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Forma Pro: portfolio grids and galleries for WordPress

Forma Pro builds the grids your work deserves: portfolios, photo galleries, blog and product grids, sliders and project indexes. You build a layout once in a visual editor, see every change in a live preview with your theme’s own styles, and place it anywhere with a block, an Elementor widget, a WPBakery element or a shortcode.

Seven layout types, sixteen card styles, AJAX filters and search, a PhotoSwipe lightbox, video and audio, client proofing for photographers and an AI assistant that sets a grid up from one sentence, all in one plugin that takes your theme’s fonts and colors.

Highlights

• 7 layout types: Grid, Masonry, Metro, Justified, Freeform, Slider and List.
• 16 card styles: 9 classic styles, 6 animated ones and Index for project lists.
• Live preview in the editor, per device: desktop, tablet landscape, tablet and phone.
• AJAX filters, search, sorting and pagination without reloading the page.
• Describe your grid: write what you want and the AI connected to your WordPress sets the layout up.
• Client proofing: clients pick their favorite photos from a link and send you the selection.
• Video and audio items in the lightbox, and video files playing in the card.
• Works everywhere: block editor, Elementor, WPBakery, shortcodes, WooCommerce products.
• Theme-friendly: it takes your theme’s fonts and colors, and every template can be overridden.

Seven layout types

• Grid: equal cells, with the image ratio you choose per device.
• Masonry: each item goes under the shortest column; items loaded later never move the ones above.
• Metro: repeating patterns of wide, tall and small tiles, with ready-made presets, set per device.
• Justified: rows of even height, each image at its own proportions.
• Freeform: a scattered collage on a 12-column row, with its own arrangement per device.
• Slider: slide, coverflow or fade, with arrows, dots, autoplay, loop and free scroll.
• List: an index of your projects in large type. The row under the pointer stands out, the others fade, and its image (or its video) follows the pointer, coming in with a Grow, Reveal, Fade, Slide or Random effect and leaning as it moves.

Sixteen card styles

Classic: Default, Fade, Overlay, Caption, Minimal, Magazine (for blogs), Polaroid, Glass (a frosted caption) and Mono (black and white, color on hover).

Animated:

• Tilt: the card tilts in 3D after the pointer, with a soft glare.
• Drift: the image drifts with the mouse, the text a little less.
• Cursor: the title follows the mouse in large type.
• Brush: brush strokes paint over the image, then the title rises in.
• Cube: the card turns like a cube to its caption, from the side the pointer comes in, and back towards the side it leaves.
• Glide: the caption glides in over the image from the side the pointer comes in, pushing the image on, its text coming in fast.

Index: a row of a project index (number, title, year, categories, tags), made for the List layout.

Every style has its own settings in the editor (colors, corner radius, image filter, text position, what to show) and CSS variables for everything else.

Any content

• Portfolio projects, posts, pages, WooCommerce products or any public post type, several of them in one grid.
• Images straight from the Media Library, with a link, a video or an audio file of their own.
• The categories and tags themselves, as a grid of terms.
• Precise queries: categories and tags, chosen or excluded items, words to match, authors, a date range, custom fields (a featured flag, a price, a rating), items with a featured image only, without sticky posts.
• Order by date, title, comments, random, a custom field, or your own order by drag and drop.

Filters, search, sorting and pagination

• AJAX filter by category or tag, as pills, a Line style or a dropdown.
• Live search as visitors type.
• Sorting for visitors: newest, A to Z, most commented, random and more.
• Page numbers, Load More or infinite scroll, in Default, Line and Orbit styles.
• Drag the search, filter and sorting into a toolbar of two rows (left, center, right); a row that doesn’t fit stacks on its own.
• Shareable views: the filter and order go into the page address, ready to share and bookmark, as real links search engines follow.
• Instant filtering: views already seen show at once, the next ones load in advance.

Lightbox, video and audio

• PhotoSwipe lightbox with swipe, zoom, captions, a counter and a share menu, for your grids and, if you like, for WordPress galleries and Image blocks.
• Video and audio items: YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Instagram and other video sites, Spotify, SoundCloud, Mixcloud, Beatport, or your own files.
• Video files play muted in their card, on hover or while in view.

Made for photographers

• Client proofing: turn it on for a gallery and everyone with the link picks their favorite photos and sends the selection. You get an email, see every selection in the editor and copy the file names into Lightroom in one click. Set how many photos each person may pick and how many people a gallery takes.
• Camera details: camera, focal length, aperture, shutter speed and ISO under each photo, read from the photo itself.
• Image protection: no right-click, dragging or long-press saving on a gallery’s images and in its lightbox.
• Lighter uploads: the sizes WordPress makes of your JPEG and PNG uploads saved as WebP or AVIF; the original stays as uploaded.

An editor that shows you the result

• Live preview with your theme’s styles, at the size of each device.
• Columns, gaps, image ratio, tile patterns and row heights per device.
• Describe your grid: write “a masonry gallery of my photography, three columns, filter by category” and the editor sets it up, using the AI service you connected to WordPress (WordPress 7.0 or newer). Undo takes it back.
• Entrance animations: fade up, fade, fade down, slide, zoom, blur and reveal, with their speed and delay.
• Inserts: a banner, a form or any shortcode in a cell of its own between the items.
• Custom CSS for one layout only, kept away from the rest of the site.
• Keyboard shortcuts to the sections you use most.

A ready portfolio

• A Portfolio post type with categories and tags, and an archive page of your choice.
• Move your projects over from another portfolio plugin in one click.
• It stays out of the way when your theme already has a portfolio of its own.
• Choose which roles add projects, build layouts or change the settings.

For theme developers

• Every card, filter, search, sorting and pagination is a template: copy it into your-theme/forma/ to change it.
• Add your own card styles and layout types; mark a card style for the layouts it is made for.
• Turn the plugin’s own look off and style everything from your theme.
• Theme functions, PHP and JavaScript hooks, and REST routes to build on.
• Works with AI assistants: its actions are WordPress abilities, ready for the AI tools connected to a site.

Compatibility

• Block editor (Forma block), Elementor (widget), WPBakery (element), any theme through shortcodes.
• WooCommerce products in any layout.
• Right-to-left languages: layouts, slider and lightbox follow the page direction.
• Translation ready, with a POT file.
• Multisite: one license covers the whole network.
• Page caches: grids load their next pages without a nonce, so cached pages keep working.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5 or newer (7.0 or newer for Describe your grid)
• PHP 8.0 or newer

Getting started

1. Install and activate Forma Pro from Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
2. Enter your purchase code in Forma → Settings → License to get updates from your dashboard.
3. Go to Forma → Forma Layouts → Add New, build your layout and place it on any page.

Credits

• PhotoSwipe (MIT)
• Swiper (MIT)
• GSAP (GreenSock Standard License)
• Bricolage Grotesque font (SIL Open Font License 1.1)

Changelog

1.0.0
- Initial release