Use Existing galleries on 7.1 with Classic Gallery block
This post is a follow-up on Classic Gallery block introduction, helping user add Gallery block on Squarespace 7.1 Sections
If you are familiar with 7.0 Gallery pages and Use Existing Gallery option of 7.0 Gallery blocks, you may find it disappointed that this option is no longer available on 7.1 Gallery blocks.
“It’s not possible to use the Use Existing Gallery option in version 7.1. This option is only for gallery pages, which are only available in version 7.0.”
That maybe a deal break for who want to upgrade their site from 7.0 to 7.1, but with the latest updates of Classic Gallery block the Existing Gallery has become available!
Gallery method options
Gallery blocks on Squarespace are working on 2 methods transient and existing
Transient Gallery: this contains the images and videos that you inserted into the block in Content > Upload Media tab and can not be shared between pages.
7.1 Gallery sections also a transient Gallery, we can take advantage of this finding for create our Gallery page in 7.1 below…Existing Gallery: in this method, the gallery media is linked from a Gallery pages, so you can have multiple Gallery blocks with the same content but with different layout. The Gallery pages can be found in Content > Use Existing Gallery tab, however this method is not available on 7.1, you will see a blank screen in the page selection, this is due to Gallery pages are not supported in 7.1 template.
So, to replicate a Gallery page on 7.1 template, you need to create a transient Gallery block or Gallery section on a blank page.
Making Gallery pages
Create a regular page and insert a Gallery to the page, you can insert a transient Gallery block or a Gallery section. A Gallery can contain up to 250 items.
By default the code will scan all regular pages to look for a transient gallery, for website which has many pages, it can be a slow process, so to make it organized and easier for the code to look for galleries, I created a reserved name for dropdown/folder, so if you create a dropdown named Classic Gallery Pages and put your Gallery pages there, the code will only look for pages within that dropdown.
To use those pages on 7.1 Gallery blocks
step 1: create transient Gallery block or section on blank page
step 2: create new gallery block, switch to Use Existing Gallery tab
step 3: choose a page from the list
Step-by-step tutorial for the above steps has been created in this post
Disclaimer
This script uses undocumented API from Squarespace, so use it with your own risks
It is required Squarespace Business plan or higher to install the script, if you are Personal plan, checkout out this post.
Bonus
Do you want to display different Gallery block on desktop and mobile? Enabling Existing Gallery option and using Block Visibility from Spark plugin can help you save tons of clicks upload images and video on both blocks.
