Professional Website using Templates?

[Marko]

I'm not baiting you here Frank, but what do you think sets your web design apart? For instance I like the Praus site, it is nice and clean, functional and I love the photos. I have watched the redesign and I think you did a great job. But the Allied Builders site seems very generic, much like every other contrators site out there. As a matter of fact it looks an awful lot like a template site. Comment?

I can't speak for Frank, although I think we both do "get it". But I can speak for myself and the project me and my son have done in the past or are doing now. Most web desiners and developers, just like most photographers, work for a Client. If the Client wants dancing pink rhinos on the background of subtly waving blue-green lillies, then that's what the Client will ultimately get, despite all the advice to the contrary that the designer will inevitably put forward. Simply because the designer cannot afford to have the Client bring in another designer to do it for him.

It's unfortunate, but not very many designers, and even fewer photographers I suspect, can afford to say that "they don't do that". But it is what lies underneath that makes a true difference, and sadly, very few people are aware of it.

Not to bait you either, but let me turn the tables a little. To the untrained eye, a photograph of the building is a photograph of the building. How would you explain the need to hire top notch (and expensive) photographer to produce something they could do themselves with the help of a single-use camera they can buy at the local drugstor and have it processed within an hour? Maybe not quite as fancy, but still recognizable...

[Marko]

Marko,

Many top photographers in the country use templates and I think for good reasons.

Just to illustrate my previous post, many web designers also use those nifty little happy snappys, and mostly digital at that. For good reason as well, I should think, although I don't quite follow suit.

[George Losse]

One thing not mentioned here yet and not that important to photographers is that black backgrounds with white text doesn't print very well. Most printers drop out the background. Even light gray text can have some trouble.

Again not as important for photographers as it would be for other industries. Our sites should not be word heavy anyway.

[Kirk Gittings]

I understand the limitations of working for clients, but if my images don't look significantly better than the other twelve architectural photographers who work my local market, why would they pay my higher prices?

Part of Frank argument against templates was their generic look. I am very familiar with contractor sites as many of my clients are contractors. The Allied site looks much like most contractor sites. Hence my question.

[darr]

If you market yourself as a creative professional, why would one choose to have a generic look?

[robc]

This argument of templates is not valid. What is a template? Well its a design whether you like it or not. The question is, is it a good, bad or indifferent design? To generalise and imply that all off the shelf designs are not good is simply not true. That doesn't mean they are all good either. It means that some are bad, some indifferent and some good. You just need to find the good ones if that is the route you choose.

Franks web sites use movabletype which is an off the shelf product. You have to design your own "template" to give it the look you want and since it was designed as blogging software it comes with a content management system designed for writing articles which I guess is why he used it. And also the inbuilt features for promotion within the blogging community. The http://www.alliedbuilders.com/ site uses movabletype, at least it says it does. So lets drop this template product stuff and just talk about design.

My criteria have been for very easy navigation so that images can be flicked through without mouse movement and different galleries are only a single click away. Also images are centered on screen and finally, it works for all screen resolutions including 800x600. After that its just the look of the site for which I have chosen white(ish).

Of all the sites I have seen of members here, the one I like the design of best is:

http://www.srosenberg.com/

it just looks professionally put together. Whether it is or not is neither here or there. It just looks good. It is heavy on graphics and there some navigation issues but I like the look of it. Nice images too. Whether it's sucessful or not I don't know and I haven't looked to see how well it is constructed and besides, from a users point of view, that is irrelevant providing it works.

[Kirk Gittings]

I agree about Scotts site. I wouldn't want it for my work, but I think it works extremely well for his. It has a sophisticated warmth (even though the colors are cool!) about it that fits his imagery.

[Kirk Gittings]

I also like Frank's personal site because it is so totally him, no pretence, no BS, totally unique for a photographer.

[Frank Petronio]

The funniest thing is that the old Praus site is ancient and uses code and techniques that I now cringe by. Wheras the Allied Builders website is set up pretty much perfectly in my mind.

I know my sites are so stark as to be cruelly minimalistic -- but that is totally intentional.

Maybe they look like canned templates but peek under the hood -- there is more too it that the surface.

[JW Dewdney]

I'm wondering if anybody here has used Adobe GoLive for their site... I got an older 6.0 version from someone along with LiveMotion (to do flash) - I've only done some preliminary snooping around in the program - and I'm thinking GoLive might not QUITE be what I'm looking for in terms of site building. The last one I did I hand-coded, and though it seemed like a total PITA to do, it probably was pretty simple compared to most. But using GoLive looks like it'd be even more complex than hand-coding java stuff. I'm not super keen on the idea of using a 'from-the-box' solution since it usually makes for really sloppy, slow code compared to 'by hand'... but if it's going to make it way easier - well, I'd consider it.

Any thoughts?