It's time to finally leave Zenfolio

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-Rob-

Say Cheese!...Oh, and call me Susan
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After 4 years of having my website hosted with Zenfolio I think it’s time to seriously think about moving on to something far better.

The benefits of Zenfolio:
Unlimited photo hosting for just £100/year
Very easy and intuitive to use
Multiple templates to choose from
It’s an all in one solution

The downsides of Zenfolio:
Terrible SEO
Their ‘mobile friendly’ websites are no longer classed as mobile friendly by Google
Slow image loading times
Auto resizing of images reduces quality

The downsides are definitely very much outweighing the benefits at the moment so I’m really looking to move away from Zenfolio to something that will hopefully give me all the same benefits that I have with Zenfolio but also offers complete control over SEO, mobile responsiveness and image quality.

I know a lot of people rave about Wordpress but I had a crack at it a few years ago before getting Zenfolio and I just couldn’t get my head around it at all. I guess a lot has changed in those few years so maybe I’ll find it a lot easier now especially as I have more experience about what I actually want from a website.

Ideally I would like to be able to create and manage the new website myself so that I learn and understand how it all works.

What are people’s recommendations on where to start? Who can give me links to places that are going to answer all my questions?
 
Professionals hire professionals, I would really recommend to hire a professional, get a consistent site configured (note configured not developed) and designed, and then it will be easy to manage it yourself in the CMS of choice. I do think Wordpress is good for this. Starting it from scratch and trying to gain many years of experience through some links is to me seriously underestimating what is involved.
 
I totally understand your point and obviously as a wedding photographer I would always recommend getting the right person for the job but that in itself presents another problem. Where do you start with finding the right person to do the job for you with any guarantee that they are going to get it how you want it?

I've spent the last couple of hours looking in to hosting, wordpress and ProPhoto and a lot of the reviews make each step sound so easy but obviously I have no idea of what level of experience each of these reviewers have.

The one thing that makes me want to do it myself if that I have an existing website that does the job. I can create this new website in parallel, I can take months doing it if I need to, I can play around with it as much as I want to until I'm 100% happy and then make it go live. Even if I do a lot of it and decide it's all too much for me I can then bring in some help and get someone to take over. Building a website is something where you can make mistakes then go back and fix them 2 or 3 weeks later. I bet all the website/SEO experts started off by just having a go and learning from it. I have no intention of becoming an expert but I would like to end up with a pretty decent knowledge of how my own website works and how to manage it properly. I won't get that by handing over to someone else.
 
I've just started with Wordpress using a free theme and found it surprisingly manageable, there's plenty of plugins to help you along your way.
 
I use Wix (I'm not a professional)

Wordpress-on-your-own was something I did try, but then I got fed up of updating everything and figuring out how to update everything when it didn't update. And themes breaking and not being updated by their author, and plugins breaking and not being updated by their author... It ended up being more work than... well... real work... And I'm not a web developer. Once I realised I could build anything in WP with enough research and time, I got carried away, then when I was satisfied, I spent six months forgetting how I did it so that when I needed to fix something I had to start learning again.

'Professionals' need careful consideration. Who owns the site? the domain name? Who updates it? How much will they charge? How easy are they to move away from if you have another Zenfolio experience or if their service declines?

If I was trying to make money out of it - I'd go the pro route. Stick to what I know (photography) and let web developers do their stuff. I'd spend a lot of time though finding the right company.
Your mileage may, of course, vary.
 
Another one that often been mentioned is Smugmug. However there does seem to be a number of companies that have sprung up offering quite similar styles of photo-heavy sites: Format.com, Squarespace, 22slides, Photodeck, Photoshelter, Photodeck, ...

http://petapixel.com/2015/07/10/6-top-online-photography-portfolio-hosting-options/

Personally I use wordpress, after years of struggling with a half-written self-programmed backend.
 
I've made the leap, I've bought some hosting, I've installed WordPress and bought ProPhoto6. After a few hours of playing with it, it looks like its going to take a while to learn how to actually design, build and maintain a site but I'm in no rush so I'll get there eventually.
It looks like I'll be watching every ProPhoto and WordPress tutorial I can get my hands on.
 
Take some time to read about various security plugins. They're worth installing right at the beginning. Get Akismet, WordFence and WangGuard installed immediately and you should be fairly well protected and spam free from the offset. Also activate JetPack. There are lots of useful add-ons in there that will help you simply and quickly build your site.
 
I to have been with Zenfolio for about 4 years and as my yearly subscription is up in August and I am seriously looking at going somewhere else. In the past I have used Clikpic and Photium and I am looking at both of these companies again. Both of these companies do pretty much what Zenfolio does.
 
I am too on the fence over leaving. I'd go for either photoshelter or fully independent WP solution.

They've done so many mistakes with customer's orders lately, the sales dropped and I fear it has actually hit my ratings somewhere somehow. If it goes like this I'm not renewing in the autumn.
 
Colin Grace said:
I to have been with Zenfolio for about 4 years and as my yearly subscription is up in August and I am seriously looking at going somewhere else. In the past I have used Clikpic and Photium and I am looking at both of these companies again. Both of these companies do pretty much what Zenfolio does.
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LongLensPhotography said:
I am too on the fence over leaving. I'd go for either photoshelter or fully independent WP solution.

They've done so many mistakes with customer's orders lately, the sales dropped and I fear it has actually hit my ratings somewhere somehow. If it goes like this I'm not renewing in the autumn.
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I've been with Zenofolio for a similar period of time, I've thought about leaving but can't find anywhere I can get similar website for the same money (I'm on the £5 a month deal from years ago that has no shopping cart). All other options are at least double what I'm paying now. The other point that stops me is lack of website knowledge for Wordpress and also the amount of information, pages and blogs I have done on the zenfolio site. Transferring to a new website would take some work. I do neglect the website compared to Flickr so maybe a fresh start would be a good idea to get exactly what I want from a website. I will follow this thread with interest.
 
-Rob- said:
Their ‘mobile friendly’ websites are no longer classed as mobile friendly by Google
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I have to say I've noticed this recently with my zen folio website recently too, i had many mobile site errors but they seem to have reduced to zero recently so not sure if much has changed. If I could find a decent alternative that's worth the effort changing I too would seriously think about it.
 
I was thinking of using Zen myself but after reading this don't think i will bother .
 
cjt2011 said:
I was thinking of using Zen myself but after reading this don't think i will bother .
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If you want a basic website without a shopping cart the lowest zenfolio price seems it can't be beaten at £5 a month (in the uk you can also pay in euros which currently makes it a little cheaper). There are now alternatives out there that there wasn't a few years ago but they are more expensive and usually start at around £8-10 a month.
 
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I have just developed my own website using Photocrati (see signature if interested). It's a WordPress based system and can be completely customised. I'm fairly happy with how mine turned out (at the moment anyway), but I'm not overlay fond of the shopping cart function which I've still to implement *who know's, maybe one day someone will want to buy one ;)). It's fairly simplistic and involves creating a price list based on the size of the image. Customers can then add the image they want into their cart and pay for it. It seems quite confusing to set up and the problem is that not all images will print well at the chosen size.

I have looked at a few Smugmug websites from photographers I follow and I have been very impressed by their shopping cart system. It allows customers to see a preview of the image in their chosen size and shows what would be cropped off etc.
 
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