Why We Built Ultimate Product Gallery
The story behind our first plugin: what problem we saw, how we approached solving it, and what we learned shipping v1.0.
Every plugin starts with frustration.
For Ultimate Product Gallery, the frustration was trying to add a YouTube video to a WooCommerce product page—something that should take thirty seconds—and realizing there was no good way to do it.
WooCommerce's default gallery supports images. Only images. If you want to show customers a video walkthrough of your product, or embed a sizing guide PDF, or include a Vimeo testimonial from a happy customer, you're on your own.
The workarounds are ugly: shortcodes jammed into the product description, custom fields that require theme modifications, page builder widgets that don't integrate with the actual gallery, or plugins that haven't been updated since Gutenberg launched.
We'd been hacking around this limitation for years on client stores. Eventually, we decided to build the solution we wished existed.
What we wanted
The requirements were clear from day one:
Mixed media in one gallery. Images, video, PDFs—all displaying together, not as separate sections bolted onto the page.
Embedded video that works. YouTube and Vimeo URLs should just paste in and work. No API keys, no embed code wrangling, no thumbnail generation headaches.
Self-hosted video support. Some stores can't or won't use third-party video hosts. They should be able to upload MP4 files directly.
Variable product support. If you're selling a shirt in five colors, each color should be able to have its own gallery. The red shirt shows red lifestyle photos. The blue shows blue.
Builder compatibility. Stores use Block Editor, Elementor, Divi, or classic themes with shortcodes. The plugin should work with all of them, natively, not through workarounds.
No dependency hell. No requiring jQuery when WooCommerce is moving away from it. No conflicts with lightbox plugins. No loading five JavaScript libraries for basic functionality.
HPOS ready. WooCommerce is transitioning to High-Performance Order Storage. New plugins should be built for that future, not the past.
What existed
Before building, we surveyed the landscape. Plenty of product gallery plugins exist. Most fell into a few categories:
The abandoned. Last updated 2+ years ago. Still referencing jQuery. Untested with current WooCommerce versions. Maybe works, maybe breaks your store.
The everything-plugin. Gallery features bundled into a massive "WooCommerce enhancement" suite with 47 other features you don't need. Heavy, slow, expensive.
The almost-there. Good gallery features but no page builder support, or builder support but no video, or video but only YouTube, or YouTube but no variable product handling.
The premium theme requirement. Gallery features locked into a specific theme. Switch themes, lose your galleries.
Nothing did all the things we needed without tradeoffs we weren't willing to make.
The build
We started with the core gallery mechanics: how media items get stored, how they render on the frontend, how they integrate with WooCommerce's product data structure.
We chose to store gallery data as product meta rather than in separate custom tables. This keeps the data portable—export a product, the gallery comes with it. It also means compatibility with existing backup, migration, and staging workflows.
For video embeds, we use oEmbed—the same system WordPress uses for embedding videos in posts. Paste a YouTube URL, WordPress handles the rest. No API keys, no authentication, no rate limits.
The lightbox was a deliberate choice. Many stores already have a lightbox plugin installed. Ours is optional—if you prefer your existing lightbox, disable ours. But having one built-in means new users get a complete experience without installing additional plugins.
Page builder integration took the most time. Each builder has its own widget/module system, its own styling approach, its own quirks. We built native integrations for Block Editor, Elementor, and Divi rather than trying to create one generic solution that works poorly everywhere.
What we learned
Video sells products. Early beta users reported significant conversion improvements after adding product videos. One electronics store saw a 23% lift in add-to-cart rate. This wasn't surprising—the data on video commerce is clear—but seeing it happen in real stores was validating.
PDFs are underrated. We almost cut PDF support to ship faster. Glad we didn't. Stores selling technical products, furniture, appliances, and B2B goods use spec sheets heavily. Putting the PDF right in the gallery instead of buried in a tab or the description—reduces friction.
Variable product galleries are a pain point. More support questions than expected were about variable products. WooCommerce's default handling of variation images is limited, and store owners are frustrated by it. Our variation-specific gallery feature gets used more than we anticipated.
Builder compatibility is non-negotiable. We initially planned to launch with Block Editor support only and add other builders later. Beta feedback was clear: stores already using Elementor or Divi weren't going to switch editors just for our plugin. All three shipped in v1.0.
What's next
Version 1.0 is a starting point. We're already working on:
- Additional video sources (TikTok, Instagram)
- 360° product photography support
- Enhanced mobile touch gestures
- More lightbox customization options
- Performance optimizations for galleries with many items
The roadmap is driven by what users ask for and what we see stores struggling with. No feature theater—just solving real problems.
The philosophy in practice
We named our company WP e/acc for a reason. Ship fast, iterate based on feedback, charge for your work, build for the WordPress ecosystem rather than against it.
Ultimate Product Gallery is that philosophy as a product. We saw a problem, we built a solution, we put it on the market. Version 1.0 isn't perfect—no v1 ever is—but it's real software solving a real problem for real stores.
That's the WP e/acc way.