Professional Portfolios On The Web

[lawrence]

I'm interested in your experiences with publishing a professional photography portfolio on the web and which provider you use. By 'professional' I mean that it must at least be possible to point you own domain name at the site but other facilities can be useful too E.g. Display client photographs in private albums, ecommerce etc.

 

[willie_901]

I choose Other.

I roll my own web site(s). The host is SkyLink and they are inexpensive and utterly reliable. There are many other excellent hosts as well. SkyLink also will register domain names. While not being unique in anyway, you also get an email address that uses your web site name. In some areas of commercial photography this is a useful marketing tool as it differentiates you from people who just use gmail or some other generic mail address.

I use OS X and produce the web site(s) with Sandvox ($80). Obviously there myst be similar products for Windows platforms. At first I used a third-party photo gallery app (Juicebox LR Plug-ins) for their flexibility (e.g. automatically provide both mobile and tablet galleries) and polished look. Since LR 6, Adobe's web albums are just as good... if not better. Now there are numerous third-party web gallery LR plug-ins that support private viewing and image selection/e-commerce tools.

Besides a portfolio presence I also built minimalistic web sites for client photo delivery via ZIP files. This was a simple, bullet-proof way to offer private, in-line image delivery.

My programming skills are primitive. But in a previous life I managed SW developers. From them I learned to go slow and document everything I do regarding web-site/gallery production. That way when I want to make changes or additions, I don't have to re-learn everything.

Sandvox and other apps are compatible with customized code and there are third-party companies that sell Sandvox templates. But a truly unique professional photography presence where the look and user experience is precisely as you want it to be requires skills and experience in web coding. My view is it is more productive to spend time and money on other marketing activities than create or pay for custom coding.

I never marketed in the wedding/event space, but no doubt there are polished, professional turn-key solutions.

 

[RichC]

To paraphrase Willie:

I choose Other ... I roll my own web site(s) ... [for] a truly unique professional photography presence where the look and user experience is precisely as you want it to be.

I use a CMS system (previously WordPress, now Concrete5) with a bespoke template that I designed and paid a coder to, well, code it.

Your website is crucially important, and needs to be unique to you and whatever you're using it for - here, to showcase your photography.

I think it makes more sense to get someone to help create such a website rather than using something generic.

Regular payments for good portfolio sites that include hosting aren't especially cheap, so it's worth comparing that with the larger one-off cost of designing and setting up a bespoke website but which is offset by the very much smaller regular fee for hosting a domain.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I built my own, so I would have a unique site that didn't look like the ten thousand other websites using the same generic template.

 

[om.ch]

Custom coded website hosted on Cargo.

Has all the positive aspects of "social" platforms with a selection of artists being featured on their main page with none of the annoying interactions.

I disagree slightly with Rich on having a full on self-hosted solution (which is the reason why I ended on Cargo) as at the very least you don't have to deal with infrastructure and scaling and all that malarkey.

 

[RichC]

Custom coded website hosted on Cargo.

Has all the positive aspects of "social" platforms with a selection of artists being featured on their main page with none of the annoying interactions.

I disagree slightly with Rich on having a full on self-hosted solution (which is the reason why I ended on Cargo) as at the very least you don't have to deal with infrastructure and scaling and all that malarkey.

I didn't want to complicate my initial reply above but I too use Cargo - mainly for its benefits as a social media arts platform. However, it's only used for my website's blog (the rest is driven by Concrete5, which is a CMS system controlled by me not a portfolio site run by a company) - that's the beauty of a creating custom website: you can do what you want!

 

[rogue_designer]

I installed a wordpress backend onto my server, and then found a template that got me the structure I wanted. The rest is my own work.

 

[Jake Mongey]

Carbonmade which i regret because i cant terminate my account and it look pro but it really isnt and i hate it

 

[Nathan King]

I tried many hosting options before settling on Squarespace. Some of the other options (a third party host with Wordpress installed, etc) offer more customization, but I always ended up having to edit stylesheets or tweak templates due to irritating issues to get things to work properly. I'm too busy taking photographs and don't have time for that. 😎

Squarespace doesn't have the largest quantity of options, but rest assured that everything they have is very well designed and works perfectly out of the box.

 

[Hogarth Ferguson]

I also use squarespace, i like the simplicity of it. They had what I wanted, too. There are some small things I would like to see different about it, but that would require me learning how to code or paying someone, which I'm not opposed to doing, just not right now.

 

[easyrider]

I use Smugmug but don't much like it since they remade it a few months ago. Not sure where to go.

 

[brennanphotoguy]

I've been saying for a while now that I'll make one this month but I never get around to it. I plan on trying out squarespace or 22slides. I've got friends who use one or the other and they all say they are really simple to use and are professional.

 

[Baby of Macon]

I also use Squarespace - as has been said, not the most customisable but dead easy to use.

 

[KevinS]

I started with PhotoShelter way back when they attempted to enter the stock business with PhotoShelter Collection. That attempt didn't last long, but it was there that I learned much about being online (previous to that I knew zero about it). After the demise of the Collection, they offered some incentive to leave the photos up and migrate them to a custom website. Mine about pays for itself with a few odd sales, and is used as a portfolio and as a delivery method to get hi-res files to existing customers. I'm happy with the look and functionality of it.