Portfolios are a little more flexible than Galleries are in their usage.

Galleries are a single page of images that will open in lightbox.

Portfolios are multiple posts displayed on a page with optional pagination.

This means it’s like a set of blog posts but dynamically laid out as a Portfolio when the shortcode is used.

Like blog posts, it’s a custom Post Type that you create individual posts in.

Each post is a single Portfolio item and it comes with multiple options.

For example, if you want to create a Portfolio item for a client session.

Inside it, you want to display to that client the images from that session (using the Gallery shortcode).

You can password protect this too and provide that client with a private session – only available to them.

The main page / post that displays your Portfolio items, you can choose whether or not to show more images.

To show more images when clicking the thumbnail in lightbox (which is optional) you can attach more media.

This is done by ‘Add Media’ option at the top, attaching more images to that specific portfolio post.

These images (if lightbox is enabled) will then show up as additional images when the thumbnail is clicked.

Portfolios also have the capabilities of showing ‘Videos’ in lightbox.

You can display videos from YouTube and Vimeo, as well upload and link to your own MP4 videos or embeds.

Portfolios are filtered based on the ‘Category’ associated with the shortcode being used.

Portfolios offer a diverse set of options that can be used to cater to a lot of outside-the-box ideas. The only limitations to this would be your imagination as you get control over it all and just as you do with Galleries, can re-use these conveniently throughout your website with unlimited restrictions.

Here’s a video tutorial that will help: