Original website or start from template?

[gnuyork]

How do most of you make your websites? I have seen some really nice ones. Do you hire a designer and make a custom website? Or do you start with a template and go from there?

I've been meaning to getting around to making a site for years now. It's about time I get to it.

[Darren H]

I'd look at a free or low cost option as the best route for most people as a way to display work and have a web presence.

Something as simple as a Flickr account, Picasa Web album, Blogger etc are free and let people see your work.

You can even buy a domain and have it hosted on blogger for free. Check out the Strobist site for example of a guy really running a business for about free.

If you want to have the ability to sell the occasional print automated, look at something like Zenfolio or Smugmug. Templates are easy and probably good enough for 98% of us.

If you have an established business, you have a client base, and if you need the top professionalsim to maintain that business, then maybe go with a pro.

FWIW, you can see my Smugmug site and Blogger site linked below.

Hope that helps.

[David Aimone]

I've been happy with Zenfolio, and it's a modest cost for what it offers.

Here's my site (http://www.davidaimone.com) as an example.

[Mark Woods]

iWeb is simple and can be elegant. You can look at my website and make up your own mind as to what it is. ;-)

[Mark Stahlke]

iWeb is simple and can be elegant. You can look at my website and make up your own mind as to what it is. ;-)My web sites (such as they are) were also built with Apple's iWeb software. iWeb is theme and template based but it's inexpensive and easy to use.

[Steve Gledhill]

I built my first website using a template based packaged product - Net Objects Fusion. Not too difficult but the real question to consider is ease of maintenance and ease of image management. NOF got too clumsy and I didn't get into it enough - perhaps that was my problem. But the time came a year ago to start afresh. I reviewed a few products and services and plumped for Photium. It took me a few hours to play (free tryout) to see how it worked and select a look and feel that I liked. Then after the annual payment - reasonable in my eyes - it took me a day to build the whole site, upload the images, etc. It's a doddle to maintain. So, I suggest you at least take a look at Photium. They are very responsive to questions and receptive to suggestions. It's linked at the bottom of my home page.

[FYI - I'm not in their pay though they do feature my website as an example.]

[darr]

I used ImageFolio (http://imagefolio.com/) for a few years and customized it. It is not cheap and customizing is a hassle as you have to update the perl code for about every page in their system for the commercial version. I have become dissatisfied with it's support which is basically "vacant." My current portfolio site (photoscapes.com) is still running it, but I have not updated anything in over a year. I personally would not recommend it for the price.

I signed onto PhotoShelter (http://www.photoshelter.com/index/d) a few months back to try their service without committing to a full changeover, but I was looking to update my site for commercial print offerings and back up storage. I decided that I will be making the switch to PhotoShelter for these reasons:


I shoot more commercial stuff now and PhotoShelter's fulfillment to labs is just what I need for a lot of my work.
Included in their price is fotoQuote which I ran as a standalone program and paid for it. Now I do not have to deal with buying upgrades from the publisher.
I was using PhotoShelter for back up storage of digital files any how and need to keep this service going.
Their SEO service is outstanding and is included in their price.


I am plugging PhotoShelter because I want to see them survive. :)

If your needs are small, they have a service to fit it. Their templates are pretty and if you find you need more services, it is available. You can try them for free.

Lunarpages (http://www.lunarpages.com/) is an excellent hosting service that I have been using for a few years.

Good luck on your quest as there is a lot of services, hosting companies and software developers to pick from!

Darr

[Ash]

I looked at the code on websites I liked, then re-wrote or adapted the code to suit

[Frank Petronio]

Do you even need a stand alone website anymore when you can have Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr to build a little network of social media?

Seriously. Just have your $9/year domain name point to your free Tumblr blog built w a custom template. Post your new stuff there and have it link to your other pages.

Keep your portfolio on $24.95 Pro Flickr account, it has the best image and gallery management tools, you couldn't duplicate its capabilities with $100K custom site. Photographers actually manage to update their Flickr pages, unlike their actual websites.

Use a free Facebook Business Page for your "About Us" and for a secondary portfolio. It's the best way to interact w clients and make sales, if that is what you're about.

Sell the best prints on Etsy or one of the other art sales sites, using PayPal for the transaction and give them a few %.

Everything cross links and is searchable and tagged and if you do it right, you can upload to Flickr and update everything at once automagically.

So... why do you need a dedicated site at all? Until you go pro and pay hundreds annually to use LiveBooks or DripBooks or PhotoShelter, what is the point?

Besides, I got burnt w PhotoShelter's stock photo business and while I hate to see a business fail, I am not giving them any more money or investing time into something that might go belly up next month or next year. Stick to the low cost and free solutions.

I have a couple of great websites that I am satisfied with, they are old yet still decent. But it isn't the way I'd approach the web nowadays if I were starting from scratch.

Look at this ad agency, it's the only decent ad agency website in the world:

http://www.modernista.com/

[Scott Knowles]

What do you want to present on the Website? That determines your choices along with the time and money you want to spend, not just initially but on-going, and if you want your own domain name or willing to accept using a host with just your name. It's easy to set up a one-off Website, but then discover the additions and updates are too much time.

But that said, you should brainstorm all the stuff you want to present now and later, listing all the topics (blog, photos, information, etc.) and then organizing it into a structure (the old fashioned storyboard idea). Then you can see what the on-line template hosts offer and how much you have to learn to build the initial Website and to update and add to it.

