Fast Easy ways of building a photography website

[peter_hoang1]

<p>hello, i am looking to make a photography website but i dont even know where to start. i dont know flash but i understand a bit of dreamweaver. but all that stuff is all to confusing for me to grasp. I know that theres a bunch of different websites out there where you can post your images, and websites that sell you templates. im looking for something that is more professional, customizable, user friendly, and allows you to use your own domain. do you know any websites or programs that would help? thanks!</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

<p>www.livebooks.com</p>

<p>you can check out my site: and my experiences in creating it with the livebooks team at http://www.ppmag.com/web-exclusives/2009/02/the-livebooks-process-a-total.html</p>

<p>If that option is too pricey and you use a Mac check out iWeb which is part of the iLife package bundled with new Macs. Kirk Tuck's site , http://www.kirktuck.com , is built and continuously rebuilt and refreshed by Kirk using iWeb.</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>You can create photo galleries, in flash or HTML in either Lightroom or Photoshop. They are complete "sites" and just have to be uploaded onto your domain server to have a gallery.</p>

<p>Admittedly, the flash galleries are difficult to update, and none contain pages such as "About us" or "Contact us" etc. There is a Lightoom gallery template set called Lightroom Complete 3 that allows you to use LR to create and link all those pages into a more complete site.</p>

<p>I bought a template from Allwebco because I'm not a graphic designer, and threw away their galleries and slideshow because the functionality was funky. I built a top level infrastructure using plain-vanilla HTML and use it to link to LR-generated galleries. That way I get all the benefits of both HTML and flash. I get the ease of one-click gallery generation in LR, and the ease of updating the HTML instead of flash.</p>

<p>It takes me very little time and effort to create a new gallery, update the gallery index page, and upload it to my server.</p>

<p>I host all this (a dozen or more galleries with more than a hundred photos) on an ISP (powweb.com) that costs me about $100 a year.</p>

<p>You can see all this on my site, which is linked to my user page here. Click on my name and then click on the link to my web site. (We're not allowed to link to our own sites from posts.)</p>

<p><Chas></p>

[ktharp]

<p>Hey Peter, I use a flash site and it seems to be the standard at the moment for photographers websites. I checked out several different sites and finally decided to use portfoliositez.com Other than a setup fee and monthly payment you only have to purchase your domain name. It's very affordable and profesional looking in my opinion. Visit my page if you would like to see the look of it. kelseytharpphotography.com</p>

[peter_hoang1]

<p>thanks for the info guys. yeah theres alot of websites like, photographysitez and livebooks, and it seems like theres alot of photography websites that are generated form them. i am looking for somehting that has a bit more control with layouts. I like the idea of iweb for mac. does apple allow you to use your own domain name? does it give you a lot of control? thanks</p>

[AJG]

<p>Peter--I have two sites--one for my commercial work that I did with LiveBooks and one for my personal work that I did with i Web. LiveBooks costs more, but has more design options and is probably better set up for search engine optimization. Both work well, and were relatively painless to set up. It really depends on what you are needing to do with your site--are you using it to directly get work or are you using it as a portfolio that is instantly available anywhere in the world for galleries, etc. to look at?</p>

[kathryn_hayden]

<p>Peter...in response to question about domain names...yes, apple does let you use your own domain names -- will vary by who you have your domain with, but GoDaddy (who I registered domain name through), gave pretty simple to follow instructions on how to make this work. You actually are still using the mac server, as I understand it, but there is a domain forwarding process that provides for having just your domain name as the URL. <br>

Feel free to follow up if this doesn't make sense..and also check out the discussion forums for iweb (http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=188)</p>

[robert_k1]

<p>Charles, I agree with you about using LR templates for galleries. However, I have yet to find a way to customize the gallery pages to match the layout/design of a site's other pages. (I don't know enough html coding to do that). Or know of sites that are doing that. If they do exist, references please.<br>

For example, once I open a gallery page at your site, the background color is no longer black as on other pages, and the global menu bar is gone. Not sure if you did that on purpose. Other tweaks I would like to make is to make the forward/backward buttons somewhat bigger, change the font type to be the same as on other pages (if different), etc.<br>

The LR templates take care of the bulk of designing and maintaining a web gallery. But being able to customize will result in a more cohesive and consistent look for the whole site. The galleries can also be made to look somewhat different from others' using the same template. I think that this should not be a really challenging job for the experienced coders.</p>

[one shot gallery]

<p>Hi - If you like the look of a site like www.1shot.uk.com then I can design you something like that for about 500 dollars. All you have to do is send me a folder of photos for each menu you want. Simple!</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>Robert, yes it is difficult to fully customize the LR galleries. There are lots of "templates" available to do some of it. My trade-off was to trade full customizability for ease of use and simplicity.</p>

<p>The color shouldn't change between the gallery and the top level pages, the top level pages were coded to be the same color as the gallery, because I couldn't change the gallery page color ;-(</p>

<p>Good, Fast, Cheap - pick 2</p>

<p>You generally can't get full customization, and ease of update without paying for a full-custom site, which is neither fast nor cheap.</p>

<p><Chas></p>

[robert_k1]

<blockquote>

<p><em>You generally can't get full customization, and ease of update without paying for a full-custom site, which is neither fast nor cheap.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Agreed. But the LR templates are so close...</p>

[aimee_pieters]

<p>Just an observation. Most photographers who have complaints about their web designer are using individuals. If you're trying to run a business, it's better to deal with a business vs. an individual when it comes to websites. I've heard everything such as "my web designer just disappeared", "i have this great web designer, but i can't get my site updated because she's pregnant", "my web designer takes forever to change images and/or copy". If you have access to the site and can make changes yourself, that's a good situation. If you're at the mercy of ONE person, that's asking for trouble at some point....-Aimee</p>

[jim mucklin]

<p>Peter, I feel your pain. To me there were two schools when it came to my decision. I shoot events and post hundreds of photos per month and could not afford to have someone create a site let alone maintain it, then there was the selling of photos thru services who make a good commission on your work, the idea of a customer having to go thru this type of service and get the prints in the mail without me first proofing them just didn't work for me, it also didn't work for some of my competitiors who are no longer around. In my field it comes down to not only price but service.<br />So with no, I mean no computer knowlege I went to MS and they had a tutorial on how to build a site without html knowledge, It was hard and time consuming, but I did it and now I have full control. I did a search on web providers and found IX webhosting and selected it base on the recomendation of web developers. I can't say enough good things about them. I think the days of taking the money and building bad sites is in the past. If your building a couple of pages and not going to change things, maybe an individual or a service, if not consider this option. If I can do it, anyone can.<br />Jim<br>

 

 

MODERATOR NOTE: Website link removed. Users should have their URL in their Community page.

[michelle_carrillo]

<p>I have my website through <a href="http://www.photobiz.net">www.photobiz.net</a>. It is very, very simple to use and they have a LOT of fabulous templates to choose from. You can even hook up a shopping cart and blog directly to your site with no hassle. Check out my site if you want to see what it's like: <a href="http://www.theSuitcaseStudio">www.theSuitcaseStudio</a>.<br>

Photobiz charges one fee up front to get set up, and then it's a monthly payment based on how many pictures you host on your site.</p>