Advanced Controls
Caching, retina delivery, debug output, and what happens to your data if you delete the plugin.
Shaped Gallery → Settings → Advanced Controls. Six rows, and the defaults are right for almost every site.
Clean-up Data on Deletion
Completely remove all plugin data when the plugin is uninstalled, including your license key and watermark files.
Off by default, and that's the safe setting.
With it off, deleting the plugin leaves your galleries and settings in the database, so reinstalling picks up exactly where you left off. With it on, deleting the plugin removes everything.
Switching it on asks you to confirm
The confirmation is explicit: Deleting the plugin will permanently remove all Shaped Gallery Pro data, including galleries, settings, caches, your license key and watermark files. Nothing is removed now, and this cannot be undone.
"Nothing is removed now" is the key phrase — the switch arms the cleanup, it doesn't perform it. Full detail →
Clear Cache Timeout
Sets the cache timeout in hours, defining how often cached resources are cleared.
24 hours by default; the range is 1–720. It governs the plugin's own cached gallery data.
Leave it alone unless you're debugging. Lowering it doesn't make your site fresher in any way a visitor notices — the caches it governs are already invalidated by the events that matter (editing a gallery, editing an attachment), so the timeout only decides how long an orphaned entry lingers.
A changed value takes effect on the next page view.
Enable Browser Caching
Allow browsers to cache gallery assets for faster repeat visits. (Only affects plugin assets.)
On by default, and should stay on. It decides whether a repeat visitor may reuse the plugin's CSS and JavaScript instead of downloading them again.
Switching it off makes every visit fetch fresh copies. That's a troubleshooting tool — am I looking at a stale stylesheet? — not a permanent setting.
"Only affects plugin assets" is structural
The version string it controls is applied at exactly one point in the code, which is why it can't reach WordPress core's assets or another plugin's.
Note that a full-page cache defeats it: the HTML carrying the version is itself cached, so the value freezes for as long as that page does.
Clear Gallery Cache
Instantly clear all cached gallery data.
A button, not a switch. Press it and the plugin's cached gallery data is cleared now.
Safe to press at any time — everything it clears is derived and rebuilds on the next view. Use it when a gallery looks stale after an edit, or after bulk-changing media outside the editor (WP-CLI, a bulk-edit plugin, a direct import).
What it deliberately doesn't touch
It clears cached gallery data and nothing else. It does not reset the password gate's failure counters — clearing those would hand someone mid-lockout a fresh set of attempts from an unrelated button — and it doesn't touch your license or your watermark files. Watermark files have their own Purge Watermark Cache button, in that module's panel.
Debug Performance
Display performance logs and loading information for troubleshooting.
Off by default. On, it adds timing and item counts to the front end as HTML comments, a summary before the closing body tag, and a browser-console group.
It reports three separate item counts, because they answer three different questions: how many items the gallery stores, how many survived resolving and filtering, and how many this response actually rendered. On a paginated, filtered gallery those three numbers are what explains what you're seeing.
It also names why a gallery didn't render — license, private visibility, a password prompt, or an empty set — which is the answer to the commonest support question there is.
Visitors see nothing at all
The output requires the setting and an administrator and a front-end request. An anonymous visitor's HTML is byte-for-byte identical with the toggle on and off, so you can leave it on while investigating.
Retina Images
Deliver high-resolution images on Retina and HiDPI displays.
On by default. It lets the browser choose a sharper file on a high-density screen.
Switching it off is a real trade rather than a placebo: the plugin stops computing the candidate list at all, which saves work per image per render as well as bandwidth. Consider it on metered hosting or for an audience on slow connections.
Watermarked galleries never have retina
Responsive candidates are dropped on watermarked galleries, because a candidate the browser picked would be an unwatermarked original.
Reset to Default
The panel's own button, which restores all six to their shipped values. Unlike Reset Changes elsewhere in Settings, it works whether or not you have unsaved edits — which is the case it exists for.