Grids are fine. They’re also everywhere.
PhotoPile scatters your images across the page like a handful of prints tossed on a table — overlapping, tilted, never landing the same way twice. Hover one and it pulls out from under its neighbors, straightens up, and lifts. Click it and it opens full-size in a lightbox.
This is version 2. The original was a Yabdab stack, and it’s been completely rebuilt: modern CSS, an ES6 class, no jQuery, no legacy code.
What’s in it:
- Separate thumbnail and full image per photo. The pile loads light; the lightbox loads sharp. Set both sizes independently.
- Preload on hover. By the time someone clicks, the full-size image is already there.
- Responsive overlap. Min width, max height, and overlap are all set per breakpoint — so the pile stays a pile on a phone instead of collapsing into a mess.
- Built-in lightbox with keyboard arrows, swipe, trackpad gestures, prev/next controls, and a blurred backdrop you can tune.
- Alt tag doubles as the caption — so your accessibility work isn’t wasted effort.
- Warehoused images from your server or a CDN, if you’d rather not embed.
- Feeds and Total CMS integration for galleries that update themselves.
- Drag and drop images straight in for a static pile, or wire it to a collection and let it fill itself.
$29.95 →
Already own the Yabdab bundle? You’ve got this — PhotoPile was part of that bundle. Grab the download from the link in your original invoice. Don’t buy it twice.
If you build something with it, drop a screenshot in this thread. And the product page could use its first review if you’re inclined.