Photo Web Host - suggestions?

[Michael Hewson]

I found "Dreamweaver" easy to use (bit like a word processor really) - then hosted the web site I built locally using the ISP that provides me my internet/email service - part of the deal is a certain web space free.

[Marko]

What Frank said.

Flash, Dreamweaver et al are all just tools. Capable and complex tools to be sure, but they will not construct your site no more than Photoshop will create your graphics - it's what a designer/web architect will do. But then again, really competent ones can do that using nothing more than a text editor.

Web design and photography have a lot in common - everybody can "do" that, but only professionals can do either professionally. And guess what, no matter what Uncle Ernie says, you can always tell his snapshots from professional photography. Well, it's the same with web design, just substitute Uncle Ernie with your neighbour's "kid with Front Page".

If you think $2,000-3,000 is expensive, you can always commission a site for $500-$600. Just remember, if you do that, you will end up with just that - a $500 site representing you and your worth.

Regards,

[Witold Grabiec]

Before you decide on a hosting provider, check out webhostingtalk.com. Probably the only place with reliable input on hosters actually do and offer (bluehost for example has been trouble for many). It's a forum where actual users tell you how things are going. Many hosters offer huge space/bandwidth, but oversell heavilly which slows their servers and creates a load of other problems too. It's more reliable to sign up for a "reseller" account. This will give you not only better performance (almost guaranteed), but also the ability to set up many (or even unlimited) domains if you choose or need. It's all done in your control panel, which are almsot as easy to use as point-and-click affairs. What this means is that you can get together with someone else (to share the cost) and essentially share an account while running completely seperate web sites (in a reseller account you slice and cut the allocated space as you choose).

One of the most trusted hosters appears to be hostgator.com. Reseller account with 5Gb of space runs for $25 a month. While this pales against a 15Gb for $7, the truth is quite opposite. Again, reading the webhostingtalk.com will tell you some amazing stories on what to expect.

[Witold Grabiec]

Further, assuming you intend to be fund efficient, you should not be paying more than $10 a year for your domain. In general you should not have your site host as your domain registrar (or a middle man). I use gkg.net for domain registration (about $8/year) and have not looked at it for a couple of years. I'm sure there is planty of others doing just as well. Just make sure YOU remain the owner of the domain.

Domain name is a key so it'd be time to check out available names and register. You can park your domain before you get a host.

[robc]

sorry to be negative about it but you should also consider this:

Photography is one one of the biggest subjects on the net after anything computer related. For your intended site to be visible in search engines that means you are competing with the big boys. To be on page one of google for any one of thousands of search phrases which are photo or art related you will be competing with thousands of other web pages. If you ain't on page one for any one of those possible phrases then getting sufficient hits to make many sales is not going to happen in a big way. Achieving page one is very very difficult and for $2000 or $3000 you won't get that.

There thousands of web designers out there who are willing to re-invent the wheel for you with their "super" design skills. Trouble is, they don't have a clue about achieving high search engine position. So when they tell you its going to cost $2000 or $3000 tell them that at that price it must include guaranteed page one position in google for ten different search phrases and see what they say. I can can guarantee you that you will then get stream of effluent from them. You might then want to consider why you would be paying $3000 for something which very few people are ever likely to see unless you point them there by spending more money on other forms of web site promotion.

You might want to consider some free software such as a blog with a photoblog plugin and template. Have a look at www.wordpress.org. There are others which are just as good. They may not have the best graphics design but web site success is not about graphics design, its about page hits. You know that if you show an image to 100 people you will get a 100 different opinions. Same is true for web page design so spending lots on a graphic design won't pay. Spending lots on getting web page hits will.

[Witold Grabiec]

Page one in Goole for general photographic phrases? Rather unrealistic at any price, not to mention unneccessary. If your name is searched for, it will end up close to page one relatively quickly with rather basic search engine submissions (and in a few months without anything).

[robc]

"If your name is searched for, it will end up close to page one relatively quickly"

obviously thats true unless you happen to be called "smith", but that only works if people already know who you are. What if they've never heard of you and do a search on "photo art" or "black and white photography", then your stuffed unless you have someone who really knows what they are doing writing your site. That costs big bucks...

try it, type in photo art to google and you'll get ten links back out of 450 million. You might narrow that down by puting photo art inside quotes and get 10 out of 2.8 million but that still means tha 2.8 million pages have not been optimised to appear on page 1 for that search phrase. In my book thats not very good odds when looking for a web designer...

I should add again that photography is a worst case example for this simply because it is such a popular subject. Tough I know but thats just how the web works, there can only be a few on page one and getting there takes a lot more than a bit of fancy web design...

[Frank Petronio]

If it were simply about showing up higher in search engines then you'd be right, nothing else matters. But merely getting rankings is hardly enough -- you need to attract quality people who are impressed by your work and may purchase prints or hire you. The idea behind having a simple, attractive design with easy clear navigation, built with standards-based best practice techniques, is to remove the barriers that separate your website from your audience. You need to make it easy for people.

It's not at all about being fancy. In fact, being less fancy is harder to do.

A couple of years ago I convinced a company to toss out $75,000 of bad code in order to build a better - simpler - website. I suggest it works at this level as well.

[robc]

I don't disagree with you Frank, but getting hits comes first and if the images are good enough they will sell themselves. The Graphic design comes last in my book but there is no doubt it adds to marketing but without the first two its useless IMO.

getting back to the original question, here is a link to a gallery software suite which I have no personal experience of but which if I were in the market for one then I would look at very closely.

www.lightboxphoto.com/

at $600 for the pro version I think it represents very good value and it almost click and go as the original question asked for. Check the demos and also look at the customise optimise options to see what people have done with it. It has a simple and effective layout.

What do you think Frank? Could you do that for $600?

[Frank Petronio]

Nah, I don't want to get outta bed for $600 ;-)

And I'm certainly not looking to sell anything here. Just my two cents from doing web photo galleries for eleven years now. I still think the best stuff is done by hand, with a text editor and lots of testing.

For $600 it's a good product. I was looking at this standards-based photo gallery software myself:

http://www.stopdesign.com/templates/photos/

Which is $25 shareware and perhaps the better solution incorporating Moveable Type. Stop Design is one of the better web design places.

Maybe spend $25 on shareware and give $575 to a local geek to set it up properly?

As for search engine results, I doubt you can knock Photo.net off. But you might be able to do pretty well when someone searches for something more specific, like "black, white, Glacier Bay" or that sort of thing.

I get a lot of hits from Google "Images" not text because I use good text descriptors and names for my images (most of the time). That's often overlooked in all of this.