So... you want a website?

I've just bought a web domain name (.com) and really haven't a clue who to use for web hosting (??), sorry, but I'm lost in this field with total lack of computer/website experience. I take it 'WordPress' is excellent to install (free) ?
Are the likes 'HostGator' any good for hosting I wonder...?

I'll be using a web-host for a personal photographic website, single domain name etc... I want my photographic site (eventually) to look quite 'Pro' like. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.


Regards;
Peter
Central Scotland
 
Your questions have already been answered in your other thread. ;)

Yes wordpress is free to use and comes with some basic themes, custom themes can be bought for a small fee from various places

Again do not use Hostgator LOL
 
As extensive hypertext markup language XHTML or XML is no longer the most recent or versatile, I would do the coding in HTML5 instead. The canvas and video are done far more efficeintly.
Also, avoid flash as it is not supported by Apple and is being dropped by Google soon.
 
I use behance for some art project and flickr just for relax.
 
Digital Ocean for hosting, Let's Encrypt for free SSL certificate, WordPress for the CMS, JetPack for gallery layouts.

Digital Ocean have a simple step by step guide to setting up a WordPress site - it doesn't need any technical knowledge although it is command line, you can just copy and paste from the guide.

There are LOADS of free themes that will give a great looking website very quickly.

If you need to sell prints etc then you can add WooCommerce - it's free too :)
 
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I am currently working on a photo club script that I would like to offer for free when its done.
I joined here to see what photographers are looking for in a complete online club.
I have also checked out some photo clubs that are already up and running, some are good some are not.

Currently I am writing the script in PHP, JQuery, and AJAX. I want it to be as interactive as possible between all members, where the members can share their work and their techniques. Admin can select features they want to be on their club, and manage the entire website without any real coding experience.

So far I have incorporated:
  • Unlimited Uploads
  • Album Creation
  • Photo Comments
  • Profiles
  • Manage Your Photos
  • Admin Control Panel
What I want to add:
  • Online Chat
  • Facebook style index view
  • EXIF INFO
  • Google Map GEO Location
  • Photo Description
  • Photo Rating
  • Community Calendar
  • Trophies
  • Moderation
  • Newsletter
  • Member PM and Email

Are these features something photographers would be interested in seeing as options in a club?
What are ideas of things you as a photographer would like to see? Any idea/help is appreciated.

Thanks.
 
Wordpress is indeed a great platform for building websites but not necessarily for photographers. Every new feature that you need requires you to find the appropriate plugin and even slight change in the design requires you to get into coding. A photographer should spend more time taking pictures rather than designing websites.
A better option is to go with decent portfolio builders and let them handle the main part while you upload your best shots and sometimes work on the design of website. Pixpa or Squarespace are good to start with, both being inclined towards photographers websites. Pixpa also has the features where you can sell your photos as digital product or prints within the same website. Try out their free trial and choose the one that works best for you.
 
I do event photography in the summer and have a photo printing service and sell digital files and prints from my website.

I've stopped my subscription with Zenfolio and changed over to TheImageFile https://www.theimagefile.com

Very happy customer so far in my first three months. Zenfolio, in my experience, was fantastic until about May 2017 when they lost the plot. Many moans on their forum page and they don't seem to listen which is why I changed. I tried Smugmug, Squarespace, etc but only TheImageFile had 99% of what I wanted. One big wish was an attractive menu system and I got exactly what I wanted.
 
Thinking of trying to build a website, any recommendations on who to use?
 
Thinking of trying to build a website, any recommendations on who to use?

Wordpress is excellent if you have the time to understand it and do all the plugins etc... Squarespace is easy, quick and very good but depends what you want out of it - ecommerce, SEO, portfolio?
 
Thinking of trying to build a website, any recommendations on who to use?

Like the above, have a think about what the purpose of your website will be. That will help you understand what your host/platform needs to provide and will help with your decision.

I almost switched over to squarespace a month ago but decided to stay with Wordpress and double down on learning it. Square space is VERY expensive for what it is.
 
This is not for everyone but for a long time (probably about 6 years now) I’ve been using PhotoFloat to build my website. It generates the HTML and thumbnails from albums and then you host it somewhere. My internet is fast enough I could do it from home now, but I look for cheap VPS every Black Friday and find something with enough storage. As it’s all static it needs virtually zero resources to run, right now it’s using 48 MB of RAM. It’s a low traffic site, just family but could handle more. No e-commerce or accounts or anything fancy but I like the clean, minimal look, EXIF info is there and people can easily download the original if they want.
 
I have a private Blog on Wordpress.com, and a few photos from comic cons and stuff in the Gallery on there, very ocassionally I'll link to my Google Photos content on forums but I tend to avoid that due to problems with trolls attacking me for not being very photogenic :(
 
Just circling back to this post. I have a free Flickr account - I had Flickr Pro for years but stopped subscribing in the end. I am trying get back seriously into my photography and am really struggling to find a good platform (besides TP) to post my work. I also want a platform that allows me to embed images using BB code.

