Getting a website of my own

Spider67

Spider67

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Has anyone of you experiences with wix.com? Their offer seems to be too good to be true. Is there a catch?
Are there other ways to build a solid Photosite that won't cost a fortune?
Thanks in advance for your advice
Des
 
There's no such thing as FREE. The free sites there have ads and the company's logo, VERY unprofessional looking for a photographer to have such a site. To get rid of that stuff, it costs $10 a month, about what hosting elsewhere costs. I built my own site and I pay $20 a month for hosting. Mine costs that because I have a plan that allows up to 100 websites. I have a couple sites of my own plus I host sites for several friends. If you don't mind buying Dreamweaver and learning it, design your own. Templates suck and they scream I AM NOT CREATIVE. The worst thing an artist can do is have a site that says THAT.
 
Thanks Chris that was exactly the info I was looking for! Everything has its price so I must either learn dreamweaver or find a person who can work with it. Although I would not mind using templates at the beginning.
Best regards from Vienna
Des
 
I had my own host once and did my own site. it was awful. Then I got one of those template where you change everything around and it improved some. Then I got one of services that includes hosting and they have an easy to use template picker. it was worth the extra cash and looked a lot better than what I had before.

Now I still use one of those services but switched to a higher quality one that costs around $300 a year. You really get what you pay for with these things.

If I had to do it all over again I'd probably hire a designer to build me a site.

And I don't know what the obsession is with wanting to make your own website. Photographers are not web designers. They are two completely different jobs. And the first crack I had at it I knew I wasn't capable. Not with the knowledge required or the creativity. Just because you can paint doesn't mean you can stain glass. Besides, I think all that flashiness really distracts from the point of the site. To show off your pictures. Unless you're selling web design also, keep all the gimmicks away.
 
swoop said:
I had my own host once and did my own site. it was awful. Then I got one of those template where you change everything around and it improved some. Then I got one of services that includes hosting and they have an easy to use template picker. it was worth the extra cash and looked a lot better than what I had before.

Now I still use one of those services but switched to a higher quality one that costs around $300 a year. You really get what you pay for with these things.

If I had to do it all over again I'd probably hire a designer to build me a site.

And I don't know what the obsession is with wanting to make your own website. Photographers are not web designers. They are two completely different jobs. And the first crack I had at it I knew I wasn't capable. Not with the knowledge required or the creativity. Just because you can paint doesn't mean you can stain glass. Besides, I think all that flashiness really distracts from the point of the site. To show off your pictures. Unless you're selling web design also, keep all the gimmicks away.
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Then again, how many web designers are web designers? And how many are hyperactive nerds?

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Then again, how many web designers are web designers? And how many are hyperactive nerds?

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...

But seriously there is a difference between a graphic designer and someone who can build a website. And then there is a difference between someone who can put together a template and bolt on freebies that pass as a website and someone who can build a content management system from the ground up.

Designing photography websites has been done to death. There is absolutely zero point in paying for bespoke web design for a photography site unless you know with 100% certainty that it will pay for itself cos it won't be cheap.
So the best policy is to use a provider such as clikpic for a year or two to test the water and then if you are selling bundles of prints, you can cost justify the expense of having a bespoke site built if you really want to.
I build websites for a living but if a photographer comes to me asking for a site I won't do it because there's no money in it. Most of them are skint and have unrealistic ideas about how much money they will make out of it so why pay for bespoke design when you can have a great site which has masses of good functionality for next to nothing.



.
 
tlitody said:
But seriously there is a difference between a graphic designer and someone who can build a website. And then there is a difference between someone who can put together a template and bolt on freebies that pass as a website and someone who can build a content management system from the ground up.

Designing photography websites has been done to death. There is absolutely zero point in paying for bespoke web design for a photography site unless you know with 100% certainty that it will pay for itself cos it won't be cheap.
So the best policy is to use a provider such as clikpic for a year or two to test the water and then if you are selling bundles of prints, you can cost justify the expense of having a bespoke site built if you really want to.
I build websites for a living but if a photographer comes to me asking for a site I won't do it because there's no money in it. Most of them are skint and have unrealistic ideas about how much money they will make out of it so why pay for bespoke design when you can have a great site which has masses of good functionality for next to nothing.



