Recommend me a web hosting/design site

Raymond Lin

Raymond Lin

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Raymond
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So, i got a domain name, I got my photos, but i dunno jack about designing a website. I need one of those that is online which looks snazzy with some options i can adjust to suit like colours and some design elements and of course storage. Of course, the ability to get the site to point it to my domain name so that when someone put in my Domain name they also see the photos too.

I realise i need to pay for this service, but what are the choices out there?

Ta :)
 
The problem is that they always look exactly the same as the next user of such a service.
 
The alternative is either

1 - Learn Flash and Dreamweaver
2 - Pay someone else to do it

The problem with 1 is that I don't have the time, and the problem with 2 (costs aside) is that the guy could be crap and i dunno how to maintain the site once it is up.
 
3 - install a CRM such as Joomla! or a gallery such as Coppermine or Gallery2

These are free. They can be skinned fairly easily with your own graphics to give them a personal feel and are then easily updated
 
andrewc said:
3 - install a CRM such as Joomla! or a gallery such as Coppermine or Gallery2

These are free. They can be skinned fairly easily with your own graphics to give them a personal feel and are then easily updated
Click to expand...

I think the correct abbreviation is CMS in this case.

I found Joomla! to be very slow (Mambo too).
I'd suggest Dupal or maybe even better, Jaws or DragonflyCMS instead.

Jaws and Dragonfly come with an image gallery integrated (Dragonfly integrates Coppermine).
 
The absolute easiest method in my opinion is to use the web page creator in lightroom. It will design the whole HTML or Flash gallery for you and you simply stick it on your server. It even titles the main page as "index" so it's ready to rock and roll. It's limited to just being a gallery but very straightforward. There are quite a few templates to choose from and I'm sure there's loads others online you can download.

Otherwise, UKHost4u.com has coppermine built in to the control panel. It's a little more complicated to setup but certainly easier than building your own site.

Here's my lightroom gallery: Lightoom Gallery

And here's my Coppermine gallery: Coppermine Gallery

Personally I prefer the lightroom one as it's cleaner. For me it's a very fast way to update my photo gallery! :)
 
andrewc said:
Yes, getting my acronyms muddled up.

www.opensourcecms.net is a good way of trialling software.
Click to expand...

Not exactly the best resource there.

lightsabre said:
clikpic is very good


https://www.clikpic.com
Click to expand...

Same problem again. It looks just like every other clickpic website.

gman, the problem with your site is that its just a gallery. Its lacking in any real information. Who are you, what do you do, etc. When you start adding that you'll run into a problem with the Lr galleries because they will lose your navigation. They're standalone galleries. What would I suggest? Try Wordpress, not as a blog as you can use it for other things. Get some integrated gallery system, maybe link it with Flickr. Easy to do and there are plenty of themes around that with some effort you may be able to customise.
 
No pete, my site isn't just a gallery. I was only showing what the gallery section looks like. I use dreamweaver to build websites but mine is very basic because that's all I wanted, simply a splash page, gallery and contact :)

I agree that with bother coppermine and lightroom you'll only be able to create a gallery but lightroom in particular is a very fast way to get your work up and it does allow for titles and a contact link.

If you want a full website but don't want to learn or pay someone then templates are pretty much the only alternative - unless you have a friend who'll do it for free ;)
 
Ok its a gallery, a splash page and a email link from what I can see. Splash pages were basically a bad idea like 8-10 years ago and then you're left with a gallery and an email link. Thats about as much as I can see from the initial splash page anyway. So I'm sticking with my initial thought, its just a gallery :)
 
I'll add loads of content when I get the time....just for you ;)
 
I've got a mate who hosts, he's good, sound, reliable, helpful and he'll do you a good deal.
 
yes - sorry meant opensourcecms.com

It gives default installs of all the major (and more) of the various CMS's so you can try before you download / install

The whole site gets reset every 2 hours.
 
petemc said:
What would I suggest? Try Wordpress, not as a blog as you can use it for other things. Get some integrated gallery system, maybe link it with Flickr. Easy to do and there are plenty of themes around that with some effort you may be able to customise.
Click to expand...

As an example of what you can do with Wordpress, try checking my site http://rvphotos.co.uk. Its very easy to use.

You have to do a bit of work to get it set-up, but once thats done away you go.
 
You can have the source code to my website if you like:

http://mikespics.co.uk/

I wrote the software myself, so no other gallery is like it. You can also create your own theme (just need to learn css) and it will be unique! Requires PHP5 :p
 
Wordpress. It's a blog at it's heart but you can add static pages to make it work like a normal site with a blog plus there are hundreds of plugins to extend it any which way for galleries online sales, etc. Best of all it's free and easy to use :thumbs:
 
Last week I bought a site and am having a play with different things.

One thing I'm using is a thing called BananAlbum.

My site is http://www.yourcarphotos.co.uk

All the links are dead so just click on 'portfolio' to see the slideshow.

Currenly just playing about with slideshows etc hence why i've not done anything more than wack the front page together. Hopefully next week the site will be more complete.
 
I'm liking the idea of Wordpress. Does anyone know if it integrates with Lightroom web galleries at all???
 
At the most basic level you could just link to the gallery page created by LR. I believe there are also some solutions that allow you to export from LR straight into the wordpress blog but I've not tried any of them.
 
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