DIY photography websites

Rooster

Rooster

Suspended / Banned
Messages
685
Name
John
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi, I want a website to display and sell landscape photos. Just a simple, mostly white one with checkout and payment facilities and using my own domain name. Can anyone recommend one of the template-based DIY sites? I've used one before but it was quite restrictive in the templates it used and the appearance was not to my satisfaction. Or am I better off getting a bespoke website built?
 
f you want a bespoke website then be prepared to pay big bucks for it. My eldest son is a web designer and does programming and front end stuff. he charges around £400+ per day and is already booked for the next 3 months before he is off again giving a lecture tour on this field of work.
He has lost me on it in the first 10 seconds of what he talks about. Also been head hunted in the USA and worked over there on 2 start up companies to get them going.


MOD EDIT: if your son wishes to advertise on here Bazza, tell him to apply for our advertising rates. otherwise, desist from advertising for him. Also, really, you're missing the whole "DIY aspect" of the question.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Rooster said:
I will print and mount/frame them myself.
Click to expand...
Zenfolio does portfolio hosting & shopping carts with the option of self-fulfilment.

They've had a lot of technical issues lately and their SEO is nowhere near as good as SmugMug but they are getting better. However SmugMug don't allow self-fulfilment.

viewfromthenorth said:
Photium. Been using them since 2007 and am really happy with them.
Click to expand...

Hadn't come across that one.. looks very good.
 
Last edited:
Another vote for Wordpress.

There's loads of easy to follow tutorials on YouTube, plugin's that cover everything you could need inc. shopping carts, tons of free themes and a lot of people here that can answer questions on how to do things.
 
juggler said:
Zenfolio does portfolio hosting & shopping carts with the option of self-fulfilment.

They've had a lot of technical issues lately and their SEO is nowhere near as good as SmugMug but they are getting better. However SmugMug don't allow self-fulfilment.


Hadn't come across that one.. looks very good.
Click to expand...

I also have a Zenfolio site. Google virtually ignores it and I've done everything they advise on an SEO front. It is a more attractive site from an aesthetic perspective though.
 
bulldog5988 said:
Try looking at Wordpress. This site is built using wordpress www.jenartimaging.co.uk
Click to expand...

If you're self-hosting Wordpress (which is a great system) make sure you keep up to date with patches and ensure your security is top notch. It's well known for exploitable security breaches, sadly!
 
ChrisR said:
If you're self-hosting Wordpress (which is a great system) make sure you keep up to date with patches and ensure your security is top notch. It's well known for exploitable security breaches, sadly!
Click to expand...

That is the trouble with open source stuff, anyone can modify it and you do not always know who has made a Wordpress template / theme. But I still do like Wordpress..
 
Rooster said:
I will print and mount/frame them myself.
Click to expand...

This would simplify what you need from your website as there is no real need for fancy e-commerce additions. Direct contact to discuss customer requirements and then payments via paypal or cheque? This being the case then a simple wordpress portfolio type theme ought to be sufficient and relatively easy to set up. Depending on the theme choice it could be easy to add in e-commerce via a plugin such as 'woocommerce' later if necessary.

I recently chose the wordpress route for a personal photography site (not geared for sales but it would be easy to add with the theme I chose.). Very simple with some galleries and a blog it only took a couple of hours to get a working site with minimal cost.
 
Oliver Pohlmann said:
All my websites use WordPress. Faultless and flexible.
Click to expand...

I was wondering what Wordpress "themes" you'd suggest for a photographer's blog? The choice of themes seems vast and the pros and cons not at all clear!
 
ChrisR said:
I was wondering what Wordpress "themes" you'd suggest for a photographer's blog? The choice of themes seems vast and the pros and cons not at all clear!
Click to expand...

I'm no expert on Wordpress and it's only a few weeks since I decided to try and build myself a website. Quickly narrowed down the choice of CMS to Wordpress and tried a few free themes....the bundled ones were ok but I didn't get on with them....tried some free ones - generally quite awful (might be down to my choices on which to try).
Looked around at what themes other photography portfolio/gallery websites were using and found that a lot were using Photocrati or Enfold. Both are 'premium' themes but cost isn't very high. Both allow easy integration of sales structures (not a requirement for me at this time but wanted it easy to add in if I go down that route one day). I went for Enfold and I'm finding it very easy to use. I imagine Photocrati is similar.

I'd look for themes that are aimed at photographers or artists and read the user feedback for those as a quick sift method before taking a closer look at a few. It is fairly easy to swap between well built themes (another reason to go premium I think).

My own requirement was for a simple 'blog' that I could link to galleries with the main emphasis being on showing some large pictures.

I'm sure the bundled themes are capable of doing what I wanted but with more input from me in terms of learning how they tick. I didn't really want to spend (or even have) time learning all about stuff like that. If you have the time and inclination then the shortcut of having the templates in a premium theme might not be necessary.
 
Last edited:
** bit of an in depth and probably over the top post below ** TLDR - All the info for research your probably going to need included below.

Just to back up what others have said about wordpress Id like to point out that massive companies such as CNN and the NewYorkTimes use Wordpress. Some of the sites look so clean and professional you would be hard pushed to even guess anything other than bespoke. Now, these sites do have custom skins made etc but you can get really good skins/platforms for around $59 or so which make for superb starting points. You can get ecommerce plugins that you can then link an image to buy in your webshop. You could even go as far as to give the option of buying the image out right via an email quoter from this page too and set up bespoke product listings to suit.

Links to other sites on wordpress - https://wordpress.com/notable-users/

Link to a decent place to find/buy themes - https://theme-fusion.com/

Id personally look at 1and1 hosting for word press. - https://www.1and1.co.uk/wordpress-b...73a&gclid=CLjFlf7Ds8wCFYIK0wodFI4JPg#Packages

The packages start at a very reasonable price point and they sort everything from domains to getting your bandwidth and security sorted ready for you to get going.

If you have a business and its an registered ltd business then get a bank set up to pay for the site etc so its all in one place. Get your bespoke site email set up along with a second saying "payments@webpage.com" and have that registered to a business paypal and your business account. Its about as professional as you can get without spending mega amounts of money and shouldnt cost more than about £50 a year for a small site. Initial set up may cost around £200 or so due to all of the above but its a cracking way to get started and due to the money involved and the time required to get the site up to how you want it also helps with keeping motivation to make sure it works or at the very least to make sure you give it a good crack! Tax return is included on some .ltd setups for the first year too!
 
Thanks all, for the suggestions. I will investigate them all. Can I buy my domain name for the same price anywhere or does the price vary?
 
Rooster said:
Thanks all, for the suggestions. I will investigate them all. Can I buy my domain name for the same price anywhere or does the price vary?
Click to expand...

Prices vary. Depending how you plan on hosting your site some companies throw in the price of your first years domain registration.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top