.
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Absolutely. There are honest web designers, just as there are honest lawyers, and both will advise people to avoid their respective professions except when they are needed -- as you have done.

Sorry to lump web designers together with lawyers but I think the parallel is exact. There may be rotten apples in any barrel but in some barrels they are more numerous, self-assertive, dishonest and prominent than in others. In some trades, professions or callings they may even be a majority...

Cheers,

R. (LL.B.)
 
aperture64 said:
He is asking for advice on where to go to get an affordable web site that won't look packaged. Easy enough question. If you don't have the answer, move on. No need to bash designers/developers.
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I'm only 'bashing' bad ones. Ten or fifteen years ago I was stung by a bad one, who promised to do one thing, then did another (random colour changes, bad gratuitous editing, etc.) There are quite a lot of bad ones about, just as there are quite a lot of bad 'professional' photographers who are, in reality, complete amateurs with an unduly high opinion of their own skills.

At that point, no, I won't 'move on'. I don't want the OP wasting hundreds of pounds (or dollars or euros) the way I did. The OP's question was phrased in wide terms, and telling him what to avoid is as important as relling him what to go for.

Cheers,

R.
 
A good web-designer will net at least US 50-100 per hour, because that's what he can get when being hired by a bigger company. As a client you will be charged 2-3x that, fully loaded.

Building a decent private web-site takes what, say, 3 days or more ? If you pay any less than that, you must have expected a "hyperactive nerd", and not professional service.

Roland.
 
I justhost.com for my hosting. Price was great and they've been perfectly reliable.
Wordpress makes for an interesting blogging/community/magazine/portfolio platform, and I use it on two of my sites. For simplicities sake, I'd recommend a WP template from Themeforest.net- altogether a rather wholesome collection of template authors. I've spent a few hundred there over the last couple years, and every author I've dealt with has been amazing. Not like the crooks the posts above talk about!
Good thing about Wordpress is that it is (maybe literally) infinitely extensible, templates are easily made or configured and you can still plug flash galleries or whatever else you want into it.
 
One option a lot of professional shooters use is LiveBooks.com. It's not cheap but they make it really easy to build and maintain your site with a drop-and-drag interface. You can have the site customized for a fee but that can be expensive.

As suggested earlier, rolling your own site is the most cost effective route. Bluehost.com is an excellent hosting service offering unlimited domain hosting, unlimited hosting space, unlimited email accounts and free domain registration all for $6.95 / month. There are other perks / deals.
 
ferider said:
A good web-designer will net at least US 50-100 per hour, because that's what he can get when being hired by a bigger company. As a client you will be charged 2-3x that, fully loaded.

Building a decent private web-site takes what, say, 3 days or more ? If you pay any less than that, you must have expected a "hyperactive nerd", and not professional service.

Roland.
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3 days or more falls squarely into the hyperactive nerd frame since in that amount of time all you can do is take a package and tailor it with a template and a small amount of content. Doing that is kids stuff and certainly doesn't warrant $100 an hour. It is no more than anyone can do themselves using something like clikpic. You can't write content management systems in that time so you will be using off the shelf software and maybe making out that you wrote it when you didn't. And since the price is so cheap you are probably using free opensource software too.
 
I don't think we disagree. I was saying that for a few thousand dollars you should expect "kid stuff". And not extrapolate your possibly bad experience to all pro web designers.
 
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Spider67 said:
Has anyone of you experiences with wix.com? Their offer seems to be too good to be true. Is there a catch?
Are there other ways to build a solid Photosite that won't cost a fortune?
Thanks in advance for your advice
Des
Click to expand...

Like other said before. There is no free website. Most of the time you have advertising on free websites that you can't control.

There is carbonmade.com. They mainly offer templates and most websites are not very individual but nonetheless there are a lot of professional / freelancer photographers, designers etc. offering their service over carbonmade.

just one of many they advetised http://scarletpage.carbonmade.com/
 
To add a bit of schoolboy humor "Wix" means in German "M-turbate" (Imperative). So telling people in Austria or Germany of a new made site by Wix would have been good for a laugh.....
 
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