Taking my photography one step further with my own ..... Web Site

bbg404

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Ben
Edit My Images
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Morning all I've thought about it for a while but keep putting it off as I know absolutely nothing about it or where to start.

I currently use Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to get my photos out there but I'm thinking about having my own site for the more "Professional look"
just looking on some pointers where to start?
 
I get my domain name and hoisting for my valeting from 123reg. Its not very expensive at all. But I use WordPress to make my site, I also had a lot of help, but I don't have a shopping cart so you would need to look into that.
 
Zenfolio is one I would recommend, its easy to use, unlimited disk space, galleries, slideshows and you can customise it pretty much any way you want. Here's 10% off if you decide to go for it B3W-75N-KQY (referral code).

You can price up products (loads of products) by % or by specific amount of money. Private galleries, customise the pages as well, change themes almost on the fly. At least give it a trial go, you have nothing to lose. Good luck!
 
I currently use Zenfolio, quite to easy to set up a website. I looked into word press but I don't know enough about website design. I currently don't use the shopping basket as I don't sell images but if I wanted to in the future then it would only take a couple of clicks to install it. The domain name was bought through go daddy as they have an easy set up tutorial on Zenfolio.
 
Hello Ben
There is plenty of template website creation sites out there , great ones for photographer can be as Robin said Layerspace plus Redframe and the one I use Squarespace.
All have easy to use Editing tools and offer 30 day free trials, so have a play and see which one works for you.
As for a domain name again there are so many dedicated sites like godaddy or the web creation sites them selves have this facility, but when choosing your domain name take you time and create one that is easy to remember and simple. You will most likely find that a lot of them are gone and consider choosing one that the site recommends, don't do this , take you time and create something unique.
Another very important thing, is to make sure both the .com and .co.uk domains are available, if they are not then check out the other site that has gone to see if they are doing the same thing as you. If they are don't go with it as there is some one else with the same domain that is just a couple of key presses different Doing the same as you.
This could loose traffic to another competitors site by accident and possibly loose you business if you decide to sell your images or services.
This dose not matter so much if they are in a completely different industry and you may be thinking that you only want to showcase your work not sell anything.
But you have to plan ahead , things might take off and people start asking to buy your images , so by doing this you should be all set for a business site if that's what the future holds.
Hope this helps and if I can assist in any way let me know.
 
Something I think is important is that the preview thumbnails show the whole photo, not just a square crop. I think it was Moonfruit that only allow square crop thumbnails.
 
Hello Ben
There is plenty of template website creation sites out there , great ones for photographer can be as Robin said Layerspace plus Redframe and the one I use Squarespace.
All have easy to use Editing tools and offer 30 day free trials, so have a play and see which one works for you.
As for a domain name again there are so many dedicated sites like godaddy or the web creation sites them selves have this facility, but when choosing your domain name take you time and create one that is easy to remember and simple. You will most likely find that a lot of them are gone and consider choosing one that the site recommends, don't do this , take you time and create something unique.
Another very important thing, is to make sure both the .com and .co.uk domains are available, if they are not then check out the other site that has gone to see if they are doing the same thing as you. If they are don't go with it as there is some one else with the same domain that is just a couple of key presses different Doing the same as you.
This could loose traffic to another competitors site by accident and possibly loose you business if you decide to sell your images or services.
This dose not matter so much if they are in a completely different industry and you may be thinking that you only want to showcase your work not sell anything.
But you have to plan ahead , things might take off and people start asking to buy your images , so by doing this you should be all set for a business site if that's what the future holds.
Hope this helps and if I can assist in any way let me know.

I'm having trouble with a page name because my name is taken :mad:
I though of Jurassic Photography, because we're a few miles from the coast, but that's gone too. Shame cos my boy loves dinosaurs and I couldve had one as a logo lol
 
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:D
I'm having trouble with a page name because my name is taken :mad:
I though of Jurassic Photography, because we're a few miles from the coast, but that's gone too. Shame cos my boy loves dinosaurs and I couldve had one as a logo lol
Raptor Mike as your user name ,Mike Raptor could be your business name , both .com and .co.uk are available and you can have a velociraptor in your logo win win hahaha :D
 
As for creating a website, there is a great free wysiwyg website editor/creator program called Kompozer on Sourceforge. Here is a link to it : http://kompozer.sourceforge.net/ I used it for creating my website and for free you can't go wrong. :)

One thing that you really do have to watch when creating a website is the resolution that people will be viewing it. When I first created my website it looked fine on a monitor at 1920x1200 but looked horrific on 1366x768 resolution screen. I soon redesigned the site after that factoring the most used res. The thing to bear in mind is that the most popularly used resolution used right now is 1366x768 so it would be a good idea to make sure you webby looks good at that resolution.

Here is a link to the stats on the most used screen res which is up-to-date for October 2014:
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/best-screen-size/
 
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As for creating a website, there is a great free wysiwyg website editor/creator program called Kompozer on Sourceforge. Here is a link to it : http://kompozer.sourceforge.net/ I used it for creating my website and for free you can't go wrong. :)

One thing that you really do have to watch when creating a website is the resolution that people will be viewing it. When I first created my website it looked fine on a monitor at 1920x1200 but looked horrific on 1366x768 resolution screen. I soon redesigned the site after that factoring the most used res. The thing to bear in mind is that the most popularly used resolution used right now is 1366x768 so it would be a good idea to make sure you webby looks good at that resolution.

Here is a link to the stats on the most used screen res which is up-to-date for October 2014:
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/best-screen-size/
Actually I would go a step further and ensure you apply a responsive design such that it looks good on any size, and any device...I think most will find that the majority of traffic will come from mobile devices...
 
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