Wordpress options

[LongLensPhotography]

I'm nearly running out of time to get website re-done on Wordpress and still overwhelmed with options and lack of direction. (to be honest I was overwhelmed with different things and got nothing done!)

I've already got host, and everything paid up for 3 years so would rather not consider spending more £££ for other services. I'm also 100% finishing with Zenflio.

Basically I need to decide on a Theme and e-commerce solution if separate one is needed. The end goal is website looking a bit like it does right now, with every image directly available to buy as they appear. This is really important. I will be doing all printing and posting so just need money via PP or whatever else works.
I'm happy to pay some here or there as long as it's reasonable and ideally a one off cost rather than $$$ per year every year. There is no point then.

Ideas on porting blog posts from Zenfolio to WP with as little hassle as possible would be also very useful.

Re images and gallery I imagine it only needs low res versions up (say 1024 or 1200px long side?) and I can print big one from off-line hard drive? '

I'm very interested to see sucessful WP examples be it your own or someone else's.

 

[andrewc]

A lot of the commercial wordpress plug-ins that you need may effectively be a subscription basis if you want to keep on top of the latest versions.

A lot of themes will integrate with the popular e-commerce systems such as WooCommerce (the core system of this is free), but adding functionality introduces costs.

WooCommerce have a paid plug in called WooCommerce Photography which may help streamline setting up galleries but its currently $79/yr. Your theme may/may not have an annual cost associated with it.

Themes - I tend to look at Themeforest first and then a few others - but this weekend is often the time to buy - black friday / cyber monday.

 

[LongLensPhotography]

WooCommerce Photography

Do you know any successful example of it? It frankly looks beyond awful on their description page.

This is what I want from my gallery - all in 1 solution - and no separate shop page with tiny thumbnails of the same thing to complicate everything.
Not necessarily in this order and layout, ideally no keywords in the balloons but rather sensible description, and then they can just buy it....

 

[LongLensPhotography]

OK, the inconclusive short list so far.

NextGen Pro with whatever theme from somewhere, poss self made. (Photocrate appears to be obsolete version of the same, looks DREADFUL in demos)
Envira Gallery. Not sure about e-commerce there - can't find actual examples
Graph Paper Press. Reasonable all rounder.
Divi - probably best overall but sales pages are TOTALLY AWFUL for prints. This would be good for my real estate / portraits site.

Maybe I'm missing something or making incorrect conclusions at this point; I am certainly getting tiered and annoyed of looking at it for sure and time is running out till I'm left with no live site.

edit: NextGEN pro + DIVI? Maybe but getting a little expensive!

Do people normally buy 1 year (and maybe not renew 2-3 y) or right away get lifetime?

 

[LongLensPhotography]

I have to say nextgen pro or its combination with tsohost is turning out to be a complete nightmare; nothing is working at all now, just crashing, changing and misbehaving.
I'm close to asking for full refund on the opening of business hours tomorrow.

Commercial portfolio site frankly doesn't really require any of the fancy stuff.
Whatever I have to do with landscapes sales gallery is now we'll beyond my understanding and imagination!

 

[LongLensPhotography]

As an update I would like to clarify that majority of the very worst problems were all to with TSOhost's antiquated server. They finally moved site to a better one and it looks a lot more promising.

nextgen may still have some rough edges or minor bugs and I can't get my head round themes, or how to enable full width post display (post drop down menu do 20-20 doesn't change thing!)

 

[DaelpixPhotography]

Might be late, but this YT might help you to do some things

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiTDv6q1XYwZnAm2EYN8wKw

 

[LongLensPhotography]

Might be late, but this YT might help you to do some things

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiTDv6q1XYwZnAm2EYN8wKw

It's never too late with WP actually, as I realise it is a permanent living project and you can keep doing as much as you come up with new things or as they become available.

I think I have the core landscape site back up. Blog still needs to be duplicated, and then whatever else I can think of to make it better for the purpose.