BlueWorx Lab | Forum Lighting

Site functionality plugin for Forum Lighting: one control centre to switch the WooCommerce gallery, metadata, pricing and more on or off.

Description

Provides a new Elementor widget, "Forum: Product Image Gallery", that renders a modern product gallery (main image, clickable thumbnails and looping arrows) without relying on the native WooCommerce gallery output. The same gallery can be placed anywhere with [forum_product_gallery].

• Auto-detects the current WooCommerce product.
• Pictures come from ePim (by image ID) or the WooCommerce gallery — pick the source on the widget, or with source="woocommerce" on the shortcode.
• The featured image opens the gallery and sits first in the thumbnails, followed by the gallery in its own order.
• Shows product and WooCommerce metadata in a searchable admin section.
• Copies metadata to the clipboard or downloads it as a JSON file.
• Keeps a full product change log for users, imports, and external APIs.
• Shows when each product was last updated and who edited it.
• Products with no pictures show bundled placeholders, so a page never breaks.
• Loads CSS/JS only on pages where the widget is used.
• Fully responsive and accessible. Vanilla JS, no jQuery dependency.

Setup

1. Install and activate WooCommerce and Elementor (Pro optional).
2. Install and activate this plugin.
3. Edit a single product template (Templates > Theme Builder > Single Product, or any Elementor-built single product page).
4. Delete the existing "Product Images" (woocommerce-product-images.default) widget.
5. Drag in the "Forum: Product Image Gallery" widget from the WooCommerce / General category. Save.

Changelog

1.14.0

• Products are pulled from ePim daily and on demand, matched by SKU, with a Product import page that records every pull product by product.
• Test mode (on to begin with) and a pull of one category at a time.

1.13.0

• The product change log keeps each product's last two updates from ePim or from staff, field by field. Older history is cleared on update.

1.12.3

• The product change log no longer records SureRank's SEO checks, so it only shows real product changes. Old SureRank entries are cleared on update.

1.12.2

• The featured image is now the first thumbnail in the gallery, not the last, so the last gallery picture (the dimensional drawing) comes last.

1.12.1

• The gallery widget can take its pictures from the WooCommerce gallery as well as ePim. Pick the source on the widget.
• Arrows on the main image loop through every picture; the featured image opens the gallery and sits last in the thumbnails.
• [forum_product_gallery] places the gallery without Elementor.
• An enlarge button opens the pictures full size over the page, with arrows, swipe and keyboard to move through them.

1.11.1

• Product bullets now show exactly as typed on the product. "IP44 Rating" no longer becomes "Ip44 rating".

1.8.0

• Forum Pages: long-form support pages with every heading, paragraph, photo and button editable in one place, under Forum Pages in the menu.
• Each section of a Forum Page can be switched off, and the page numbers its sections and builds its "on this page" links from whichever ones are left.
• Drop [forum_page] into an Elementor template for Forum Pages and the site's own header and footer stay in charge of the page.

1.7.1

• The Save changes bar now sits along the bottom of the window on every admin screen, instead of coming to rest halfway up a short page.
• Every on/off toggle now sits on the right of the setting it switches, lined up down the right edge of the panel.
• A toggle you cannot use, because the plugin it needs is not active, now shows as unavailable rather than lighting up when you click it.

1.7.0

• The last three admin screens now match the rest of the plugin: the product metadata section on the product edit page, the product change log, and Tools > Purge Product Images. Same buttons, same tables, same notices as Settings > BlueWorx Lab.
• The metadata page and the purge tool now run the full width of the screen.
• The purge tool reads its figures as plain counts rather than a wall of bold text, and the long image lists scroll in place instead of pushing the page down.

1.6.0

• Settings > BlueWorx Lab has been rebuilt on the shared BlueWorx admin design. Feature groups are now sections you switch between rather than one long list, and the Save button stays in view. Everything still saves in one go, whichever section you are looking at.
• The plugin now updates itself on the site from a published release, so nobody uploads a zip any more.
• Uninstalling the plugin now removes the settings and the change-log table it created, and leaves everything else alone.
• Every change to the plugin is now checked automatically before it can go out.
• IMPORTANT: the imported Code Snippets scripts now use their own function names. If any of the matching entries are still switched on in the Code Snippets plugin, switch them off - with the names no longer clashing, both copies would run.

