Essential Grid is a premium grid builder plugin for WordPress. It’s not just an ordinary gallery plugin but the most complete visual grid-based framework.
One of the reasons why Essential Grid is highly favored by developers is its ability to pull data from virtually any digital data on your website. This plugin doesn’t limit you to the WordPress media library only; you can stream content from Posts, Pages, Custom Post Types (CPT), to WooCommerce products complete with pulling price data, ratings, and stock status.
Data Source Omnipresence
Here is one of Essential Grid’s main strengths: it can pull data from anywhere. Here are the details:
- Internal WordPress content such as regular Posts, Pages, Custom Post Types CPT, WooCommerce Products, and also Taxonomies.
- Social Media Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter/X, Flickr, Facebook, and RSS Feeds.
- You can also create Custom Grids manually by uploading images, self-hosted videos, or embedding iframes for each grid item.
Skin Builder: The Core Complexity
This is one of the best features the plugin has, it includes a highly detailed Visual Skin Editor.
For example, if you’re not satisfied with the existing pre-built skins, you can create your own grid item appearance.
Here are some features you can use:
- Layer-Based — similar to Photoshop or Slider Revolution, you can stack title text, read more buttons, social media icons, product prices, or custom meta data on top of the image.
- Hover Animation Effects — you can control how the overlay appears when the cursor is directed to the grid item, such as fade, slide, rotate, and zoom.
- CSS & Style Customization — to change fonts, colors, border-radius, padding, and add custom CSS animations per element.
Types of Layouts in Essential Grid
Essential Grid has three main layout types that are fully responsive (full-responsive control). Here I will explain the details:
- Even Grid has exactly the same width and height ratio for each item. This is suitable for product catalogs or portfolios so they look good.
- Masonry Grid has the same width but varying heights based on the original content. This is suitable for visual blogs or photo galleries.
- While Cobbles Layout allows you to determine the size specifically, for example one item uses 2×2 grid space, while another is 1×1.
Navigation, Filtration, and Sorting Features
You might have a lot of content or maybe up to hundreds, well… Essential Grid provides an internal search system. Here are the details:
- Your visitors can filter content by multiple categories at once using AND or OR logic.
- Advanced Sorting is useful for sorting items by date, title, number of comments, or randomly. It can also be by price if you use the WooCommerce plugin.
- Pagination & Lazy Loading features support the Load More button, and Infinite Scroll which automatically loads when scrolled.
Technical Features for Developers
If you’re a WordPress developer, Essential Grid actually provides features specifically for you. What are these features? Here’s my explanation:
You can use Custom Meta Data to pull specific data from other plugins like Advanced Custom Fields ACF and display it within the grid.
APIs & Shortcodes that are easy to integrate into page builders like Elementor, WPBakery, or Gutenberg.
Performance Optimization to ensure gallery scripts don’t burden page load time. This comes with an internal caching system and smart loading options.
Essential Grid: According to GPLShare’s View
In my opinion, Essential Grid is the heavyweight champion when it comes to visual flexibility in WordPress. But it should be noted that with its complete features, this plugin definitely has a fairly challenging learning curve, especially if you’re still a beginner. You need to study and familiarize yourself first to understand its dense Skin Editor.
But once you’ve mastered it, you can create any display freely. You can make online store galleries, videos, even news portals.
