I started building these apps to pacify a frustration of not finding the type of apps I needed.
PRO FILTER GALLERY
Introduction:
I originally started working on Pro Filter Gallery because I wanted something between a basic image gallery and a completely custom CMS-driven portfolio.
For designers, photographers, agencies and other businesses with a lot of projects, a standard gallery can become difficult to navigate quite quickly. Building everything manually with collections, datasets and custom filtering works, but it can also be more setup than many site owners actually need.
So I built Pro Filter Gallery around a fairly simple idea: add your projects, assign categories, and let visitors find the work they’re interested in.
I also wanted it to feel like part of the website rather than a third-party widget, so quite a lot of the work went into giving the site owner control over how the gallery actually looks.
I’d be interested to hear from other Wix designers and developers about how you currently handle large portfolios, and whether there are things you think a gallery like this should do that I haven’t considered yet.
How I did it:
The app has two main parts.
The first is a purpose-built dashboard where the site owner can add projects, upload multiple images, organise categories and manage their portfolio without needing to create their own Wix CMS collections.
The second is the gallery itself, which is added to the site and customised from the Editor.
Visitors can filter projects by category, search through the gallery and open individual projects to see more information and additional images.
I also built the design controls into the experience so things such as layout, spacing, typography, colours and container styles can be adjusted to suit the site rather than forcing every installation to look the same.
One of the more interesting parts of building it has actually been making sure the Editor experience, live site and dashboard all remain in sync as projects and settings change.
Tools, Documentation and APIs:
I built the app using Wix’s app development framework and Wix CLI, with separate dashboard and site-facing extensions.
Some of the areas of the Wix developer ecosystem that were particularly relevant were:
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Wix CLI and local app development
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Site/widget extensions
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Dashboard extensions
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App settings and configuration
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Wix App Market plans and entitlements
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Wix Media for project imagery
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Responsive behaviour across Wix and Wix Studio sites
One thing I deliberately avoided was making the user configure their own CMS collections. The app manages the portfolio experience for them.
Example:
The app is live on my website www.ardoproductions.com where I will be putting all the apps I eventually build!