Website Question

goldilocksandmy3bears · October 2, 2009

I have been asked numerous times "can I see your website" well I don't have one.:scratch :cry
I'm just starting out and figured I didn't need one yet.. but obviously I do. So can someone help me with this.. where is the best site you have used or use to make a website. How do I go about even making one and where is the cheapest place you have found.. yes! I am cheap lol..TIA
Courtney

adbsgicom · October 2, 2009

goldilocksandmy3bears wrote:

I have been asked numerous times "can I see your website" well I don't have one. :cry
I'm just starting out and figured I didn't need one yet.. but obviously I do. So can someone help me with this.. where is the best site you have used or use to make a website. How do I go about even making one and where is the cheapest place you have found.. yes! I am cheap lol..TIA
Courtney

www.smugmug.com

I haven't used the customization at all, but there seem to be quite a few nice sites built on it.

Sam · October 2, 2009

Courtney,

Do you have cheap camera gear? Cheap printing? Cheap computer, and software?

Are you proud of your work?

Now that we have that out of the way, I can't think of a better choice than Smugmug. You have a choice between three levels of site features with three pricing levels. You can start with the basic site and upgrade as you find a need.

Smugmug as well as the support forum here offers a ton of help getting your site up and running with a lot of customization capability.

It took me a long time to pull the trigger on a web site, too long.

There isn't any benefit to waiting, take my word on that......just do it, you won't be sorry.

Sam

angevin1 · October 2, 2009

Sam wrote:

Courtney,

Do you have cheap camera gear? Cheap printing? Cheap computer, and software?

Are you proud of your work?

Now that we have that out of the way, I can't think of a better choice than Smugmug. You have a choice between three levels of site features with three pricing levels. You can start with the basic site and upgrade as you find a need.

Smugmug as well as the support forum here offers a ton of help getting your site up and running with a lot of customization capability.

It took me a long time to pull the trigger on a web site, too long.

There isn't any benefit to waiting, take my word on that......just do it, you won't be sorry.

Sam

....and you can do it : T o d a y ~ with help ~ Heck you even get a fourteen day free trial~ I did the trial and haven't looked back.

Heck: Heres a coupon for $5 off: enter this AnPIeQ60Pn4wk on the sign up form.

cheers, tom

goldilocksandmy3bears · October 2, 2009

Sam wrote:

Courtney,

Do you have cheap camera gear? Cheap printing? Cheap computer, and software?

Are you proud of your work?

Now that we have that out of the way, I can't think of a better choice than Smugmug. You have a choice between three levels of site features with three pricing levels. You can start with the basic site and upgrade as you find a need.

Smugmug as well as the support forum here offers a ton of help getting your site up and running with a lot of customization capability.

It took me a long time to pull the trigger on a web site, too long.

There isn't any benefit to waiting, take my word on that......just do it, you won't be sorry.

Sam

your right your right...

goldilocksandmy3bears · October 2, 2009

angevin1 wrote:

....and you can do it : T o d a y ~ with help ~ Heck you even get a fourteen day free trial~ I did the trial and haven't looked back.

Heck: Heres a coupon for $5 off: enter this AnPIeQ60Pn4wk on the sign up form.

cheers, tom

thank you!:D

angevin1 · October 2, 2009

goldilocksandmy3bears wrote:

thank you!:D

You're Welcome Courtney. That Website is a tool! And we both know a very desirable tool. We have to have a Web presence now days, and it is another wonderful tool in your toolbox. Your friends/clients will see it as an extension of you, what you represent, and other attributes that they will apply. But it will say I am Here. I am a Pro.

You don't have to sell one thing FROM the site for it to be a very, very useful tool. And in case you haven't noticed The DGrin Forum has a huge Support Presence. Lots of very helpful folks and helpful at all hours of the day!

Give a shout when you get that site up!

Scott_Quier · October 3, 2009

I have to agree with above comments about using SmugMug. Oh, and you probably want to pony up the $150 for the professional level. Then, get well acquainted with the folks in the SmugMug Customization forum - they are all hanging out there just waiting for YOU to drop in and ask for some help.

jbakerphoto · October 4, 2009

Coupon code YaHOo gets you 50% off the first year. So you pay 75 instead of 150 for the pro account...