Personally I wanted the freedom to do my own, but then I started Website design and work in 1994 when all we had was text editors. I never learned the wysiwyg editors or templates and continue to write code on all my Webpages. I learned to keep the longterm design in mind to minimize the work for version changes, learned to develop my own templates to minimize additions and learned css, and learned other code (although badly) to add expand the presentations.

I spend 2-3 days a week working on the Website because I'm working on a photo guide and history projects, and I use some other hosting sites for some things, such as photo.net for photo galleries, blogspot for blogs and mobile me for large files. They're easier to use and have higher file storage limits, something my old host didn't have until last year.

Good luck with your Website.

[Matus Kalisky]

Frank, you should be teaching this ...

[gnuyork]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have made websites with iWeb, and though they can be nice, but I want something a little more "custom".

The Flikr and other free routes seem interesting. I will look into some of those ideas. But in my own viewing of other people sites, I don't tend to look past the first few images in their Flikr site. I guess I don't like how it navigates. But when I see a good photo site with stunning images and the navigation does NOT drive me crazy, I tend to stay longer, even bookmark it sometimes for future inspiration.

I guess I really need to determine the real purpose for the site. Sure, I'd like to sell some prints, but I'm not sure if that's the primary goal with the site. I really just want to establish an online gallery, that I can point someone to. I was asked the other day by a notable photographer to see my site... and I didn't have one. So I sent an 11MB slide show file of my last show in an e-mail which is probably not the best way to go about it.

[Jim Becia]

I recently put up a new website using www.visualserver.com. It's a template driven program and was very easy to use. It had most of the things I wanted in a website, the main one being simplicity and ease of use. My website is www.spiritlightphotography.com. Nothing fancy, but it works for me. As for cost, it seems reasonable enough. I had researched others, but kept coming back to Visual Server. When I had a question and called their "tech" line and got my answers immediately. Not affiliated with them, just pleased with their product so far. Jim

[gnuyork]

Jim- nice.

[Richard Wasserman]

I also used VisualServer for the same reasons Jim articulated–simplicity and ease of use. I didn't want to take on the task of designing a website from more or less scratch and liked the way ViualServer looked. It's not perfect, but close enough.

[gnuyork]

I just realized I posted this in the wrong forum. Apologies.

[Mike Anderson]

I recently put up a new website using www.visualserver.com. It's a template driven program and was very easy to use. It had most of the things I wanted in a website, the main one being simplicity and ease of use. My website is www.spiritlightphotography.com. Nothing fancy, but it works for me. As for cost, it seems reasonable enough. I had researched others, but kept coming back to Visual Server. When I had a question and called their "tech" line and got my answers immediately. Not affiliated with them, just pleased with their product so far. Jim

But real men hand code their websites.:) Seriously, Jim, I like your website, nice and clean and simple, which is I think important for a photography site. It seems automated or template driven site creation is very viable now.

I'd advise anyone going for an automated site creation approach to check the system's support for phone and tablet clients and such. Small touch screens are going to keep increasing in popularity as a way to access the web.

...Mike

[gnuyork]

I'd advise anyone going for an automated site creation approach to check the system's support for phone and tablet clients and such. Small touch screens are going to keep increasing in popularity as a way to access the web.

...Mike

Good point, Mike.

[Joe Lipka]

More than a few years ago I decided I wanted a web site. I took a course at the local community college and gave it a go. I am up to revision 11 on my web site and and sucks less and less the more I work on it.

Three things to note as you begin this journey.

1. Figure out what you want your web site to be before you start anything else. Sales vehicle? Promotional site? Communication to the world? Big ego trip? Whatever you want, make that decision first. That will become your web site motto. Put in on your home page so the world knows what to expect when they see your web site.

2. Navigation and operation are really important. The underlying thought is how to get the viewer to as many of your photographs as possible with the fewest number of clicks. Remember 80% of your viewers will spend less than one minute on your web site. Your job is to make the site so easy to use, more of them will stay.

3.Creating the web site it easy. Making content is hard. If you want people to keep coming back to your web site you will have to give them a reason to come back. That means the content of your website will have to be continually updated. That means you will have to add content. Adding content means that you will have to become adept at creating new work and then scan, photoshop and update your web site. Either that, or you will have to pay someone lots of money to do that for you.

Now you have something to start with. Go get 'em.

[John NYC]

snip
3.Creating the web site it easy. Making content is hard. If you want people to keep coming back to your web site you will have to give them a reason to come back.
snip


Yes, that is a major problem with most people's websites. It's one thing that RSS is great for. When there is a site I like but is not updated often, I like to put it in my RSS feeds so that I will see when it is and I don't have to keep checking. Before I did that, I would find I'd check the site a couple times to see if it was updated, and then when it wasn't, I'd never go there again.

p.s. I really like your concept of putting your content into pdfs!!!

John

[mhanc]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have made websites with iWeb, and though they can be nice, but I want something a little more "custom".

If you do not use the prefab templates such as "Photos" but, instead use blank pages then iWeb is infinitely customizable. Each page has to be created, formatted and the desired links to other pages inserted so it can be a bit tedious -- but the only cost it time and effort. Its an ideal solution if you do not want to continually change content and/or formatting.

[Joe Lipka]

Thanks for stopping by. The concept of RSS feeds hit me the other day. I don't even have myself set up to receive RSS feeds, much less originate them from my web site. It's something else to learn.

Basically, I update my weekly blog on Sunday mornings and try to add a new folio at the end of every month.