I’m brand new to WordPress (and website building in general), so please go easy on me! Basically I want a website to show off my collection and to aid in my own organization. I want it to be in a database-like structure with emphasis on visuals. It will be self-hosted (with help from my husband); that part is already set up and I have it ready to go. I’ve been playing around with various plugins.
I’m a refugee from Snupps (I believe PeakNest is very similar though I haven’t tried it because it’s iOS only). I had a massive collection on there and one day they pulled the plug and I lost it all. A Snupps clone would be a dream come true. You could create different “shelves” (categories), then create entries of each item. Each entry had a number of images you could add, and that first image would be what was displayed on the shelf. So, you could click on a shelf and scroll through a stream of nice and neat square photos on a grid, each with a cover image of the item with the title underneath. I want this same visual representation.
When you click on an item, you are brought to an entry page with images to cycle through and the information underneath. From that entry page you can see which “shelves” the item is on, because an item can be on multiple shelves. So for example I can have a book listed in my “Science Fiction” shelf, but it’s also on my “Top Favorites” shelf. From the shelf you clicked the item from, you have the option of clicking to navigate to the previous or next entry in the series. Or you could click the link to one of the shelves that item is was in to see everything else on that shelf. An easy way to move an item onto different shelves would be great, but I can see why something like that may be difficult when not dealing with a dedicated app.
I want to easily be able to drag and drop entries on a shelf because I like to have them in a particular order, in which there is no automated way of doing. A search bar is essential but I don’t foresee that being too hard to find.
Another thing I would love (that Snupps didn’t have) is a tagging system. For example in an entry I can name the author, and clicking on that author will bring up all entries that are also by that author.
Shop and portfolio plugins seems to be the closest to meeting my needs but I can’t seem to find exactly what I’m looking for. It’s important that you are able to scroll through an unlimited number of entries in a shelf for one thing. I don’t want to have to click to the “next page” to see more. Because I have hundreds of items in each section, I would assume some sort of loading limiter would be necessary, like loading entries in chunks as you scroll instead of having everything load at once when to load the page.
Since it’s just a personal website I don’t need the ability for visitors to create accounts or buy stuff. I’m on the fence about a commenting system so I can go either way on that feature. Maybe some kind of “like” feature just to have some sort of interactive element, but I’m not sure how that would work without the account element.
I don’t need anything fancy – simple and clean is best. Is there anything out that that comes close to what I’m looking for? I acknowledge there isn’t going to be the perfect plugin out there but I was hoping for a good starting point!
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You could look at Omeka. It’s not as user friendly or pretty as wordpress – but it is built to do what you want, at least more so than WP is.
Otherwise a Portfolio theme would be a good place to start. You can have galleries for images. WP has categories and tags built in – so that’s already there. I’m not recommending this (I literally just googled for it as an example so no idea if its any good)… but something like:
[https://organicthemes.com/demo/showcase/filterable-portfolio/](https://organicthemes.com/demo/showcase/filterable-portfolio/)
Has a lot of what you want out-of-the-box.
Also – visual portfolio pro plugin allows carousels/galleries of images, so you could use posts for items, and add a VPP to the page with all the images – and info underneath.
Once you want to add / layout specific info – you’re probably looking at Advanced Custom Fields, or PODS – which means some knowledge and much learning.
To my knowledge you wont get a ‘drag it on the shelf’ thing – that’s too custom. For that you’d have to get a hosted / sass service – like SNUPPS. WP just isn’t built for it. It’s possible, but you’d pay a lot for someone to build it – and it’s so left-field of vanilla WP, you may be better building it out of WP – and maybe just using WP as a front-page.
This is what I did for a client – WP for the pretty stuff, Omeka back-end for the collection. But again – no ‘bookshelf’ stuff – I doubt you’ll find that outside a Snupps style equivalent.