NERDY HACKS · WEBSITE & ONLINE STORE

Wedding photographer has Claude write a self-hosted client gallery plugin

Tired of paying for gallery hosting on top of web hosting, a wedding photographer directed Claude to write a WordPress plugin for big uploads, client proofing and watermarks.

TOOL USED

Claude, WordPress, Elementor

SPOTTED ON

u/noiram_1944 · Sep 15, 2026

FILED UNDER

Website & Online Store hacks

TL;DR

What did u/noiram_1944 use Claude for?

Tired of paying for gallery hosting on top of web hosting, a wedding photographer directed Claude to write a WordPress plugin for big uploads, client proofing and watermarks. They say it has been running on their real site with real client galleries, including 1,000+ image galleries. Their flow: publish watermarked and locked, the client hearts picks, they delete the rest, then turn downloads back on. They released it free under the GPL on GitHub.

What they did

Over a few weeks they directed Claude to write a gallery plugin, tried each feature on their own live site and reported back what broke. It uploads a whole Lightroom export folder in chunks, skips duplicates, stores photos outside the Media Library, and adds client favorites, watermarks, a download lock and ZIP downloads.

How it went

They say it has been running on their real site with real client galleries, including 1,000+ image galleries. Their flow: publish watermarked and locked, the client hearts picks, they delete the rest, then turn downloads back on. They released it free under the GPL on GitHub.

Worth knowing

  • They say they can't explain how the code works. It has only run on one host, the download lock is "not real security," there are no client logins, and there has been no security audit. A commenter warned about WordPress security for a core business tool.
  • Price check: Claude: free plan; Pro: US$20/month, or US$17/month on a yearly plan (US$200/year) (checked Nov 1, 2026).

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Try it yourself

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Original post

See u/noiram_1944's original post on Reddit → (Sep 15, 2026)

Sources

  1. u/noiram_1944 on Reddit, Sep 15, 2026 — the original post
  2. Claude pricing — checked Nov 1, 2026

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