Password protection

This page covers how to lock a gallery page so only your client can see it. Customer Cloud Gallery deliberately does not ship its own login system — instead it leverages WordPress’s built-in page-level password protection, which is robust, theme-agnostic, and well understood by WordPress hosts. Aimed at photographers who deliver one gallery per client and want a no-friction handover.

What you’ll learn

• How WordPress page passwords work and where to set them
• How to share the password with your client
• The spacer-block trick for themes with transparent headers
• Why the password is per-page, not per-gallery
• How to revoke access when a job is finished

Prerequisites

• A published gallery and a WordPress page with the gallery shortcode (see Your first gallery)
• Permission to edit pages on the site

Tutorial video

Video coming soon.

Step-by-step

1. Open the page that contains the gallery

In the WordPress admin, go to Pages → All Pages and open the page you embedded the shortcode in (e.g. “Smith Wedding”).

2. Set the page to password-protected

In the right-hand sidebar (Block editor: top-right tab “Page”; Classic editor: “Publish” box):

1. Click on Visibility (it shows Public by default).
2. Choose Password protected.
3. Type the password the client should use. Use something memorable but unique to this shoot (e.g. smith-2025 or a four-word passphrase).
4. Click Update.

3. Share the link and password with the client

The URL stays the same; visitors who don’t have the password see a WordPress-native password form. Once they enter the right password, WordPress sets a session cookie and the gallery loads as normal.

A short delivery email might look like:

Your photos are ready: https://yourstudio.com/smith-wedding Password: smith-2025

4. Add a spacer block if your theme has a transparent header

This is important and easy to miss. Many modern WordPress themes (Astra, Kadence, GeneratePress, OceanWP, plus most block themes) offer a “transparent header” mode where the header overlays the page content. With Customer Cloud Gallery, this means the top row of thumbnails hides behind the header unless you push the gallery down.

Fix:

1. Open the page in the editor.
2. Click the + icon above the Shortcode block and add a Spacer block.
3. Set its height to roughly your header height (commonly 80–120 px for desktop). The spacer is invisible but pushes the gallery into view.
4. Update the page.

If your theme has a solid (non-transparent) header you can skip this step.

5. Revoke access when the job is finished

Two ways:

• Change the password on the page — old links stop working immediately.
• Switch the page to Private (in the same Visibility menu) — only logged-in admins can see it.
• Move the page to Trash — fully gone but recoverable for 30 days.

You don’t have to delete the gallery itself; the gallery post can stay around, only the page that exposes it is locked down.

Common mistakes

“I want one password for all my client galleries.” WordPress page passwords are per-page, not site-wide. If you really want a single shared password across many galleries, consider a dedicated membership plugin — but most photographers prefer per-client passwords because rotating one password doesn’t lock everyone out.

Client says the password doesn’t work. WordPress page passwords are case-sensitive and don’t ignore leading/trailing spaces. Re-copy the password into a fresh email or message; double-check there’s no autocorrect inserting capital letters on phones.

Gallery hides behind the header on mobile but not on desktop. Mobile headers often have a different height. Either set the spacer to a generous value (e.g. 100px) that works for both, or use a Group block with conditional CSS to vary the height by viewport.

Next step

Customise the gallery’s behaviour with shortcode attributes: Shortcodes.