Website design

[swmcl]

Hello chaps (sorry but its is mainly chaps isn't it!)

Am looking to do the website thing and I'm wanting to get a bit more clued in.

For a number of years I've had a domain and the hosters are using a Linux server of some sort (possibly redhat). I have my own development server at home - an Ubuntu box. I'd start with that.

I want a visually simple and uncluttered but sophisticated-enough website. I'm thinking of something like a film reel of smaller thumbnails along the bottom and the centre photo enlarged above the film reel. The show would fade images in and out. A click on the image will load another page with just the image and image data. etc.

I want to avoid Microsoft and Adobe. No Flash.

I have php, mysql, postgres and am thinking of Ajax and jquery.

Does anyone have specific experience here to guide my thoughts - does anyone want a job !?! I don't want to do this myself exactly but I might have to.

I've loaded Coppermine and Gallery3 but I don't think they're quite the right thing...

That's it. My limits have been reached! I'm not sure how to speak too much more of the lingo required. I'm not computer silly and I promise I can learn quickly!

Help and opinions appreciated.

Cheers,

Steve

[kjsphotography]

Wordpress with plugins. You can add galleries, shopping carts all very easily.

[Brian C. Miller]

Well, what you want can be accomplished with a bit of Javascript. How much do you know about HTML and Javascript? CSS?

#1, look for a site that you like. Turn off your Adobe Flash, and then sites will load their HTML pages. The code will be on the page which does stuff like that.
#2, for interesting web commentary, visit Vincent Flanders' Web Pages That Suck (http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com). I browsed through his book, but I didn't buy it. I bought one from O'Reilly instead. The site grew out of a class Flanders taught, and he decided to teach good design by showing lots of bad design.
#3, peruse some decent books to learn Javascript and how it interacts with HTML.

Basic design: This would use layers. You could call the top layer the "mat" and the other stuff would exist in layers underneath it. The ribbon of thumbnails would reside on its own layer, and its position would be controlled by Javascript. The viewing photo layer can be faded in and out by Javascript.

[hiroki]

My website is very simple. I mainly use XML and XSL with a little PHP and Javascript. Javascript just to scale the images and fade them in/out. Plus reading some EXIF-data.
PHP I use to transform XML via XSL to HTML and extract some EXIF data from the image files.

XSL is the main part - creating the HTML / structure and layout. XML contains all the info/content, like the navigation, page names and content, image references and some text.

XSL is 250 lines long. PHP is 90 lines. Javascript 118 lines. CSS 62. But it's all very simple. For adding pictures, my "workflow" is to upload a 145x145px sized thumb, the hi-res image (up to 1000px high) and add an entry in the XML file to determine in which category(ies) the image should be displayed.

I have to admit that I prefer doing stuff myself rather than using bloated libraries or applications like gallery / wordpress / etc.

[swmcl]

Thanks guys for your insights,

I must admit the customisation of Gallery3 or Coppermine might take as much as making a relatively simple site in the first place.

Hiroki, you sound like an experienced pro. I've not heard of XSL !

Brian, is Java a security risk ? I think I've heard of people having problems with Java in some way .. No?

I'll look into Wordpress too. I'm not sure its available on Ubuntu though.

This is going to be a long drawn out adventure isn't it ? How much is it worth, should I pay someone ?

Rgds,

[swmcl]

Ha !

2 minutes of googling sees that WOrdpress is an open source CMS ...

OK so Wordpress is in the mix if its easy ...

[Brian C. Miller]

Javascript is a web browser scripting language, and doesn't really have much to do with Java. Different code engines. There haven't been too many Javascript security exploits. The main problems have come from a company's web system regurgitating Javascript fed through user input. Since the Javascript is just being used to control some photo positions, it's just fine.

[supremespy2]

Definitely Wordpress! There are already photography themes available for what you are looking for. Add a few more plugins for even more customization and you've got a professional looking website that you put together yourself, it's really simple.

[swmcl]

Thank you supremespy2 !

Your links are very encouraging. I might even be able to do this.

Cheers,

[timparkin]

Definitely Wordpress! There are already photography themes available for what you are looking for. Add a few more plugins for even more customization and you've got a professional looking website that you put together yourself, it's really simple.

+1 on wordpress - I'm a professional web developer and programmer and would only develop a fully custom website if I absolutely needed to create something that was impossible with available commodity tools.

I recently started a photography magazine and had it up and running in two weeks (http://www.landscapegb.com). You can customise themes quite easily if necessary but there are so many good themes out there, you might as well just choose a pre-exising one and tweak the logo and colours (it's your photography that is supposed to be original and make an impression, not your website). Choose something minimal that makes the most of your photographs..

google "elegant themes" and "woo themes" for some good premium themes

[Mike Anderson]

I want to avoid Microsoft and Adobe. No Flash.

I have php, mysql, postgres and am thinking of Ajax and jquery.



I agree avoid Flash. And I also agree that WordPress is a good inexpensive option. Check with your hosting company to see if WordPress is included in the service, it often is built into the package (look around the control panel of the hosting service to see if there's anything called "WordPress").

I'd find a starving student who has some photographic/visual sensibilities help you with this.

...Mike

[photobymike]

APPLE mobile me and Iweb. simple easy and fast ... basic

http://www.mikepic.com

[paulr]

Interesting thread. Are there any good sites out there on how to customize wordpress (must be web-tard friendly)?

