Someone uploads a photo of their business without resizing it first. It’s a big, high-quality photo, several megabytes in size. It shows up on their listing looking small and normal. Nothing looks wrong. But behind the scenes, every visitor who opens that listing is still downloading that entire big file, even though they only ever see a small version of it. Multiply that across dozens of listings, and it’s a real reason your directory can feel slower than it should.
The good news: Directorist has a simple way to fix this, and it takes about a minute to set up.
What the Image Gallery extension actually gives you
Instead of a business having just one photo, the Image Gallery extension lets them upload a whole set of photos, shown together as a gallery a visitor can click through. This is already turned on by default, business owners see it right in their listing form and can upload, rearrange, or remove photos themselves.
Why this matters for you: more photos means a visitor gets a much better feel for a business before deciding to call or visit, without you having to do anything extra. A restaurant can show its dining room and its food. A property listing can show the outside, the kitchen, the view. One photo can’t do that.
Why some galleries end up looking messy
Here’s a common problem: if every uploaded photo is a different size and shape, tall, wide, square, all mixed together, the gallery ends up looking uneven and a bit unprofessional, more like a random photo dump than a real business page.
The fix: a setting called “Cropping”
Directorist has a setting simply called Cropping that fixes this automatically. Think of it like a picture frame, once it’s turned on, every photo gets trimmed to fit the exact same frame size, so they all look consistent next to each other.
One thing worth knowing: this setting is turned off by default, so it won’t happen automatically until you switch it on.
Choosing how big the photos should be
Once cropping is on, you can choose how big that “frame” is, basically how big each photo should appear. There’s no single right answer here, it depends on your directory:
- If the photo itself is a big part of the decision, like real estate or hotels, go a bit bigger so the photo actually does its job.
- If your directory has lots of listings and photos are more of a quick preview, the smaller default size works fine.
Choosing how many photos per row
You can also choose how many photos show side by side, 2, 3, or 4 per row.
- Fewer per row (2) means each photo is bigger and easier to actually look at, good for real estate or hotels.
- More per row (4) means visitors can scan more photos quickly, good for directories where people are browsing a lot of listings fast.
Why this actually makes your site faster
This isn’t just about looking neat. Smaller, same-sized photos are smaller files, and smaller files load faster. A visitor who has to wait for a page to load is a visitor who might leave before they even see the listing. Turning on cropping and picking sensible photo sizes is a small change that has a real, direct effect on how fast your directory feels to use.
How to do it
- Go to Settings → Extensions → Listing Gallery.
- Turn on Gallery Image Cropping.
- Set a Width and Height for photos, or just leave the default if you’re not sure.
- Choose 2, 3, or 4 columns for how many photos show per row.
- Click Save Changes.
That’s the entire setup.
Quick recap
Turning on cropping keeps every photo the same size, which makes your directory look clean and load faster. Picking the right size and column count just depends on how important the photos are for your type of business, bigger and fewer for real estate or hotels, smaller and more for fast-browsing directories. It takes a minute to set up and it’s worth doing on any directory where listings include photos.
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