Flash Template/hosting companies

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I know of BluDomain, CMD, oh folio and foliosnap but I was wondering if there were any others/any recommended.

I have a domain name, and no hosting so pref want one that offers the hosting too - and the control panel doodah etc. I'd love a bludomain template but it's an extra $100 a year just for the 'privelege' of hosting with them.
Also not necessary, but would be great if a free trial was on offer.

Not 100% needed but a client proofing gallery, or ability to password protect gallery would be a bonus MAX wanna spend $150 on the design and hosting.... but won't not look at links with higher prices.

Thanks!
 
Bump.....It's not looking like there are other companies, and I'll prob just go with BluDomain, but, I want my site to have fun colours and a fun feel, none of BluDomain's templates scream 'fun' to me, that offer me what I want....
I just have to rely on them saying 'fully customisable' just hoping it means background colours can be changed. ANyone have an idea on that?

Any help/answers appreciated...
 
Flashpalette sites are inexpensive, can be quite fun and there's no need to spend a fortune on hosting.
Some good flashpalette templates available for $90 (£56) and hosting is available for less than £50 a year from loads of suppliers.

Also budget for some royalty free music:
Triplescoop
Stock20

However:
There's quite a bit of buzz on the internet atm re. flash only sites. As apple provide no native flash support, and don't look like they're going to either. All ipod, iphone, ipad and mac users will not be able to see your site. Also Google's web-bots can't read the inside of a flash site either, so they're no good for SEO.
Then there's the slightly tricky issue of the disability discrimination act, basically, flash only sites are technically illegal in the UK.
see here
 
OK, I am on a mac and don't have ANY issues viewing flash sites, so thats not true. and the SEO/mac issue, is a lot of these places offer an HTML site too, so that counteracts both those 'problems'
I don't want music on my site, I despise it.

And if there's the cheap option, could you supply me with some links please, so I can see? Thanks
 
Phil V said:
mac users will not be able to see your site. Also Google's web-bots can't read the inside of a flash site either, so they're no good for SEO.
Click to expand...

Not true on both counts.

OS X can happily see Flash sites, it's iPhone OS that can't (Touch and iPad use this OS)

Google can read a lot of information from Flash sites, including, but not limited to

Text
Text loaded from XML files using action script
URL's & embedded links
Alt text information

swf2html is a tool that can be used to identify what google etc will be able to extract and read.

You can also add an HTML alternative if you want to, and undertake SEO on the underlying index.html page that launches the flash anyway loading this with the Meta components and some keyword heavy text for those users that do arrive without flash.

I've switched my site to Flash based, it cost £30 for the components and was done in an evening.

As for non flash users, they get a simple page with a sample image and a little link to the blog which will have more images on. I want people to view the images on the biggest screen possible as the site uses the whole screen and dynamically resizes the images.
 
JasonRS said:
This is where my flash came from, total cost $50

http://www.flashcomponents.net/components/flash_galleries_and_slide_shows.html
Click to expand...

You have to create the sites yourself though, don't you - like load the template and use dreamweaver type programs? I have no knowledge at all to do this, and this is why something like the above mentioned companies was helpful - cos they have admin panel site builders so you don't need to actually know anything techy - does this make sense?

However, if it's not one where you download it to your computer, create it and then upload - let me know and if this is the case, could you explain what needs doing? Thanks.
 
No dreamweaver or anything like that required, the only tool I needed (except for prepping the images in PS or LR) was a text editor.

Most of the galleries use XML files which is essentially a document that tells the flash that the images are in folder X and this is the text (if any) you want to appear with it.

e.g. from mine, the bits in red are all I need to worry about, and they're just folders with pics in, then a description of that pic.

<image>
<big_image_path>load/collections1/bigimage/image-1.jpg</big_image_path>
<small_image_path>load/collections1/smallimage/image-1.jpg</small_image_path>
<description><![CDATA[Description for this image <br> <br>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.]]></description>
</image>

So basically, for each pic it goes

Here,s the photo
Here's the thumbnail
Here's the description

You fill those out as you need, then you're away

BTW, I've turned off the description on my site as I've not got text written for all the images yet.

Then there's usually another config file (config.xml most commonly) where you set things like gallery names, music on or off (off, please!) colours etc. These are usually yes/no settings except for the gallery names. This you set once, then forget about it.

Mine took about 20 minutes to set up, and then the rest of the time I was fiddling with image sizes until I got something I was happy with across different display resolutions.

It's really pretty simple, and they usually come with good help docs too.
 
Ooh, OK, will take another look. How does the hosting work then, with your own template? I've never had to do anything but web builders before.

Also, have you got a whole site template or just a picture gallery flash page? Cos I'd like whole site[with HTML choice] to be Flash, if possible.
 
If you take a look, my whole site is flash.

I just created the site then uploaded it to my host, don't need to do anything more than that. Any changes I make, I just upload the changes.

If you've bought a domain with hosting, then you don't even need to worry about redirecting your domain name. If they're separate, then it's all dependant on who you bought what from.
 
I just have the domain atm. I've bookmarked one site template I just need to see if it can hold portrait orientation shots, cos the window for a gallery and all the sample pictures within the gallery are landscape, whereas majority of my shots are portrait. But thats just an aside.

I am speaking to a friend later who may be able to design/host my site or at the least just help me out. We'll see.
Thanks for your help today Jason, has given me much better options!
 
