
        $full_size = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $img->ID, $size='full-size' ); ?>
        <a href="<?php echo $full_size[0]; ?>" rel="shadowbox" alt="<?php echo $img->post_title; ?>">
            <img src="<?php echo $preview_size[0]; ?>" alt="<?php echo $img->post_title; ?>" />
        </a>
    <?php endforeach; ?>
    </div>
<?php endif; ?>

(...)

It's also worth mentioning that Justin Tadlock has a really nice plugin called Cleaner Gallery. It was while checking his plugin' code that I found out about the nice get_children(); function that makes all this customization possible.

Hope it helps someone else in the future.