Wix App · v1.7.0 · Live on the Wix App Market
Photo Wall & Social Grid
A wall of your own pictures, captions and dates on any page — one that connects to nothing, so there is nothing that can disconnect.
- Connects to nothing
- No cap on posts
- No badge, ever
- One request a page
The gap it closes
Every app on this shelf fails the same way, and its reviewers all describe it. The 2.6★/1,248 leader: “App continually disconnects” (4 votes) · “This app always needs to be checked on… Every time I reconnect it, it works for a month tops, and then it doesn’t” (3) · “It worked fine for about a year, but immediately after renewing the subscription, it completely stopped working” (4) · “Doesn’t work with multiple feeds, also stopped working completely after a few months” (5). The 1.6★/749 first-party one: “removed the old working app and does not work” (16) · “The old one worked fine, I can’t even add this new one to my site!” (15) · “Can’t believe you still don’t have an app that works” (14). Every one of those is a connection, and this app has none.
Six of the nine print their own name on the customer’s website. The leader’s free plan literally lists “Social Media Stream logo” as a feature and sells “Remove Branding & Logo” on all three paid tiers ($8.32 / $13.92 / $34.91 a month). POWR’s two sell “Remove POWR branding”. A 4.5★/463 one ships a “Watermark” free and makes “No Watermark” the first bullet of every paid tier. Common Ninja sells “Remove Common Ninja icon”. Elfsight’s free tier is “200 views” and “Elfsight Branding”, rising to $67.16 a month. And a three-star reviewer wrote the whole argument while otherwise praising the app: “the color of the bottom banner clashes with literally everything… Probably won’t be using this until you make that banner transparent.”
Five ration the number of posts, and one rations design control by name. Six posts free. Six posts free. “Up to 3 last posts” and “Limited Controls” free, against “Control Design/Layout (Unlimited)” at $7.68 a month. Sixteen posts and one stream. Two hundred views. Two of the nine have no free plan whatsoever. Three posts is not a free plan, it is a demonstration — so there is no cap here on posts, channels or placements, on any plan, and every arrangement and every design control is free.
And the page weight is the complaint nobody on that shelf has answered. “It’s very inefficient and drastically reduces the speed of your website. removing this widget reduced my page download size by 90%. If you add this app to your site, don’t have it on your homepage” (3★, 2 votes) · “Wix mobile speed is already bad enough — this tanks it” · “It just spins and doesnt ever load.” Measured on a published page here: a 2.66 MB photograph is drawn as a 1,927-byte tile, and a placement makes exactly one request — searching, filtering, stepping through months and pressing Show more add none.
The permission dialog is part of the pitch. “Wix now requires access to my private messages and an excessive amount of personal information, not something I want or need” (8 votes) · “Unusable… and now they have permissions into all of my ‘Meta’ info. Bad app” (2). This app asks for one permission, and it is the one that tells it which plan your site is on. It reaches out to nobody, so there is nothing to grant access to.
How it works
Three steps, then it runs itself.
- 01
Add your own posts in the dashboard
Pick pictures straight out of your own media library, as many at once as you like, then write a caption, set the day it went out, give it a channel and point it at wherever it already lives. A post can also be a picture that links to a video, or just words on a coloured card. There is no cap on posts on any plan.
- 02
Drop the wall on any page, as many times as you like
It is an ordinary element you place, resize and delete yourself — it never adds itself to your home page and never creates a page of its own. Four arrangements, all free: a mosaic with one large lead tile, an even grid, masonry with natural heights, and a single-column feed. Each placement can show the whole wall or just one channel, with its own arrangement.
- 03
Nothing is fetched, ever
Your pictures stay in your own media library and the app keeps a note of where they are. Each tile asks for a thumbnail at exactly the size it is drawn, so the browser downloads a fraction of a percent of the original. One request per placement and nothing after it — and not a single request to anybody else.
How it behaves
The decisions that matter.
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No watermark and no badge, on any plan, ever
Not on the page, not in the editor, not on the free plan, not on a lapsed one. Six of the nine apps on this shelf print their own name on the customer’s website and charge between $1.39 and $34.91 a month to take it off. This is the wedge for the whole wave and it is not going to move.