Shorty said:
whereas majority of my shots are portrait.
Click to expand...

Mine are the same.

It's that which took most of my time sorting out.

If you look in my galleries, they're almost all portrait (since I shoot people) so I added a lot of extra black canvas to the images so that they behaved how I wanted them to.

I've now got a droplet on the desktop which does it all for me now, all I need to do is export the image from LR 1000px high, and the droplet does the rest.

TBH, there are probably some free templates out there you could use as well.

I use one of these for customers to view and order from

http://www.lightroomgalleries.com/index.php
 
JasonRS said:
Not true on both counts.
OS X can happily see Flash sites, it's iPhone OS that can't (Touch and iPad use this OS)
Google can read a lot of information from Flash sites, including, but not limited to
Text
Text loaded from XML files using action script
URL's & embedded links
Alt text information
swf2html is a tool that can be used to identify what google etc will be able to extract and read.
You can also add an HTML alternative if you want to, and undertake SEO on the underlying index.html page that launches the flash anyway loading this with the Meta components and some keyword heavy text for those users that do arrive without flash.
I've switched my site to Flash based, it cost £30 for the components and was done in an evening.
As for non flash users, they get a simple page with a sample image and a little link to the blog which will have more images on. I want people to view the images on the biggest screen possible as the site uses the whole screen and dynamically resizes the images.
Click to expand...

Cheers Jason; that could be seen as a little aggressive but I'm fairly thick skinned.;)
Firstly I'll admit it was late and I included mac in the apple stuff that doesn't include flash, I was clearly wrong about that - But I wasn't 'wrong on both counts'. As you've agreed there are a lot of popular devices out there made by apple that don't support flash!

However, whilst it's true that Google does in fact claim to search xml files, that's just a technical fact. I don't claim to have used the swf2html tool, however the results below are what Google actually has indexed, not what we think it should index:
The link below shows what google has got indexed from my cheap flash site (1 page indexed) and my very recent blog (2 pages indexed):
my results (slim)

Here's what google has indexed on your (very nice BTW) hand made flash site:
your results

And now a flash site that is bespoke probably at a fairly high price:
cool flash site

You'll notice that for the last site, there are 10 pages of results; that amount of searchable information comes from some serious work put into the site. I wouldn't have thought that was produced in an afternoon by a couple of part time developers.

As you're probably aware, Googling "weshootpeople" which is actually your URL doesn't even get your site on page 1 of Google's search results. :shake:
I'm not an expert but I believe just changing www.blog/yourURL to www.yourURL/blog will change your search results.

I'm also aware of the option of adding a mirror HTML site, but let's look at the original brief:
Cheap, easy to use flash site.
All the cheap and easy to use flash sites I'm aware of have very little HTML and adding a mirror site by hand could hardly be described as fitting within "easy to use".
Expensive flash template sites automatically generate a HTML mirror site, but again, they're don't fall within the original brief (cheap).

I'll finish here by stating that In no way did I pretend to be an expert at SEO! However I think it's fairly important so I'm trying to learn.

Back to my original answer, flashpalette templates are easy to use, you can try them out for free and they look good.

I'll throw into the mix:
If I had my time again, I'd not bother with a flash site at all and go straight to a blog with the Wordpress pro photo 3 template. Blogging is definitely the best way to get your site up the rankings - and you don't even have to lay it out like a blog, there a plenty of photographers who've switched to blog only - and that template is easy to use and looks great - it even allows a bit of flash too if you are really stuck on the idea.:D
 
Phil V said:
Here's what google has indexed on your (very nice BTW) hand made flash site:
your results

And now a flash site that is bespoke probably at a fairly high price:
cool flash site
Click to expand...

Ah, statistics, and the way Google works.

My site is 4 days old, and was only submitted to Google 3 days ago. They themselves quote up to 4 weeks before they index a site, sometimes longer, so it's going to take a while ;)

The other site has been online since 2008, as a result google will have had plenty of time to index the site and links into it.

So, let's have another look in 2012 when Google's had the same time to index the site and see what the results are like.

What would have been a more appropriate test would have been of a site that had been deployed and submitted at the same time but in HTML.

So, a bad comparison but with sensational results ;)

BTW, googling my original domain name, or indeed my own name then I come number 1 in Google, and they all now redirect too... ;)
 
OK, I had no idea how long your site had been up (but mine's been up over a year (not the blog) and only one page indexed - even the great Jeff Ascough who has a flash only site only manages 3 pages indexed. But Jeff isn't relying on organic searches to drive traffic to his site. ;)

The OP, you or I however might need to hit those rankings for organic searches. Getting to the top of a list by people searching for a known URL is hardly a result - people that know your URL can get to your site anyway. Search rankings is what drives new custom. If you only want a website to show off your photography - it doesn't matter how good your rankings are, but if this is your shop front - you really need to learn to be good at this stuff.

As you say, we'll see what it's like in a couple of years. But without the use of a time machine, you could just see that my purely flash site, after 1 year has only one page ranked (with virtually no content on it) and if you go back to some of the cheaper flash template sites, and view the results for some of their customers domains. I'm sure that my statistics hold water.

And if you've got additional html running alongside your flash site, more power to you, but don't forget the OP wanted something 'simple' which hand coding a mirror site certainly isn't.
 
To the OP if you want a fully fledged website, look at something like Photoshelter or any of the other website in a box solutions. All you need to do is enter your text, choose the layout etc you want and upload your images.
 
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