Having a stab at building a website - Tips please.

Blasted

Blasted

Messages
927
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi guys,

I’ve just bought a domain name and have started to play with wordpress.

The plan is to produce a website (not a blog) where I can show off my photography (regardless of if it’s good or bad). The site will simply have a little bit about me, a contact section and a gallery. I may at some point add a section for print purchasing.

The aim for the site is to be clean, stylish, and put the emphasis on the photographs, ideally set up display on computers, ipads, and smart phones. It should have a strong front screen and presence.

So, drawing on your previous experiences and knowledge I have a few questions if you don’t mind.

1, Should I make my own site or save some time and hassle and get a template? i dont code either.
2, Image protection – I have seen a plug in preventing right clicking on the image, use this or watermark the pictures before hand?
3, Should I be making a logo for the site.

Is there anything else I should be considering during the build and test stage?

Tips and hints greatly received.
 
Blasted said:
Hi guys,

I’ve just bought a domain name and have started to play with wordpress.

The plan is to produce a website (not a blog) where I can show off my photography (regardless of if it’s good or bad). The site will simply have a little bit about me, a contact section and a gallery. I may at some point add a section for print purchasing.

The aim for the site is to be clean, stylish, and put the emphasis on the photographs, ideally set up display on computers, ipads, and smart phones. It should have a strong front screen and presence.

So, drawing on your previous experiences and knowledge I have a few questions if you don’t mind.

1, Should I make my own site or save some time and hassle and get a template? i dont code either.
2, Image protection – I have seen a plug in preventing right clicking on the image, use this or watermark the pictures before hand?
3, Should I be making a logo for the site.

Is there anything else I should be considering during the build and test stage?

Tips and hints greatly received.
Click to expand...

1: you could possibly get a template from one of the sites that might suit your needs, Elegantthemes and Themeforest a couple that spring to mind, there are more. You'd need to browse through them first to see if you can find a theme to suit, also there is the satisfaction of you putting your own site together.

2: If someone wants your pic they can have it whether you have right click or not enabled. Snipping tool on Win 7 or prt scr key on most keyboards will do the job, or you put a big watermark over the photo and spoil the effect.

3: Logo would be good to identify as yours, who knows it might become as famous as the burger logo that starts with M.
 
Hi Blasted!

It's great to see more and more people jumping in to building their own site! Maybe I shouldnt be saying that since Im a web designer, but whatever! lol

Keep it simple, use colours easy on the eye and dont clutter the page. When people first attempt to build a site, they think the more you cram in to it, the better. This isn't always the case.

As above, you could try visiting a template site and buying one from there, you just add your text etc and you're done. However, I would recommend trying to customise the layout, and get to grips with it. What software will you be using?

Also, a good way to go is Wordpress. Not only is it a blog, but when used just for a website build, the platform is amazingly easy to use. Edit pages in a few simple steps, and you don't have to worry about uploading etc.

If you need anymore help then just let me know :)

Matt
 
Thanks guys (y)

It is going to wordpress based, I dont code so it has to be easy. The main point as you have said and which I agree with is "keep it simple". I'm doing it to show off my pictures, after all they are supposed to be looked at and its an easy way for people to get to them.

I take franks point about protection, a determined person can and will get the images, but rightclick disable will stop a few of the lazy ones. As I'm showing work off I think a watermark will distract and look horrible.

I've just had a look on the tinterweb and found a few places demonstrating colour themes/swatches, I may use one of those to keep it looking tasteful and smart, unlike my choice of colours for clothes.

I will have a go at building my own site before considering templates, although i might borrow a few ideas, after all nothing is new and original in this world. the satisfaction i think would be worth it.
 
Last edited:
Use pastel colours to colour your site. Limit your pages with photos such as sticking over 20 photos on to one page which would slow the page to load.

Wordpress is easy to use with minimal coding. Yes you can also start from scratch when building a site but grab a free already made template to see what the coding is like and get used to the coding terms, and codes.

A banner is good nothing to in your face tho! Nor right colours. Something like your site name with a image or icon or something.

I wish you luck :)
 
Keep meaning to get around to doing something like this myself. If only we didn't have to sleep :LOL:

Some very useful information given already, all I could add is that you ensure your monitor is calibrated and get a good cross section of web users to test your website, i.e. not just family and friends, who will probably be very nice to you, but general contacts, etc. In fact, I'm sure TP'ers can help.

Good luck and keep us informed on progress.
 
Blasted said:
Thanks guys,

If I manage to get anything built I shall let you rip it to pieces, in a nice way though.
Click to expand...

Very interested in this myself, keep meaning to find the time. How's things progressing Blasted?
 
hiya im in a very similar situation (see my thread ) ive decided to go for http://www.zenfolio.com/ this is hosted by them , and you can also resell though it , there is even a lightroom plug in to upload all very snazzy.. you can do a free trial for two weeks which im going to build this weekend , then its either £25 a year £50 to use your own domain name or £100 if you want the shopping cart bit etc
 
Things are moving, slowly, just been so busy this week.

I finally got it up and running under the name it should use and showing on Google. That's the main part out of the way. I've started to add a little content, the playing with the actual page in WordPress is really quite easy. I also added an album to a flash gallery, it provides a little bit of protection. It does look good full screen though.

you can have a look at it if you want.

stupid links, just google benleephotography.co.uk

Please bear in mind that its a work in progress, I'm not even at the asking fro criticism stage yet.

I used sixserve for free hosting, total outlay has been about £8 for the domain name and I'm up and running, minus time spent though.
 
Last edited:
Have a look at the Gallery3 package. You can get addons to integrate paypal payments for prints etc. I'm pretty sure it can be used with wordpress and the like, as it's been around for years and is fairly popular.

You may find that a free host gets slower and slower the more popular your site becomes. I couldn't see any images in your galleries btw.
 
I never add any watermarks, as I find them so distracting from the image. But I never upload any images bigger than 600px along the longest side to the internet, this way the image can be view full on, but if anyone wants it, then they cannot do a lot with it. This system works well for me, and I sell a lot of images from my website.
 
Thanks for the tips, I shall look into them.

The gallery has a feature to resize, which I've done, so hopefully it will be quicker.

I was messing earlier which is why nothing probably showed, it should do now.

I did think about giving the option for purchase, you never know I might get a bag of chips out of it.

Just got to get my head down and get some content up and tidy up the layout.

Tips still welcome (y)

Note, It can be bloody slow at times. If it works out I may migrate to a paid server.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top