Website Advice Needed

Tuna

Tuna

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I am finally going to stop shooting long enough to get a photo website up and running. I am hoping the esteemed members of this forum can give me advice on the best method from your own personal experiences and knowledge.

I expect to use one of the web hosting sites that offer unlimited space and bandwith. Should I look for one that also offers web-building tools or go out and buy seperate software? Any good/bad experiences with the popular web hosting sites (Just Host, Host Gator, etc.) Is something like Artspan.com worth it? Just pay a pro to build the site?

Thanks!
 
unlimited bandwidth? There's no such thing and besides you'll be lucky to get enough visits to reach 5GB a month unless you spend some real money on getting visits to your site.
So to save yourself wasted time and money try clikpic
 
If you have to stop shooting long enough to get a website up and running, then building a website from scratch may not be for you. You may just want to register a domain name, and sign up with zenfolio or smugmug to host your photos. Those two services allow varying degrees of customization.

I built my own site using jalbum software (free), which allows me to create a "wrapper" around the gallery to build other pages. Right now, I have a tiny link to my BLOG below the gallery. I'm not a web developer by any means, but have some understanding and building my website this way seemed straightforward to me.
 
kxl said:
If you have to stop shooting long enough to get a website up and running, then building a website from scratch may not be for you. You may just want to register a domain name, and sign up with zenfolio or smugmug to host your photos. Those two services allow varying degrees of customization.

I built my own site using jalbum software (free), which allows me to create a "wrapper" around the gallery to build other pages. Right now, I have a tiny link to my BLOG below the gallery. I'm not a web developer by any means, but have some understanding and building my website this way seemed straightforward to me.
Click to expand...

how much bandwidth a month does your site use?
 
Your site will not use loads of bandwidth, unless it's a site for Britney Spears or something! lol

I have about 8GB of stuff on my server and my bandwidth doesn't even go past 1/100th of what I have 😛 not to say my sites are boring or anything 😛 but honestly you don't need unlimited bandwidth. Most hosts offer reasonable amounts these days.

I use Wordpress for my photoblog and many of my other websites - you can get gallery/photo plugins for Wordpress for galleries. I have used some pretty good ones 🙂
 
I'm a developer. Unless you plan to make a lot of money off your site, you cannot afford a professional.
Careful with "unlimited storage", contracts usually stipulate that the storage can only be used for certain things, ie backing up your personal files would be in violation of the TOS.
Wordpress is your friend, get a good learning tool (book) and you can be done in a weekend.
learn css.
make sure your host supports wordpress.
Please don't use go daddy, I think find them to be customer friendly. register your domain with hover.com instead.
http://johannes.jarolim.com/blog/wordpress/yet-another-photoblog/
 
tlitody said:
how much bandwidth a month does your site use?
Click to expand...

When I was posting a lot of new images, i was averaging a little over 3gb of traffic per month. I haven't been posting as many these days (too busy), so bandwidth is down to around 1gb/month.
 
I use HostGator and in 4 years have absolutely no complaints about them. A "Baby" package is all you need and Wordpress etc... Is already there for you, just a couple off clicks to install it. As others have said, your site will use very little bandwidth, I did host a local photo forum on my server for a couple off years and even with the flame wars that went on there we rarely ever topped 10Gb a month with 350 plus members.

HostGator and Wordpress is the way to go!
 
What direction are you trying to go?

Blog?
Photoblog?
Photo gallery?
Photo gallery + sales?
Portfolio?
Portfolio + sales?
eMagazine?
 
Luna, just a gallery of my photos. Maybe a blog in the future. I simply need a personal web presence.

Thanks for all the advice so far. I understand I won't need a lot of bandwith - didn't mean for that to be an issue. I'm more concerned about having a site that has some fluidity (fading, moving, simple effects, etc.) rather than one that has too basic a look to it. However, I don't intend to spend a lot so I may not have much choice.

Tuna
 
cargocollective.com
squarespace.com

^the above don't require too much in the way of understanding how to build websites, and if you learn css, you're pretty golden. Both are subscription based though, so be forewarned.

indexhibit.org
wordpress.com/org

^pretty unlimited as cms architecture if you're willing to learn a bit of html, css and potentially some php.

If bandwidth is a serious concern to you, you'll eventually have to pay for it. In my experience, places like bluehost etc, who claim to give you mountains of bandwidth end up failing in the actual serving of the promised bandwidth.
 
One big thing worth looking for is a hosting service which provides real FTP uploads of images. If you have lots and lots of images to upload, any hosting service which only allows http uploading will drive nuts because it takes so long.
If its your own hosting then ftp should work but make sure any package you use allows ftp upload of images to working folder.
 
Tuna I use Zenfolio. It cost about $80.00 a year but it I have unlimited storage of full size images. Just in case my house burns down or something bad happens all my final edits are there an can be downloaded or offered for sale. Lots of options. Don't buy any cheap software you will only wind up with a cheesy website. You can get Dreamweaver and make a custom streamline website but it takes time to learn to use it.
You can try the free version of Zenfolio with limited space. Be sure and rent you a Domain, I use GoDaddy for that. Its pretty cheap to get a domain.
I am not big on spending a lot of time building a web site. I just don't have the time. Zenfolio can get as complicated or as simple as you want..
www.gregmccary.com
 
Last edited:
Tuna said:
Here it is: tunaonder.com

I used Weebly.com. It was simple and quick. Thanks to all for your advice. Please feel free to critique the site...

Tuna
Click to expand...

I would add that if you want to be found in search engines by more than a trickle of people, you will need to put some text in your site for search engines to get their teeth into. As it stands there is virtually zero for search engines.
You may get some visits from other weebly members and possibly some via rss feeds but even just some image captions would help.
And you can post links to it in face book, submit it to stumbleupon and post links in twitter etc, but long term you can't beat search engines and incoming links from sites with lots of visitors.
Unless of course you are not bothered about search engines which not everyone is.
To bring that old saying upto date:
"An image is worth a thousand words except to search engines."
 
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