Choosing a platform for cataloging photos.

[Georgiy Romanov]

Good afternoon, community! I ask for help from more experienced colleagues. I want to create a catalog of my photos with a detailed description for easy searching via google. Which platform should I choose for this? Flickr or 500px. I also think of making a catalog on my own website on WordPress.

My goal is to attract attention to my artwork and make it possible to sell photos. Since this work will take a long time, I would not want to make a mistake with the choice and choose the modern way. If I do this on my own site, I hope to attract traffic and earn some money from advertising. It seems to me that stealing photos will be more difficult. On the other hand, this will require installing plugins and large space on the server. Flickr or 500px is easier and more convenient, but I do not know how easy to steal photos from those services, as well as convenience in dealing with the sale of photographs.

What do you advise? Thank you! 🙂

 

[jarski]

My goal is to attract attention to my artwork and make it possible to sell photos.
What do you advise? Thank you! 🙂

My advice would be to focus on WordPress route, and making buying experience convenient. It's easy to open Flickr etc. if you later feel it's needed. But doing it first is not progressing with your goal of selling photos.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Make sure if you use Wordpress or some other prepackaged website system that you do not use a photo gallery plugin that gives a javascript slideshow. These make it very hard for search engines to index your images.

You want something that lets you enter an ALT Tag for each image. An ALT Tag is a short written description of a photo. It has two purposes. It tells search engines what the photo depicts, so they can index it, and blind people use software that shows the alt tag instead of the image, so they can know what any images on the web are of.

 

[FujiLove]

Make sure if you use Wordpress or some other prepackaged website system that you do not use a photo gallery plugin that gives a javascript slideshow. These make it very hard for search engines to index your images.

This was true a few years ago, but to my knowledge Google has been able to render and index Javascript generated content for a long time. There shouldn't be any issues using a Javascript based gallery, particularly if it's a modern script that's in active development.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This was true a few years ago, but to my knowledge Google has been able to render and index Javascript generated content for a long time. There shouldn't be any issues using a Javascript based gallery, particularly if it's a modern script that's in active development.

That's good. I have people ask me to look at their sites all the time and more than half the time I see a javascript slideshow that doesn't have ALT tags for each image. In those cases, the images are invisible to Google. I don't know if the slideshow software they're using doesn't support it, or if the users are just not putting in ALT Tags because they don't know what they're for, but most of the Javascript slideshows I see are not done right.

 

[FujiLove]

That's good. I have people ask me to look at their sites all the time and more than half the time I see a javascript slideshow that doesn't have ALT tags for each image. In those cases, the images are invisible to Google. I don't know if the slideshow software they're using doesn't support it, or if the users are just not putting in ALT Tags because they don't know what they're for, but most of the Javascript slideshows I see are not done right.

Only a guess, but it's probably the content creators failing to add ALT copy which is the problem, rather than Google's inability to deal with Javascript.

Google's image publishing guidelines are worth a read: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016?hl=en

The copy surrounding the image is also important, particularly a caption tag (https://www.w3schools.com/TAgs/tag_figcaption.asp)

I suppose all this is going to be less important in the near future (present?) as the Google AI learns how to 'see' and identify the images themselves.

 

[Larry H-L]

Photo Shelter?

 

[Dan Daniel]

Poke around Zenfolio. They are a relatively small operation focused on what you want to be doing. Relatively small operation with real humans helping you. Provide printing services, sales services, wordpress integration. I do only simple things with Zenfolio so do some research and see if they can work for you.


https://en.zenfolio.com/

 

[Georgiy Romanov]

Thanks for answers. I learned a little about the various modules for Wordpress. There are modules that integrate with social networks, there are modules on the basis of which you can create your own microstock, there are modules with integrated online store. So many strategies and opportunites.

I also like the idea of delegating part of the routine to Zenfolio. Too many have to do on their own. Little time for creativity. I will be very grateful if you share links to your work. How you organized your catalog? How much you invested labor and what income per month does it bring to you (you can write in private messages). I like the approach of Chris, when you can read the story under the picture and buy it if you love it, but this approach will take years of work.

I apologize if I ask too direct and rude questions. In the Russian-language Internet is very little useful information. Thanks.

 

[Georgiy Romanov]

After a lot of research, I came to the conclusion that I want to use the zenfolio for storing and selling photographs with the ability to use photographs in blog post on my own website. Has anyone already followed this path? What about services like Photoshelter and SmugMug (hey integrate with flickr isn't it?).

 

[Georgiy Romanov]

Well, I decided to try Zenfolio. Two weeks for love it or leave it. Not a big deal 😛