Photographer template websites

[Stiglet80]

Not sure the title really explains what I am looking for but basically I have been looking at a few different types of build your own photography websites. I started looking a while ago as I was losing track with photos on flickr, Facebook, Photobucket and all over and just wanted one place for my 'best' ones so should someone ask to see them they can do. Also design using a template as I am no code writer to put them on there. There seems to be a mass range of different types and ideally would like to start with a free template but with options to upgrade to get more options such as purchasing in the future if and when I felt ready to.

I have now been fortunate to be accepted as part of a 2 year exhibition around Lincolshire, so it has kind of pushed my decision making forward a lot sooner than I planned and am just getting overwhelmed with the options out there

Some of the ones I have briefly looked at:

• Wideartist - no option to purchase photos even when upgraded but only £15 to get domain and all other usual extras? and aimed at artists
• Weebly
• Photobox gallery - Can buy pics? but no domain?
• Clikpic - tried trial, too much coding, confused me
• Moonfruit
• Smugmug
• Photobiz.com? very expensive expensive?
• Wix - looks ideal but no idea on upgrade price

Am I missing a trick with ruling out flickr?

And no doubt many more, anyone got any feedback so I don't have to trial them all?

or other ones that work really well? or didn't?

Thanks in advance

[curtisl]

There are quite a few options out there. I had a look around and decided on Photium. The support is fantastic and it was an easy site to customise with quite a few templates to work from.

www.leecurtisphotography.com

To be honest I imagine that they are much of a muchness but I am happy with my choice.

[andy-xr]

TBH, you're better off getting your own domain. I built mine using Wordpress and a basic theme. No real coding required, just have to follow a set of 5 instructions and it was done. I built my o/h's website over a couple of nights

The problem with Weebly, Moonfruit and others is that you end up with something like 2121stiglet80.moonfruit.com as your address. Might be fine for you, but stiglet.com looks and feels better.

The other thing with the free ones is the amount of popups that visitors are presented with, often annoying and divert your attention away (it's free hosting to you for a reason, right?!)

Flickr has it's uses, and it's definitely worth doing for the community aspect of it. Personal preference is not to bother as I just use it as a dumping ground, but I've seen others have massive success with it

Oh, Wordpress websites

www.howiseetheworld.co.uk
www.katiesoze.com

And a final consideration, this one was built for me and wasn't expensive - www.andyh.info

[RobDickinson]

Mine is a wordpress + theme jobie and was simple to put together.

My ISP has an admin tool that installed wordpress for me, I uploaded the theme (can do from within wordpress admin too) added a few plugins and I was done. Took longer adding/updating the old content form joomla.

www.zarphag.com

[Stiglet80]

Oh this is all very helpful thank you everyone I will definitly look into wordpress, it was mentioned to me before but was concerned I needed a bit more technical skill.


Andy-xr, re the domain, yes fully expected the rubbish domian on a free account but want the option to purchase a proper domain at some point

I did try the free wide artist one and this is what I get (with a quick half arsed and unfinished attempt) http://sjsphotography.wideartist.com/

But take note about pops etc as well.

I will also go pro anyway on flickr anyway as I am really enjoying it but my ineedaflash fund takes precedence financially at the moment

[RobDickinson]

Stiglet80 said:

Oh this is all very helpful thank you everyone I will definitly look into wordpress, it was mentioned to me before but was concerned I needed a bit more technical skill.

I'm an IT techy person, with wordpress I didnt touch a line of code. vevry impressive for a blog.

Its not great for a gallery , you can add plugins for it or even drive some other gallery software under the hood but I still havnt found the best option there.

For a showy online high quality gallery in a high quality peer situation look at 500px.

[Stiglet80]

RobDickinson said:

I'm an IT techy person, with wordpress I didnt touch a line of code. vevry impressive for a blog.

Its not great for a gallery , you can add plugins for it or even drive some other gallery software under the hood but I still havnt found the best option there.