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It connects to nothing, so it cannot disconnect
No account to link, no permission into anybody’s posts, no token to expire, no refresh loop and no scheduled job. Every post is a row you typed, in your own site’s content manager. There is nothing here that can stop working when somebody else changes their terms.
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No cap on posts, channels or placements
On any plan, including the free one. The apps on this shelf stop at three, four, six, sixteen posts or two hundred page views. A wall of four hundred posts is a wall of four hundred posts here.
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Every arrangement and every design control is free
Mosaic, grid, masonry and feed; colours that follow your page so it is legible on a dark site and a light one; columns, spacing, corner rounding, tile shape, cropping, the inset under each tile, and where the caption sits. One app on this shelf sells “Control Design/Layout (Unlimited)” at $7.68 a month with “(Limited)” as its free tier.
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A 2.66 MB photograph is drawn as about 2 kB
Measured on a published page. Every tile asks for a thumbnail at the size it is actually drawn, in a modern format, lazily below the fold, with its shape declared in advance so the page never jumps. This work is free and ungated on every plan — a wall that got heavier when a subscription lapsed would be a worse app than the ones it replaces.
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One request per placement, and nothing after it
Searching, filtering by channel, stepping back through the months and pressing Show more all cost zero further network calls — measured on a published page at 135 requests before and 135 after. Nothing whatsoever is loaded from a third party: no script, no tracker, no font, no icon set.
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It never receives an upload and never stores a picture
Your pictures stay in your own media library, under your own account. Three apps on this shelf meter storage and one bills by traffic, because they took custody of other people’s photographs. If every trace of this app vanished tonight, every picture would still be exactly where you put it.
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It never plays a video, and it says so
A post marked as a video shows your own picture with a play mark and opens wherever the film already lives. A live review next door is about exactly the opposite — a still drawn as though it were a film, that does nothing when you press it.
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Nothing is stored about a visitor
No cookie, no identifier, no session, no IP address. The one optional record this app can keep is which post was opened and when — not who opened it — and it is off unless you switch it on. The install dialog is one line.
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It works on a phone and inside a narrow column
Measured at 390 pixels on a published page: two columns, no horizontal overflow, every date and channel on one line. The wall asks its own container how wide it is rather than asking the browser, which a classic Wix page gets wrong because it renders a phone in a 980-pixel viewport.
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A post you take down stays down, on every plan
Dated posts are a Business feature, but what Business buys is the ability to set the dates — the window itself is honoured on every plan, including a lapsed one. A subscription ending must never put last month’s offer back on your home page.
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Your wall is your own data, and export is free
Ordinary rows in your own site’s content manager, and CSV export on every plan including the free one. Everybody who installs this app is arriving from something that stopped working; the least it can do is make leaving it trivial.
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Nothing that is free today will ever move behind the paywall
Stated here and in the App Market listing. The free plan is the pitch, not a trial.
Pricing
Free tier that actually works.
Billed per site through the Wix App Market, monthly or yearly (yearly saves 20%). Every paid plan starts with a 14-day free trial. The free plan is deliberately functional and never expires, so the app can prove itself on a real site before you pay for it.
Free
$0
Pro
$9.99/mo
or $95.88/yr
Business
$19.99/mo
or $191.88/yr
Documentation & data handling
Everything it touches, stated plainly.
Installing & getting started
- Add Photo Wall & Social Grid to your Wix site from the App Market and approve the permissions listed below.
- Open it from your site dashboard under Apps. It adds the Photo wall element (editor widget, any page, any number of times) / Settings panel in the editor, per placement / Dashboard page.
- Follow the three steps above. The free tier covers no cap on posts, channels or placements. All four arrangements — mosaic, grid, masonry and feed — and every design control. The viewer with its own address, the dates, the link out of every post, the channel filter, the search box and the Show more paging. Alt text, structured data and CSV export. Thumbnails at the size they are drawn, lazily, one request per placement. No watermark and no badge, ever, so you can prove it works before paying.
- Stuck? Email support@buildsbyluke.com — two business days response.
Permissions, and why each one
SCOPE.DEV_CENTER.APP-INSTANCE-READ-BASIC-INFO- Read which plan the site is on, so Pro and Business features unlock. It is the only permission this app asks for, and it asks for nothing at all about anybody’s posts, pictures or messages.
