Requirements
What your site needs before Shaped Gallery will run — including the one requirement that surprises people.
The short version
| Minimum | Why | |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | 6.8 or later | The block uses editor APIs added in 6.x, and the free/Pro pairing relies on the Requires Plugins header from 6.5. |
| PHP | 8.1 or later | The plugin is written against PHP 8.1 language features throughout. |
| The free Shaped Gallery plugin | Installed and active | Shaped Gallery Pro is an add-on to it. See below. |
| Browser | Any current browser | The lightbox uses the native <dialog> element, with a fallback for browsers that lack it. |
You need both plugins
This is the requirement worth reading twice.
Shaped Gallery ships as two WordPress plugins that run together:
| Folder | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| Free | shaped-gallery/ | The WordPress.org listing and the free feature level. |
| Pro | shaped-gallery-pro/ | The premium feature level — lightbox, watermark, filtering and search, Ajax pagination, motion effects, the Perspective layout and page-builder integrations. |
They are the same plugin at two feature levels, not two products. They share one post type, one settings option, one block and one shortcode, which is what makes upgrading a zero-migration operation — you activate Pro and everything you already built keeps working exactly as it was.
Don't deactivate the free plugin
Pro declares the free plugin as a hard dependency. If you deactivate or delete shaped-gallery, Pro stops booting and your galleries stop rendering. Leave both active.
WordPress knows about this too: from 6.5 onwards it greys out Pro's Activate link and tells you which plugin is missing, rather than letting you activate into a broken state.
Only one of the two actually runs at a time. With both active, Pro is the one that boots and the free build stands down silently — there's nothing for you to do and no notice to dismiss.
PHP 8.1 and what happens below it
On PHP older than 8.1 the plugin deactivates itself with an admin notice rather than causing a fatal error, so a site on an old PHP version won't white-screen. You'll see:
Shaped Gallery Pro requires PHP 8.1 or higher. Please upgrade PHP to use this plugin.
Most managed hosts let you switch PHP versions from their control panel. If you're not sure which version you're on, Tools → Site Health → Info → Server reports it.
Image handling
Watermarking composites pixels into real image files, so it needs a PHP image library:
- ImageMagick (the
imagickextension) — preferred, better quality. - GD — the fallback, present on almost every host.
If neither is available, watermarking serves your original images untouched rather than failing. Everything else in the plugin works without an image library. Tools → Site Health → Info → Media Handling tells you what your server has.
Permissions
| Capability | What it unlocks |
|---|---|
edit_posts | Building galleries in the editor, and the Ready Patterns library. |
manage_options | The Shaped Gallery dashboard, Settings, license activation, and the cache/watermark purge buttons. |
An Editor can build and place galleries. Changing site-wide settings is an administrator's job.
Things that are not required
- No page builder. The block works in the WordPress editor on its own. Builders are supported, not needed.
- No external service. Nothing phones home to render a gallery. The one outbound request the plugin makes is the Ready Patterns library, and switching that module off stops it entirely.
- No separate lightbox plugin. The viewer is built in.