How to create a simple photosite?

<p>I want to develop my personal photosite. Could anybody give me an advice or a recommendation? <br>

<br />Now I have most of my photos at Flickr, and I like it. But I want to have something more personal, with my webdesign, a few static pages, blog, etc... I've contacted a few web-programmers and it seems this is expensive and long job. But I'm not a top-class professional to pay thousands of dollars. <br>

<br />On the other hand I found two service providers:<br>

- www.albolio.com<br>

- www.pullfolio.com<br>

Both are very cheap and can create a personal photosite based on my Flickr account. Have anybody used these services? What are pros and cons?<br>

<br />Is there another alternative?</p>

<p>Jalbum is the first program that comes to mind.</p>

<p>JAlbum is good. So is Coppermine.</p>

<p>Wordpress.org. Check out my site through my profile.</p>

<p>Thank you for advices! I see that Jalbum is just another social site, but I need something personal.<br>

Phil, I can not understand - your website is based on Wordpress? It looks very nice! Is it possible to develop something similar using Wordpress.com?</p>

<p>Have little experience with wordpress.com, Sergey, but I suspect the freedom and functionality is only slightly less than that of a wp.org installation. Browse through their site a bit, especially the forums and support areas, and you'll probably find more photo site info than you can shake a 70-200 at.</p>

Check the details. Jalbum also allows you to make à website that you can host everywhere.

<p>Yeah, I wouldn't discount JAlbum. It's created most of my archived album pages. I haven't used it, though, for several years, so am not familiar with their latest capabilities. Just trying to offer options.</p>

<p>Jos v E. makes a good point with "Check the details," Sergey. Any host or program you choose is going to require at least some learning curve. Dig a little into their offerings until you find one that works for you.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.spirer.com/">My site</a> is an example of what can be done with jalbum. It's got a lot of capability depending on the skin you use, the social stuff is an offshoot of the site building tools.</p>

<p>Smugmug.com is an image hosting site that allows customization of your personal pages. I'm not sure if they will support blogs. They will accept orders and make and ship prints for your customers at prices you determine. </p>

<p>A professional web developer will cost you a professional caliber fee. For simple web design jobs, there are high school and college students who can handle the basics. It is also not hard to learn to do it yourself. This is what I did for my strictly amateur pursuits: <a href="randrews4.com">randrews4.com</a><br>

This was created with free software. Specifically, a combination of iWeb (Mac), Google pages (now replaced by Google sites), and Sea Monkey (freeware).</p>

<p>what do you want a web site to do for you? It's a critical question and one you must graple with before you decide what directon to go . . .<br>

Making a blog your website might seem like the way to go, and it very well could be, but you should make sure you know what you want to accomplish with a website before yo build it . . . Making a blog your we presence if your trying to build a business is a mistake . . . not having a blog is a mistake too, but making your blog you website is not the way to go if this is a business decision. . .</p>

<p>i did mine in wordpress, bought a theme worth 40 bucks and a domain worth 10 - im happy with it: <a href="http://www.lankydane.com">lankydane.com</a>. If you know wordpress you can even save the 40 and go for the lite version of the theme (modularity) but the support is excellent. I dont have a blog added now, but it's easily done. 2 clicks.</p>

<p><strong>SmugMug</strong> is a great site to develop your own website, that's what I use for mine.</p>

<p><strong>Zenfolio</strong> is pretty much the same thing.</p>

<p>Hi Sergey- I am using bearhug.photoreflect.com and bearhug.com. Photoreflect is free and is a store-marketing site for our images. Bearhug.com is through Smugmug.com and has a free trial period. It provides a more complete selection of web site design options and a storage service. Just getting started on both. Also, using Facebook for working with high school seniors. We post four images of senior clients the evening of their shoot. This generates good responses. Pete

 

PS - We instruct our customers to use http. for getting to bearhug.photoreflect.com. Google and Bing searches will not get them there. Why? I don't know, any ideas on this? Pete

<p>I think Zenfolio is great for hosting and selling photos, but I wouldn't recommend using it alone for a full-fledged web site, especially if you want a blog. I have a front-end site hosted on pair Networks (using the Drupal content management system, but I have web development experience), and link from there to my Zenfolio galleries. </p>

<p>Two options come to mind. I just added a Photoshelter website <a href="http://www.photoshelter.com">www.photoshelter.com</a> and it was easy and inexpensive at about $300.00 but they have other options too. Lots of great features and it also allows you to sell stock images. The other option is to host a photo blog and I've seem some really nice ones. You can see my <a href="http://www.paulsbartholomew.com">architectural photography on my Photoshelter website at www.paulsbartholomew.com</a> Feel free to email questions.</p>

<p>I guess I'm the only one here who works on an Apple. iWeb, Mobile Me and a domain purchased thru EZ/GoDaddy is all I've ever needed.</p>

<p>Smugmug will allow you to link your e-blogger blog and incorporate it (visually) fully into your smugmug website if you want for no additional feel. Also, they partner with goDaddy to handle domain name registrations and administration directly, making the process simple and easy. They also allow MASSIVE amount of customisation of their built-in templates using simple CSS and javascript (with which their online community can help massively!).</p>

<p>Given them a try (they have a time-limited free use) and if you want, check my site to see what can be done...;-)</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Also, they partner with <a href="../business-photography-forum/00XG9q?start=10" target="_blank">goDaddy</a> to handle domain name registrations and administration directly, making the process simple and easy. They also allow MASSIVE amount of customisation of their built-in templates using simple CSS and javascript (with which their online community can help massively!).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Both of those I've done with my site at SmugMug. With little to no knowledge of CSS, I was able to use the support of the online community to further customize my website. It's nothing overly fancy, but I intentionally wanted to keep things simple and easy to navigate. Within a week I had it set the way I wanted it, and used GoDaddy to register my own domain.</p>

<p>You also have <strong>unlimited</strong> storage for your JPEG images.</p>

<p>try: wix.com<br>

you will have to buy your domain from someone else, like godaddy but wix is easy to use.</p>

<p>Many thanks everybody for the advices! I tried different ideas and services, and after all I've stoped at Albolio. This is exactly what I was looking for. Something basic and easy to get me started. It's free to use and it loaded all my Flickr pictures. I did this quick one in a few minutes: http://zamkovoy.albolio.com</p>

<p>http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=41252</p>

<p>You can get free domain names from smartdots.com...... you end up with <a href="http://www.yourname.net.tc">www.yourname.net.tc</a><br>

Just a thought.</p>