Blog or Website?

dave lackey said:
Umm...but what about the "minimal computer web site creation savvy" part which a lot of photographers have?:( Can't very well DIY.
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minimal expense and hiring some to do it are mutually exclusive as far as I'm concerned. If people plead poverty then they can do it themselves. That's just pure and simple good business sense for anyone designing and writing web sites for other people. That's why you are being advised to use a photographers/artists hosting site with pre-defined templates. Those people make their money on multiple sales of a single piece of work(which has been honed) whereas if you want bespoke design and build you pay full development costs for it or not at all. And if its the latter then you have a long learning curve to get to the point of doing a reasonable job for yourself with no guarantee of your website doing anything for you at the end of it. It just ain't worth the hassle for most people cos they really aren't prepared to put the work in. None of it is particularly difficult but there is an awful lot of it to learn. And you will need to write two or three websites just to get to the point of having a fair idea of how it all works and that is for a very basic site with no content management. As you soon as you start thinking of content management systems then forget it unless you are planning on a career as a programmer.

Just buy off the peg photographer hosting. Then in 12 to 18 months re-assess the situation and if you want something bespoke then, be prepared to pay real money for it. And if you claim poverty expect the web designer to walk away from you. They have to eat.
 
tlitody said:
minimal expense and hiring some to do it are mutually exclusive as far as I'm concerned. If people plead poverty then they can do it themselves. That's just pure and simple good business sense for anyone designing and writing web sites for other people. That's why you are being advised to use a photographers/artists hosting site with pre-defined templates. Those people make their money on multiple sales of a single piece of work(which has been honed) whereas if you want bespoke design and build you pay full development costs for it or not at all. And if its the latter then you have a long learning curve to get to the point of doing a reasonable job for yourself with no guarantee of your website doing anything for you at the end of it. It just ain't worth the hassle for most people cos they really aren't prepared to put the work in. None of it is particularly difficult but there is an awful lot of it to learn. And you will need to write two or three websites just to get to the point of having a fair idea of how it all works and that is for a very basic site with no content management. As you soon as you start thinking of content management systems then forget it unless you are planning on a career as a programmer.

Just buy off the peg photographer hosting. Then in 12 to 18 months re-assess the situation and if you want something bespoke then, be prepared to pay real money for it. And if you claim poverty expect the web designer to walk away from you. They have to eat.
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That is cool but Frank is actually asking specifically how to get it done. Who are these people that one can contact for what you are speaking about? I would also need this type of information from someone knowledgeable like you to prevent total screw-ups!:eek: Got some links for us?:)
 
dave lackey said:
That is cool but Frank is actually asking specifically how to get it done. Who are these people that one can contact for what you are speaking about? I would also need this type of information from someone knowledgeable like you to prevent total screw-ups!:eek: Got some links for us?:)
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Frank Petronio has recommended two or three earlier in the thread and I recommended one too.
 
A couple of things to check.
Some of these photographers hosting sites take a percentage of sales you make. If you sell none then its cheap. Clikpic doesn't take anything but it's hosted in the UK which is good for UK clients, OK for US and elsewhere depending on your TLD. .us or .com should be fine.
Make sure you can set individual page html <title> tags otherwise your potential web optimisation will be limited. This may happen with a degree of automation or like some they will force the same title for every page which is not so good.
 
Or you can consider buying a package. I always thought the following looks pretty good.

http://www.stockboxphoto.com/

you buy it and install it on web hosting company of your choice providing they have the minimum requirements which are fairly standard as just about everyone provides them except some don't provide imagemagik which IS worth having.
All you need is FTP software to upload it. IExplorer can even do that.

If you know HTML and CSS you can design your own template for it or hire someone to just create a template for you. The vendor will also do that for you if you want your own template at a price.

Depending on which version its pretty full featured for selling and/or licensing image use.
Not sure you want it for your first site to test the water but if you are really serious about selling then its worth looking at.

If you have thousands of images to host then google "Image asset management" and be prepared to do some serious reading and research.
 
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Just remember: when you post pics to Facebook, Flickr, et. al, you are normally giving them non-exclusive, royalty-free rights to do whatever they want with your pictures. If you build your own website, you won't have this problem...
 
consider themed wordpress ? decent looking web design that works on most devices isnt trivial task these days.

btw. more flexible domain names (.com, .org...) are reality in few months (2012).
 
I can recommend Indexhibit, which is a template-based adjustable tool for creating a website, and it's free. But you need to buy a domain before you can use the software. Maintenance and uploading is quite easy. We used it for our office site.
I managed to squeeze something useful out of the Wordpress format, but having a personal URL might make it look more professional to some people.
 
I think it takes some experimentation to find what market works for you. I have a dedicated website and generate print sales from it. I like the website because I control how the images are displayed and feel like social media sites cheapen the display of the work but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try them out. I think you should try all of them because there's a customer waiting on every one if you do it in a way that appeals to them. Some people want to read about photographs and the story behind them so a blog is useful. Facebook is a good way to spread your name, though I haven't really tapped into the Facebook crowd because I'm just not into it. My website allows me to present an image without distraction so that the viewer has psychological breathing room. I don't have a blog but I should writing about my photography but I rarely do.

As for a website creation, I think you can easily use one of the prebuilt pay per month sites if you don't want to figure everything out yourself. It really isn't hard to build a website with the amount of free tutorial information floating around the internet but it won't be perfect and you'll miss some users and details unless you really do your homework.

Google has code snippets you can put into your website where you can track what's working for you easily so get involved in all of them, track and compare what works.

Best of luck
 
Website/portfolio with built in blog. Self hosted wordpress is good. [wordpress.com] You can get some really nice premium themes inexpensively if you want something slick too. The other option is a portfolio site like zenfolio [can sell on there too] or smugmug and then a blog, wordpress or tumblr etc..
 
Blog integrated in website is best.

Blog is handy to upload pics and stories.
A website needs to be updated manually.
 
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