Ready Patterns
Browse a library of finished gallery designs and drop one on the page.
The Ready Patterns Library is a catalogue of pre-built galleries — a layout, a set of settings and placeholder images, already arranged. Import one and it lands on the page as an ordinary Shaped Gallery block you can keep editing.
Opening it
Click Ready Patterns Library in the editor header — the bar along the top of the block editor. That's the single way in, on purpose: one modal, one button.
The Dashboard also has a Use Ready Patterns button, which opens a new page with the library already showing.
Browsing
- The left sidebar groups patterns by layout — Justified, Grid, Masonry, Metro, Thumbnails, Staggered, Perspective — because that's the axis you actually choose along.
- The toolbar searches and sorts.
- A card's preview opens a drawer showing the pattern at full size, so you can judge it before importing.
- Favourite a pattern to find it again.
Open it already filtered
Clicking the button while a gallery block is selected opens the library filtered to that gallery's layout — so you see alternatives to what you already have.
Importing
Press Import on a card. The pattern is inserted as a gallery block at your cursor, selected and focused, ready to edit.
What you get is a normal block — not a locked template. Change the layout, swap the images, adjust every panel. Nothing about it stays tied to the library.
Swapping in your own images
A pattern ships with placeholder photography so it reads as a design. To make it yours:
- Select the imported gallery.
- Click Edit Gallery on the block toolbar.
- Select all the placeholder tiles and remove them.
- Add from Media and choose your own.
Every setting the pattern brought — layout, columns, gaps, content style, hover animation — stays exactly as it was.
Switching the library off
Shaped Gallery → Settings → Modules → Ready Patterns, on by default.
Switching it off does more than hide a button:
- The Ready Patterns Library button disappears from the editor header, and the Dashboard's Use Ready Patterns button disappears too.
- No outbound request is made. The catalogue lives on a ShapedPlugin server; with the module off, your site never contacts it.
The one outbound request this plugin makes
Ready Patterns is the only feature that talks to a machine outside your site. Nothing else — rendering, the lightbox, watermarking, filtering — needs the network. If your policy is "no third-party requests", switching this module off is how you get there, and it's enforced on the server rather than only in the editor.
Things worth knowing
Your site fetches the catalogue, not your browser. The request is made by PHP with the usual WordPress HTTP safeguards, and everything that comes back is re-validated before it reaches the editor. The editor bundle knows nothing but your own site's routes.
The catalogue is cached. It isn't re-fetched on every editor load. If the service is unreachable, the failure is cached briefly too, so a provider outage doesn't cost you a long wait each time you open the editor.
Imported patterns are re-keyed. Ids that were meaningful on the machine that authored the pattern are stripped on the way in, so an imported gallery can never accidentally reach into your Media Library by id or share a style scope with another gallery.
An Editor can use it. The library is gated on being able to author content, not on being an administrator — it sits inside the post editor, so the capability that matters is "may edit posts".
Troubleshooting
The button isn't there. Check the module is on in Settings → Modules, and that your user can edit posts.
The library is empty or shows an error. The catalogue service was unreachable. Wait a few minutes and reopen it — the failed fetch is cached briefly to avoid re-dialling on every editor load.
Imported images don't match the preview. Patterns ship with placeholder photography. That's expected — swap in your own.