What is stored, and where
- Every post is a row the site owner typed into their own dashboard — a picture address, a caption, a date, a channel and a link. The app never connects to any other service, never asks for a permission into one, and never fetches anything from anywhere.
- Pictures stay in the site owner’s own media library. The app stores an address, never a copy, and never receives an upload.
- Nothing whatsoever is stored about a visitor: no cookie, no identifier, no session and no IP address. The optional open count is one row saying which wall, which post and when — and is off unless the owner switches it on.
- Every row lives in a collection inside the site owner’s own site, under their own account. The site owner is the controller of it.
- Nothing is loaded from any third party: no script, no tracker, no font and no icon set. Thumbnails are served by Wix’s own media host, from the owner’s own library.
- Uninstalling removes the app’s collections and touches nothing else.
Technical detail
- Version
- 1.7.0
- Hosting
- Wix (the app runs on Wix’s own infrastructure — no servers of ours)
- Runtime
- Wix CLI app — Astro + React, Node.js
- Authentication
- Wix app-instance identity, verified on every request
- Wix surfaces
- Photo wall element (editor widget, any page, any number of times), Settings panel in the editor, per placement, Dashboard page
- App ID
3991cf75-8815-42ed-a759-9b900ecfd159- Support
- support@buildsbyluke.com
- Support SLA
- Two business days
- Publisher
- Builds By Luke, Canada
Questions people ask.
Does it connect to my social accounts?
No, and it never will. That is the entire point of it. Every post on the wall is one you put there yourself, so there is no account to link, no permission to grant, no token to expire and nothing to reconnect. The apps this one replaces all break the same way, and their reviewers say so in their own words.
So I have to add everything by hand?
Yes — and that is the trade. You pick pictures from your own media library, as many at once as you like, write a caption and a date, and that is a post. In exchange nothing ever disconnects, no platform can change its terms on you, and your wall does not go blank while you are asleep. On Business you can bring a whole wall in from a CSV file in one go.
Is there a watermark on the free plan?
No, and there is none on any plan, ever — not on the page, not in the editor, not on a lapsed plan. Six of the nine apps on this shelf print their own name on your website and charge between $1.39 and $34.91 a month to take it off.
How many posts can I have on the free plan?
As many as you like. There is no cap on posts, channels or placements on any plan. The apps on this shelf stop at three, four, six or sixteen posts, or at two hundred page views.
Will it slow my page down?
It is built to do the opposite. Every tile asks for a thumbnail at exactly the size it is drawn — a 2.66 MB photograph arrives as about 1.9 kB, measured on a published page — everything below the fold is lazy, and a placement makes one request and nothing after it. Nothing at all is loaded from a third party.
Can it show videos?
It can show a post that links to one. It draws your own picture with a play mark and opens wherever the film already lives — it never pretends to play anything on your page, which is a live complaint about the app next door.
Can I put different walls on different pages?
On Pro, yes — as many walls as you like, one per page or one per campaign. On the free plan you have one wall, but you can place it on as many pages as you like and each placement can show just one channel, with its own arrangement.
What are channels?
Your own names for your own groups — “Behind the scenes”, “The studio”, whatever you call them. Each one has a colour, visitors can filter by them, and there is no cap on how many you have. This app has no list of services anywhere in it and never supplies a name for you.
Does it store anything about my visitors?
Nothing at all. No cookie, no identifier, no session, no IP address. The one optional record is which post was opened and when — not who opened it — and it is off unless you switch it on. The install dialog is one line.
What happens to my wall if I stop paying?
It keeps working. Your posts are ordinary records in your own site’s content manager, the wall keeps drawing, the page-weight work keeps working, and any post you had scheduled to come down stays down. The Pro and Business features stop; nothing of yours is deleted or held hostage, and CSV export is free.
Are the sample pictures stock photographs?
No — they are drawings this app made, so nothing is downloaded and nothing is licensed from anybody. Replace them with your own whenever you like.
Does it work on Wix Studio?
Yes. It is a custom element, so it runs on Wix Studio, the classic Wix Editor and Wix Harmony — the same app and the same settings panel. Verified on a published Wix Studio page and on a published classic Wix page.
Put Photo Wall & Social Grid on your site.
Add it, use the free plan on a real site, and only pay once it has earned it.