Nicolas · October 5, 2009

You can do it yourself cheaply and easily. As a photographer it is a good idea to learn a little HTML and make your own website. I could seriously teach someone enough HTML to get going in about 30 minutes. Check out my site... nothing fancy, but it is free with no adds and allows me to do my own thing.
www.nicolasgullett.com

I am currently working on a flash site, a bit harder to do, but will give it a more modern look. http://www.ravenkeep.net/ngp/ (still working on this!!)

The only expenses are 1) registering the domain name (about $10 a year) and 2) hosting- where you actually store your pictures (as cheap as $12 a year).

I guess my main point is that we learn so much about photography, editing, printing, etc... why not learn a little HTML while you're at it?

wildviper · October 6, 2009

Nicolas wrote:

You can do it yourself cheaply and easily. As a photographer it is a good idea to learn a little HTML and make your own website. I could seriously teach someone enough HTML to get going in about 30 minutes. Check out my site... nothing fancy, but it is free with no adds and allows me to do my own thing.
www.nicolasgullett.com

I am currently working on a flash site, a bit harder to do, but will give it a more modern look. http://www.ravenkeep.net/ngp/ (still working on this!!)

The only expenses are 1) registering the domain name (about $10 a year) and 2) hosting- where you actually store your pictures (as cheap as $12 a year).

I guess my main point is that we learn so much about photography, editing, printing, etc... why not learn a little HTML while you're at it?

A bit off topic here, but Nicolas, I like your plain website. Only problem is that I have to scroll a bit down to see full picture or see the website gallery pages.

I am using IE 8 with a 1920x1200 rez and no toolbars besides the standard IE8 favorite bar. Your flash site also does the same. You may want to fix that. (For this reason, I would rather have someone do a site...too many small issues).

By the way, to the OP, I am checking out Zenfolio...seems pretty awesome.

sashap · October 9, 2009

Re: Website
Courtney,

You are asking on the Smugmug forum, so I think you'll find quite a few praises of smugmug here

We started out with a simple HTML site, then moved to smugmug and recently redesigned our galleries again. I've also used Zenfolio, so can chip in on that as well.

Smugmug's customization is very powerful. The site we used with smugmug is here: photos.edzeltserphoto.com
As you can see, you can customize the navbar quite a bit, have a slideshow on the main page, etc. It took a bit of patience ot my part to get there, but Smugmug support and customization forum were wonderful! You'll get a lot of help there. in my experience, zenfolio galleries are snappier and have a somewhat more modern look to them. Very easy to organize your pictures there. The premium account is $100 as opposed to smugmug's professional account for $150. HOWEVER, you cannot customize your page nearly as much as with smugmug, which was a biggie for us. Smugmug (and Zenfolio), however, is very difficult to optimize for search engines. Yes, you can tag pictures, etc, but the first (most important) page has a lot of smugmug stuff in it that you can't easily change. For that reason, we later changed our first page to something in HTML, where we had full control of its contents and used Smugmug to host our galleries.
Finally, we just redesigned the galleries using the Bludomain template. I love that the site is a lot more dynamic now, however, smugmug did have some advantages, which I miss - better statistics engine and the printing service (we'll have to print pictures ourselves now) would be the main 2. Bludomain also has quite a few negative reviews on the net, so I was very hesitant to order from them. But for us, the process was smooth and definitely worth the money. We do not host the site with them though. You can see what our site looks now at www.edzeltserphoto.com
Hope this gives you more food for thought.

- Alex

Swartzy · October 10, 2009

I too have both....for client galleries, posting on the forums, etc. Smugmug. For the visual selling point, Bludomain. Best of both worlds.

sashap · October 12, 2009

Swartzy,

This one of our dilemmas now: whether to keep using smugmug galleries for proofing or use bludomain for everything. What were your reasons to stick with smugmug?

Swartzy · October 12, 2009

sashap wrote:

Swartzy,

This one of our dilemmas now: whether to keep using smugmug galleries for proofing or use bludomain for everything. What were your reasons to stick with smugmug?

A very good question. Bludomain in the past has had some issues with email, photo ordering and such. Since Smugmug is reasonable in price with unlimited (a huge consideration) amounts of galleries and photos...including they use excellent printing services makes it a no brainer. Clients have their own private gallery. I can lock it up, diplay it as I desire, enable clients to order prints in any size they desire..including how they want it cropped. I don't have to do anything on this end other than upload the full resolution image to the gallery.

I've always enjoyed the ease of use that Smugmug offers. For marketing though, even using the flash functions of CSS isn't anywhere near what I'm after...hence Bludomain.

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