How to make your photo website better?

[Shacklebolt]

So, I've been shooting concerts for a while. Every time I shoot one and photos get published online, I get a photo credit with a link to whichever website I'd like. So far, I've just tried to arrange my flickr page as snazzily as possible, and used that. I include one, unwatermakred photo of each show. This is what I currently have:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35821646@N03/

I've tried to make it as good as it can be, but obviously, it's just a flickr page.

Ultimately the goal would be to have my own domain name and a flash/java website, but that's a little ways off.

What can I do to improve it? Like, what are the next steps - immediate steps - that can be taken to present my photos better to those who click the link? What comes after that?

Thanks for the input!

 

[HBOC]

Well, until you start a smugmug, zenfolio, pbase, etc, you really have no customization functions on flickr. If you do, i would like to know about it!

 

[jampat]

As HBOC said, Flickr is easy, but severely limited.

Do you have Lightroom? Lightroom bangs out decent looking gallery pages in seconds. You just need to create the landing page for people with the links to the gallerys (or just link them straight to the gallery page).

 

[ManhattanPrjct]

sign up for smugmug. that is all.

 

[MattSepeta]

Well

It depends what you want your site to accomplish.

I went from a stupid mobileme site to a wordpress blog, and its opened up an infinite amount of doors.

My main goal was for organic page hits through SEO, and its doing fairly well (at least better than expected.)

Trust me, try wordpress. There are plenty of free themes out there, and if you have a rudimentary knowledge of HTML/CSS/jQuery/etc you can pretty much customize however you want. Not to mention widgets, plugins, etc.

Check out my site in my sig. I have a portfolio category which holds all of my different portfolio galleries, as well as a blog section, which I have jut recently started doing.

Now, back to the reasons... I took some photos of a friends cousin who is a VERY awesome DJ for our area (Twin Cities MN) and put them up on my blog. Now whenever anyone googles his name (He is huge, he does the Timberwolves half time shows, clubs all over town, etc) my photo gallery of him is on the first page above the fold.

Another good example is my bike polo experience. Bike polo is a rapidly growing sport, and I took some photos of my room mate and his friends playing. I put them on my blog, got a few pingbacks, and now when you good "minneapolis bike polo" my images are among the first in google images.

All of the other options (smug-mug, zenfolio, etc) are ok, but if you want a website that is SUPER effective, infinitely customizable, SEO PRO, sooo easy to maintain, etc, get a wordpress blog!

---A few other tid-bits. I only paid $30 for my site, and it was for the theme I have. I had a friend with tons of hosting space and he hooked up a domain as a favor.
----Wordpress is also highly supported. Any question or issue I ran into while working on my page was handled promptly. I would merely post my question to the theme or widget developers blog and they would answer me within the day.

PPS- check out theme forest.

 

[bocomo]

Ultimately the goal would be to have my own domain name and a flash/java website, but that's a little ways off.



Thanks for the input!

i wouldn't bother with a flash site. i look at a ton of photography websites and i have to say i have never enjoyed visiting/navigating/waiting for them to load. just my 2 cents

(this is not an apple vs. adobe flash thing, i just don't think that flash websites are enjoyable)

 

[HBOC]

I have a wordpress as well, actually i just started it. You will have to pay for extra storage (i think you get 3GB free, and to add CSS you have to pay for the ability). It is not a bad start.

 

[imationx]

Zenfolio.com is very good.

 

[compuwar]

So, I've been shooting concerts for a while. Every time I shoot one and photos get published online, I get a photo credit with a link to whichever website I'd like. So far, I've just tried to arrange my flickr page as snazzily as possible, and used that. I include one, unwatermakred photo of each show. This is what I currently have:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35821646@N03/

I've tried to make it as good as it can be, but obviously, it's just a flickr page.

Ultimately the goal would be to have my own domain name and a flash/java website, but that's a little ways off.

What can I do to improve it? Like, what are the next steps - immediate steps - that can be taken to present my photos better to those who click the link? What comes after that?

Thanks for the input!

If you're not married to flickr, then you should look at the alternatives. I'm moving from Imagekind (pauldrobertson.imagekind.net) to Zenfolio (http://www.pauldrobertson.net) and ponied up for the full-on pro account. ZF is themeable, and lets you bring your own domain. Imagekind wasn't doing coupon codes, and kept promising to "look into it" for years, ZF has it, so that was my main impetus for switching. I've got about three more originals to find before I start filling out titles and finishing my transition. ZF also does UK and Canada fulfillment, which was an issue for me. They do free trials, so all you lose for trying it is some time. If you do sign up, my referral code is UJA-JQS-3XY.

About the only negative I've found is that you can't upload large TIFFs, so I'm stuck JPEGing everything.

Paul

 

[toxic]

the most popular sites are Zenfolio and Smugmug. you could also get a Wordpress and buy a theme designed for photographers.

don't use a flash-based site. if I really wanted a load time, I'd go back to dialup.