I did look at Amazon photos, but the embed links expire which isn't really much use. Flickr want £60 for a year of pro or £111 for two - which is frankly laughable given the amount of activity on the platform (a lot of the groups I used to post in have had no activity for months or years).

There really is a gap in the market for a photo hosting solution that allows embedding of images in external websites, which is focused on critique and feedback by photographers, for photographers. As things stand, I have lots of images, but nowhere to post them. Instagram is trash and I post one or two images here, but I am really looking for something that has Flickr's features, but is actually used by people.
 
It's not difficult to create your own web site. I use cix.uk for my hosting and domain provision; probably not the cheapest but I've been on CIX conferencing for over 30 years so know them well. I use Jalbum to create the albums and I can easily embed images here when required.
 
It's not difficult to create your own web site. I use cix.uk for my hosting and domain provision; probably not the cheapest but I've been on CIX conferencing for over 30 years so know them well. I use Jalbum to create the albums and I can easily embed images here when required.
Does that work out cheaper than flickr pro?
 
I pay £60 per year for (I think) 5GB storage plus my domain registration; I've no idea what Flickr Pro costs.
 
If you get your own domain name and create a website initially no one will know it exists. Wix et al sell the idea of having your own galleries and shop front presumably because they get lots of money for that.

What is the purpose of uploading the photos? Presumably it's being able to sell them rather than people just looking at them.

So you create your own or do you put your photos into someone elses? Depends what you want.

I'm not a photographer like you people, I'm a software developer. I put some time last year into this site for photographers to sell their photos. The idea was purely for selling the pics, nothing else. So you upload the pics, get the link and send the link to people who are in the photos. Dead simple. I thought it would really take off but it's been like pulling teeth! It works very well. There's a couple of photographers in the UK use it and I have used it (I do have nice camera and I do take some pictures sometimes) to make sure it works. You can lead a horse to water.

https://arethere.photos and here's one of mine: https://www.arethere.photos/event?id=14

Sometimes what seems like a great idea and people must go for it isn't a great idea and people don't go for it!
 
It seems like a good service, but there are plenty of people doing the same thing - probably with much larger marketing budgets...
 
It seems like a good service, but there are plenty of people doing the same thing - probably with much larger marketing budgets...
That's the thing yes, advertising. It's difficult to know who the customer is for a start so you can spray expensive adverts all over the place and when you do the sums if it's £0.50 per click and only 1 in 100 take up the service it's very hard to make money. Without advertising it has to be pretty good or pretty lucky to find users.
 
As far as digital downloads are concerned, photographers do not their images,they sell (or give) a licence for the downloader to use their image in a particular way which may be personal or commercial. Here's a link to a fuller explanation, https://www.copytrack.com/how-to-license-images-correctly#122.

The key to selling event photos is for participants to find them when they or their friends search the internet using a search engine. Your homepage desperately needs a list or gallery for all the events on your site! How it works would be better on another page where phographers can register. As well as the software to create a site its presence needs to be marketed with search engine optimisation as explained here

I hope this helps
 
As far as digital downloads are concerned, photographers do not their images,they sell (or give) a licence for the downloader to use their image in a particular way which may be personal or commercial. Here's a link to a fuller explanation, https://www.copytrack.com/how-to-license-images-correctly#122.

The key to selling event photos is for participants to find them when they or their friends search the internet using a search engine. Your homepage desperately needs a list or gallery for all the events on your site! How it works would be better on another page where phographers can register. As well as the software to create a site its presence needs to be marketed with search engine optimisation as explained here

I hope this helps
Yes I agree but I think it's abit chicken and egg and I had to decide which to choose initilally. It's called arethere.photos because if it were well known and well used then if you had been at an event then you might expect to see that event on arethere.photos and there would be a map showing today's events. If I did that now though there would be little to show because there aren't many events and it isn't well known so event goers won't go looking there.

In order to work it has to have events and photos and that's why the emphasis is on picture takers. Without picture takers there is not site. I don't mean photographers necessarily, just picture takers.

At some point that first page would change to show the events. The code is there, just not accessible.

Search engines. If you put in "Wenselydale Wedge" Google does find the site but on the second page, which isn't great. I have done some SEO years ago and found it quite depressing! Instead it is for the photo taker to use their skills to market their own photos, to make sure that event link gets to the people who might buy them, That's not hard, you just make sure that the organiser spreads the link for you. People do see the link and do look. There's a sharp spike in traffic on the evening of the event and it tails off over the next few days. I don't thing searching using Google is a significant source of traffic for theis scenario, which is good because I don't like SEO!

The photos that someone buys are for unlimited personal use. If the buyer wants to do more then they can contact the photographer anonymously.
 
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