Professional Photography Themes: Advice Desperately Needed!

Hi guys,

 

My name's Bryan and me and my partner are looking to set up a website for a professional photography business. We've spent scores of

hours the last few weeks looking into every theme we could find online, both recommended and not recommended. But as is sometimes

the way, the more we find out, the less we know. However, we are very clear about what we want.

 

Therefore, I was hoping for some advice from you guys. Particularly, which themes do you think we should go for? Any and all advice

would be massively appreciated; I'm losing my mind now, to be honest, and have long since lost objectivity! Another set of outlooks on

the matter would help us immensely.

 

Things we are looking for in our website...

 

1. We want to use WORDPRESS.ORG. I've got blogs at wordpress.com, so I've known about WP.org for a while. It's fantastic and I am

sure it is the best bet for us. Therefore, we want to base our website on it (although we are happy to have the website hosted elsewhere if

the themes included in WP.org aren't for us).

 

2. We like the look of two websites in particular.

 

The homepage of http://www.danimantis.com is great. We like the parallax thing and how it has been done there.

 

We also love the look of http://www.chikophotography.com 's homepage because the animated grid is only 2 x 2 and thus enables visitors

to see plenty of images but fairly large.

 

We're looking for a clear and easy-to-browse website that has a few images on the front page to show off a bit of variety and a menu

somewhere which easily links to other stuff (see danimantis.com and chikophotography,com for good examples of what we would like).

 

3. We want to have private galleries which are password protected for particular clients. We give the client the password, they type it in,

and they have access to the gallery in question.

 

4. We would like a shop function.

 

* So clients can use the private galleries function and order photos from there.

* So general visitors can look at publicly displayed / non-password protected photos, which are for sale in the store, and buy those.

 

5. We are happy to use plug-ins or whatever is required if adding to a theme is needed.

 

6. We are not techy at all, so things have to be straightforward for us to do.

 

7. We want to be able to add, change, upload, alter images (etc) on the websites ourselves, regularly, and with the minimum of fuss.

 

8. We want the website to display properly and be functional whether visitors come via a mobile phone, a PC, an iPad etc.

 

9. We don't want the website to be too demanding to open up for visitors. I think it's called "lazy option compatible" or something.

 

10. We want to put our logo on the homepage in a not-hidden / sort of obvious way.

 

11. Synching / direct transferal from LightRoom would be a big plus.

 

12. The website shouldn't be prone to crashing for any reason.

 

13. Ideally, the theme will have decent tech support and stability behind and underlying it.

 

14. We're ideally looking for a dark skinned theme, potentially with a touch of vintage or old class to it; but we could settle for modernish

dark.

 

15. The theme shouldn't force us into linking to Instagram or whatever.

 

Well, I really hope you guys can help us. As I say, we've done absurd amounts of research including long emails to theme makers. Yet I'm

less clear than ever on which theme is for us. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Kind regards,

 

Bryan

<p>Take a look at http://Photocrati.com . Check the demo page--every one of these CSS styles is configurable from the Photocrati WP theme. I spent a lot of time looking various photography themes over and this proved to be the most configurable and robust. Combined with other WP mods, you can go wherever you like with it--and anyone that is handy with CSS stylesheet coding can take it even further. I have been running it for my site about 4 months now and no issues. Oh, and it has store integration too! See what I have done at http://papatango.photography</p>

 

<p>Take a look at http://photocrati.com . All of the demos are from one theme--pretty configurable! I spent over a month weighing the various options. It does just about everything you specify. Combined with other WP mods and a little custom CSS magic, it can do everything. Although I am not using it, store integration is built in--as well as numerous gallery options. Check out what I have done with it at http://papatango.photography</p>

<p>If your time is worth anything as professionals (surely it is, isn't it?) why not just hire a web design shop to write or adapt a theme appropriate to your needs? You have plenty of examples of what you want and don't want, which is exactly what you need when choosing to engage someone on this sort of project. Or, consider melding a traditional WP theme for the hi-how-are-you communication stuff, and using a platform like Zen or Smugmug to handle all of the galleries, shopping, and password protected stuff (they already have all of that cooked and working - why reinvent the wheel?).</p>

<p>check out Photocrati. Does everything you ask except the lightroom sync. just add a com behind the name and you are at their site. I have been using this for about 5 months now. Demos show you the versatility in appearance for the theme.</p>