I’ve been in contact with the developers on this issue. After first giving me some technobabble, they’re offering to go into my site and “fix my issue” for a mere $50. ALmost sounds like I need to change to another image galley plugin.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a proposed shakedown. Their last email:
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Thank you for explaining your concern clearly. I completely understand your frustration, especially since this issue started after the latest NextGen update and you’re looking for a safe workaround without any data loss.
If you’d like, I can investigate this issue directly and fix it for you. My approach will focus on identifying the update-related bug, restoring the gallery widget output, and ensuring everything works correctly without affecting your existing images or data.
The charge for this fix would be $50.
Please let me know if you’d like me to proceed, and I’ll guide you through the next steps.
Best regards,
Juwel
Hey @scarlettr8 and @redtravelmaster ,
My name is Will, Manager for the Imagely Technical Support team.
Please know that the person you’re speaking with about fixing your custom template is not a part of the Imagely team.
Our team will never attempt to charge you for troubleshooting assistance and all communication with our support team occurs over official channels like the ww.wp.xz.cn support forum or through the support form on our website.
Fix for custom templates
You can still absolutely use custom templates with the latest update to Imagely. The custom template will need to be placed in your theme / child theme files to work though.
Please know though that since custom templates require customizing the gallery display type code, that this type of customization, or any issues that come up as a result, falls outside the scope of support our team is able to provide.
In case you’d like to look into custom development options, we highly recommend checking out this article that covers the 14 Best WordPress Development Agencies (2025) from WPBeginner.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks!
@williamdersh Thanks for the information.
Since when is the Thumbnails Template a ‘Custom Template’ and require customizing? There is no other place to select which layout to use other than in the ‘Customize’ tab of the Gallery. Three other layouts in that Customize section work properly, while the Thumbnails does not—even when no code is added by the user. The [Not a valid template] is added by the plugin, not the user. And why should the Thumbnails template file suddenly need to be put in the Child Theme when it is not edited (customized)?
The problem with the Thumbnails template is exactly within the scope of your support because it was caused by the latest update of Imagely, as many users have reported. The only fix at this point is to roll back a version.
Hey @scarlettr8 I apologize for the confusion.
The [Not a valid template] issue would occur when using a custom template or if there was an option selected in Layout Settings > Legacy Template prior to updating Imagely to the current version. Since this setting was deprecated entirely, there was a conflict occurring.
Our team has continued to investigate this issue and have identified a solution that we’ll be releasing in an upcoming update.
Once the update has released I’ll be sure to post on this thread again.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
Hey @scarlettr8
We just released an update that resolves the [Not a valid template] error.
Please be sure to update your NextGEN Gallery plugin to version 4.0.3 to start seeing this addition.
I hope this helps!
Thanks! 🙂
