With FooGallery PRO Commerce, setting up shop has never been easier!

FooGallery Pro Commerce includes an ingenious feature, a Master Product, that allows you to set up one product in WooCommerce to which you can link all of your photographs that you want to sell. This can save you hours of time, making it even easier to create your online store.

All other image gallery ecommerce solutions require you to create a separate product for every image in your gallery. With FooGallery PRO Commerce, you only need to create one: a Master Product!

Using a master product might sound complicated, but it really isn’t. It’s a simple way to set up similar products and product variations, without going to the hassle of adding individual products for every photograph you want to sell. Setting up the master product itself may take a few minutes, but it’s worth it! You’ll see why in just a minute.

To make it as simple as possible, we’re going to look at what a master product is, how it works and how you can implement this in your own online store, to help you sell your photographs.

Table of Contents

What is a Master Product?

A master product is a single product, which you can link to all of the photographs you want to sell within your gallery. In other words, you link all of the images in your gallery to just one product ID in WooCommerce, so you only need to create a single WooCommerce product!

This can be applied to new galleries or galleries that already exist.

So if you’re just starting out, you can use this method when you set up your new galleries. It saves loads of time as you DON’T need to create individual WooCommerce products for each image. And if you already have photo galleries set up on your WordPress site, the master product comes in very handy! This is because you DON’T need to recreate your galleries. All you have to do is create a single WooCommerce product, and link this to all the images you have in your gallery.

How It Works

You can apply a master ID to any gallery images that are similar in nature. For example, you could be selling different photos, art prints, or designs, all in the same sizes.

Let’s look at the photo example in a bit more detail. (You can also see a demo of how this works here.)

If you sell your photographs, you’ll most likely sell the prints or downloads in a set size. You may also offer various sizes for the different images. For example, you might want to sell your images as 250×250, 500×500, 1080×1080 or full-size image downloads.

Here’s a screenshot of how this could look in the lightbox, when you include product variations:

product variations are inherited from the master product

But instead of creating each of the images as a product that you’re selling in WooCommerce, you can simply load one product. This is your master product, which will act as a template for all of the other images in your gallery.

Now you can create a gallery with all of the images that you want to sell in this way – in other words, any images that you’re selling in all of those sizes. You would then link the gallery to your one master product. Now each item in the gallery will show the same image sizes, from which your customers can select the one they want to buy.

You can also set up different prices for the different image sizes. This would work in much the same way as the sizes – all of the photos would display the same prices for each set size. This is because when you create your master product, you set the size and price variations. Any items that are then linked to this master product will therefore inherit the same variations.

What makes this feature even better, is that each item will show the image for that individual item. So while you may have one master product, each item has its own image. AND when you add items to the cart, those individual images are shown:

Each items shows its own image in the cart

Benefits of Using a Master Product

You can probably already see some of the benefits of setting up shop this way!

Using this method can save you hours of time, as you won’t need to add each item as an individual product in WooCommerce. If you have over 500 images that you want to sell, for example, setting up each of these as an individual WooCommerce product could take hours. You can double or triple this time if you want to add variations for each of these.

Using a master product also means that you won’t need to set up new galleries. If you have already created galleries, you can simply set up master products and link these galleries to the master products’ IDs. This can save you even more time, and means you can practically start selling your images within minutes!

User experience is an important factor when it comes to online shopping. Using a master product won’t compromise this, though, as each item displays its own image in the shopping cart, along with the size, quantity, and price. This ensures that customers know exactly what they’re buying.

Getting Started

Using a master product is an efficient way to set up shop. But there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

  • You will need to be using WooCommerce and FooGallery PRO Commerce.
  • You can use this feature to link galleries to a master product, but all of the images in that gallery will inherit the settings you’ve created for the master product. In other words, each gallery image will show the same variations (e.g. sizes or colors) and the same prices.
  • It is possible to manually link gallery items to individual products, but this will need to be done manually for each item. Any item not linked to a specific product will inherit from the master product.
  • Alternatively, you can set up additional master products for each of your galleries. For example, if you’re selling different styles of artwork, you can set up a master product for each style and have separate galleries for each.
  • Your master product should not be used in any other galleries on your site.

Ready to get started? We’ve put together a detailed guide on how to set up a master product and link this to your gallery; read it here.