[Richard Mahoney]

Apart from aesthetics and usability -- from the perspective of the admin (you) and the user (your client) -- you should also be considering the system architecture, especially how it will perform under load and how it can be scaled. This may seem unimportant but the inadequacies of many popular -- e.g. PHP based -- systems become apparent when a site has to support large numbers of simultaneous users, all, say, wanting to download your splendid images ;) If one is serious I really would recommend a decent `industrial' system built using Python/Zope or Java. Possibilities include:

CPS -- http://cps-cms.org (Nuxeo)

Silva -- http://www.infrae.com/products/silva (Infrae)

Nuxeo -- http://www.nuxeo.com/ (Nuxeo) -- For the really serious (possibly a consortium of photographers wanting to manage and market a large amount of content)

These aren't toys and there is a decent learning curve but long term these types of systems will save you a great deal of time and money. You should also be carefully choosing your hardware and network infrastructure. A crowd such as Joyent may be worth considering:

Joyent -- http://www.joyent.com/


This may seem a little unnecessary at present but it is best to begin with the assumption that your business will experience and will need to gracefully accomodate rapid growth.


Kind regards,

Richard

[engl]

There are sites with millions of daily page views powered by WordPress, being PHP based is not going to be a limitation for a photography showcase site.

[Frank Petronio]

I am not a web developer but I used to manage web projects and work at as a CD at what was called a "dot.com"... and while I understand the pride one takes in "rolling their own" I can't help but think you could be up and rolling with a very clean and easy to use (and update) website using LiveBooks, DripBooks, or one of their rapidly improving competitors.

Their prices have come down, they are very search engine friendly, they pop out html and mobile version automagically, they have a lot of good features and services. And because so many of the best pros already use them, their canned navigation is pretty wildly accepted (whether you use thumbnails or scrolls or Flash or whatever) so I doubt you could do a better gallery and navigation from scratch. It just isn't worth your time.

Is there anything you want to do that they can't do better? I kind of doubt it, I think most photographers with custom sites do a lousy job and it's a knock against them at this point in 2011.

Also I am no security expert at all, but it seems an awful lot of WordPress sites get hacked regularly. I would let friends host their little websites on my service but now tell them not if they are using WP, mostly because they don't update it for security frequently enough.

[paulr]

Does anyone have links to great looking / working photo sites based on wordpress?

[clay harmon]

My site is based on wordpress, Lightroom and the Thesis customizable theme:

www.clayharmon.com


Does anyone have links to great looking / working photo sites based on wordpress?

[cyrus]

A "film reel" on the bottom, which when clicked, shows a larger photo in the center of the screen? Very simple - no Ajax etc required. The bottom part is simply a (inline?) frame which has a horizontal scroll bar. Some simple PHP coding can be used to change the content of one frame by clicking on the content of another frame.

You can use Wordpress as a content management system to update/edit the content but you don't need a plugin to get this effect.

[Mike Anderson]

Does anyone have links to great looking / working photo sites based on wordpress?

If you search for "wordpress photography themes" or "wordpress photography gallery" you'll see there's a whole micro-industry growing around this concept.

I'm no expert in wordpress, I've used it a little bit with good results, but from what I can tell it has that critical mass, inertia, etc. open source, pretty solid and really cheap.

...Mike

[chacabuco]

This portfolio theme for Wordpress is really nice and clean: http://madebyraygun.com/lab/portfolio-theme/ Easily worth the $12


Many people use Indexhibit too, but that requires a little bit more involvement.

[dalton]

Chacabuco, thanks for posting that! It just so happens that I made that WordPress theme, and I'm a LF forum member, too! I have to chime in and say that WordPress is definitely one of the easiest ways to get your site online, and is infinite fun to play with.

Just a heads up, the price for our theme is going up next week, but I'll set up a discount for any LF forum members who want to purchase it, just shoot me a PM.

Cheers,
Dalton

[BillA]

Wordpress is a very good option for most people. I personally love to roll my own, but often never get around to finishing the project. Usually this is because I overcomplicate things and lose sight of the content while in the thick of building the danged site. So, my vote goes to WordPress.

Here's another example of a WP photo blog:
http://kidsandanimals.com

If you want more complex themes, there are dozens if not hundreds. I did a search for 'portfolio themes' rather than 'photo themes':
http://kidsandanimals.com/

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/wordpress/free-portfolio-photo-gallery-wordpress-themes/

[Michael N. Meyer]

I've been using Wordpress for my blog but Indexhibit (http://www.indexhibit.org) for the main site. Indexhibit is straight forward and easy once you get a handle on it. There is plenty of space for customization of it as well. I looked at Wordpress for my main site but couldn't find a theme that was clean and simple enough for my tastes (and I didn't want to pay for a custom theme).

[chacabuco]

I use indexhibit too, but had Dalton's Wordpress theme been around at the time I started my site, I probably would've gone that way, especially if I was incorporating a blog. That said, Indexhibit does a great job.

[kedbro]

I'm an Indexhibit user as well. It's simple, it's easy to use, it's well just great. The photos speak for themselves.

PS: was just going to also recommend Dalton's theme and say he's a great photographer, but I see he's beaten me to the punch.

[swmcl]

Many thanks Richard MAHONEY and others,

I've spent a fair bit of time in the last weeks looking at this issue and I'm yet to be settled into a solution.

WordPress is a blogging framework as I see it and I don't want to blog.

Richard, the CPS CMS stuff looks undeveloped for a person like me. I need/like to see lots of front-end goodness along with repository support. The Silva product may be a bit easier to use as is also the case with Nuxeo. Joyent is completely over the top for me !

Is the Indexibit site just a text site ?!?! Or am I having some browser / internet issues ?!? I've tried a couple of sites to see what it does but I'm not exactly inspired...

Each to his own I guess but I think I'm at the point of getting something built from scratch. I would prefer to pay for it rather than start down one of those long never-ending 'research' paths ...

I'm thinking that all I need is a couple of scripts and some fairly easy ones at that ! The look I'm after at this stage is pretty damn simple ...

Cheers all,