1.5.5

• "ECD special prices" no longer shows in the product attribute list on the website. The existing rule missed it because of how WooCommerce names the rows.

1.5.4

• Gallery widget is now called "Forum: Product Image Gallery" in the Elementor panel. Existing pages using it are unaffected.

1.5.3

• Product gallery: the featured image stays in the thumbnail row and is marked more clearly as the one currently showing.

1.5.1

• Search result SKUs now read "SKU: 12345678" in the same red as the shop listing cards.

1.5.0

• Search results now show the product SKU instead of the short description. Products without a SKU show nothing in its place.
• Added a "Show SKU in search results" toggle under Settings > BlueWorx Lab.

1.4.0

• Product breadcrumbs now show the main category path again. Products also assigned to "Featured Products" were showing that path instead, because WooCommerce picks the category nested deepest rather than the one the connector sends first.
• Added a "Main category breadcrumbs" toggle under Settings > BlueWorx Lab.

1.3.0

• Added a "Log product pricing (debug)" feature. On single product pages it prints the current user role, the original vs live calculated price, and every role-based pricing tier to the browser console. Reminder: visible to every visitor while switched on, so turn it off after debugging.
• Added a "Debug logging" panel at the top of Settings > BlueWorx Lab that groups the console-logging switches (user role, product pricing) in one place for quick on/off toggling while troubleshooting.

1.2.1

• Aligned the plugin text domain with the plugin slug so all translatable strings resolve correctly.
• Hardened admin input handling (unslashing and sanitising query and form data) and documented the intentional direct database queries used by the change log and the image-purge tool.
• Switched the N/A attribute filter to wp_strip_all_tags() and added the missing translators comment.

1.2.0

• Product gallery and the WooCommerce featured image now load product imagery directly from the external ePim asset service, built from the product image IDs (_thumbnail_id and _product_image_gallery) — no media-library imports.
• Added a "ePim featured image" feature toggle under Settings > BlueWorx Lab.
• Products with no image IDs (or a missing ePim asset) fall back to the bundled placeholder images.

1.1.1

• Fixed the [product_bullets] shortcode so it renders custom (local) "Bullet" product attributes, not just the legacy global pa_bullet-* taxonomies.
• Bullets now display in numeric order (Bullet 1, 2, 3...) regardless of the attribute order on the edit screen.

1.1.0

• Renamed the plugin to "BlueWorx Lab | Forum Lighting" and turned it into the site's single custom-functionality plugin. The product image gallery is now one feature among many.
• Added a control page under Settings > BlueWorx Lab to switch every feature on or off, with a confirmation prompt before switching anything off.
• Moved the site's Code Snippets scripts into the plugin (verbatim) as toggleable features: role-based pricing, hide prices/cart from guests, product bullets, fitting/datasheet/video buttons, product filter, hide internal and N/A attributes, restrict search to products, ACF account details, clean email footer, catalogue drag-ordering, the product image purge tool, and a user-role debug logger.
• The product metadata viewer and product change log are now toggleable too.
• IMPORTANT: after updating, disable the matching entries in the Code Snippets plugin to avoid duplicate-function errors.

1.0.6

• Added a full product change log with old and new values.
• Identifies changes made by users, external APIs, imports, scheduled tasks, and command-line jobs.
• Includes changes to product details, WooCommerce metadata, variations, categories, tags, product types, and product attributes.
• Added Copy metadata and Download JSON actions.
• Metadata exports now exclude WordPress editor, SEO, and Elementor fields.

1.0.5

• Added the last update date, time, and editor to product screens and the WooCommerce product list.

1.0.4

• Added a searchable Product Meta Data section to WooCommerce product edit pages, with a readable full-page view that opens in a new tab.

1.0.3

• Replaced the demo gallery images with bundled lighting-product placeholders (self-contained SVGs themed for a wholesale lighting supplier). Removes the external image-service dependency so demo images can never fail to load.

1.0.0

• Initial release.