Galleryberg — Gallery Block with Lightbox & Layouts
A gallery block that actually holds up in real editorial workflows.
The Client
Galleryberg is a WordPress gallery plugin available on WordPress.org with a free tier and a Pro upgrade. It targets photographers, bloggers, and editorial publishers who need flexible gallery layouts, a built-in lightbox, captions, and dynamic ACF/SCF image sources. It is active on 2,000+ sites.
The Brief
WordPress's native gallery block is minimal by design, leaving publishers who need professional-grade image presentation to either pay for a page builder or stitch together multiple plugins. There was a gap in the ecosystem for a focused, well-built gallery block with a real free tier.
What Shipped
Built GalleryBerg as a first-class Gutenberg block with multiple layout modes (tiles, square, masonry, justified), a lightbox viewer, and granular controls for spacing, columns, and image sizing — all configurable directly in the block editor sidebar. The Pro tier adds a mosaic layout and advanced customisation options, distributed via Freemius.
How it was built
The block is built with React for the editor UI and a lightweight PHP/JS front-end renderer for display. Freemius handles licensing, updates, and payments for the Pro tier, providing a managed distribution layer without custom billing infrastructure. Free and Pro features are feature-flagged at the PHP layer.
Building a genuinely smooth lightbox experience that works across the full range of WordPress themes — from classic to block themes — without CSS specificity conflicts required careful scoping and extensive cross-theme testing.
Results & reach
Galleryberg is live on WordPress.org with 2,000+ active installs — a production plugin built from scratch through free/Pro architecture, licensing, and active distribution.
2,000+ active installs
active installs