For a showy online high quality gallery in a high quality peer situation look at 500px.

I did look at 500px but I have to confess I really didn't understand its main purpose? I decided it was more of a flickr with a social network aspect of it with the 'friends' and likes/dislikes etc. No?

[Ed_P]

I use Photium too, to manage my site. The "downsides" of this approach is that all the Photium (or comparable) sites have a similar "look and feel", but there are lots of formatting options available.

The benefits for me (who had never had any web-design experience), is that I had the site designed in one evening with the "free trial" and then live by the next morning. It's worked without a hitch ever since and support has been excellent.

[bacchus180]

try livebooks, very much set up for photographers

[racing green]

I use Mr site for my websites - your own .com website address, email, shop and paypal for sales and fifty pages which can take up to 99 photos per page. Easy to set up and manage, no codes or website skill required and all for about £60 a year. You can also go for the smaller version or the professional upgrade and theres good tech back up as well.

[rottie102]

andy-xr said:

The problem with Weebly, Moonfruit and others is that you end up with something like 2121stiglet80.moonfruit.com as your address. Might be fine for you, but stiglet.com looks and feels better.

you can just buy a domain name for $9.99 from name.com and set up URL forwarding to a web address of your choice.

[Stiglet80]

Cool, thanks for the tips everyone

[craikeybaby]

I use Photoshelter and have done for a few years now, it certainly isn't the cheapest (I'm paying $20 per month) but I've found it by far the best. My Dad uses Clickpic, but from looking at that it seems quite restrictive, I haven't had much experience with Photium, but like Clickpic I find the designs available to be all very similar and slightly dated.

With Photoshelter you have a lot of options to customise in the back end, either check boxes/menus or if you want it fully customised you can delve into the code. The sales aspect of their site is particularly good, you can even have files sent directly to printers and on to customers without any interaction (I prefer to print myself though). If you want a discount code for it let me know, but they do a free 30 day trial too.

Livebooks is very good as a portfolio site, quite a few people seem to use it with Photoshelter as a back end for sales.

I've got a Wordpress blog and don't find it to be that simple, unless you just want to take things off the shelf that other people have done, this winter I'm planning on fully integrating my Wordpress blog with Photoshelter.

If you want to get a domain I'd advice sorting it out separately from the rest of your site, that way you won't be tied in to one provider. I use Domain monster and they allow you transfer the domain away from them FOC.

[Stiglet80]

Thought I would update with what I actually went with in the end, (wow has it really been that long!) I think I mentioned I wanted something as am part of an exhibtion which is kicking off shortly and I wanted to put my images in a more professional looking gallery.

I actually ended up with after much trial and error with the ones suggested, with one that wasn't actually suggested. Zenfolio. I have paid £50 for the year and it has done everything I wanted it to do and has been really easy for me to use. It does have options to upgrade as well to give you extras such as buying directly through the site using a number of different well known printers like Photobox. So if I do decide to take it any further I know the option is there. I purchased a domain name for minimal cost and set up a redirect. Finished (ish) product is www.sjstephenson.co.uk. Appreciate any feedback as the promo stuff has now gone out for the exhibition and I am starting to get hits.

I would also say I have used Weebly as well as I set up the exhibitions website, very simple site to get us started but if anyone is interested its here www.shutter-chimps.com (again on a redirect). There are lots of gallery options on Weebly so would be ideal for a photographer and is free, but I haven't utilised the gallery options much due to us generally keeping photos off there for a reason.

[markmullen]

I too use Zenfolio and find it really good, if anyone fancies using it drop me a mail through my profile here and I'll send you a voucher code for money off.

[binliner]

Another vote for Zenfolio. You're a bit limited on the layout but I found it the best value for unlimited storage, integrated print sales, password protected client lightboxes etc and you can upload straight from lightroom. Here's mine www.justinminns.co.uk