Making a photo website, any suggestions?

[ProwlingTiger]

Hi,

I'm an avid photographer, semi-pro in both shooting, and editing. I love photography, and I'm taking some classes in college, attending seminars, etc. This year I made the switch to Mac. I can honestly say I've never felt anything like it, coming from a guy who loves everything tech. It handles my photos in ways that I once only dreamed of with Windows, but thats beside the point.

I successfully run a few websites, mostly others' for businesses and what not. But now I feel its time for me to create a photo website of my own. What I mean by "photo website" is a site that gives bio info, and galleries of good shots. I've never made anything of the sort, aside from using a few simple gallery scripts, and I'm wondering if anyone here as experience in this area and would be willing to lend advice. I have a general idea of how I'll make the project, but suggestions from seasoned gallery builders would be great.


-Dan

 

[alphaod]

Have you tried using Typepad or Wordpress and just doing a blog?

 

[ProwlingTiger]

Yeah, I'd prefer to use something a bit more than just a blogging software.

 

[miles01110]

A while back I was of the same mind- "Oh I'll just use some CSS and maybe some flash to make nice photo galleries." Turned out it was just a pain in the rear, so I ended up paying for a smugmug website- http://www.smugmug.com . It's much easier, and their customer service is fast and helpful. It is well worth the "standard" service I participate in, but if you were looking for a little more you could buy their professional options that allow a little more customization.

If you decide to go for it, let me know and I can give you a coupon code for a $5 discount.

 

[onomatopoeia]

I'd suggest surfing the internet to see what others are using for their photo sites. Chances are you can find out what service or client they are using and adapt that for your own site. Sites like VFXY Photos and Cool Photoblogs are good places to poke around to see what others are doing.

Consider the style of site you want. Do you want a gallery (display many images at once) or a photoblog (emphasis on one photo at a time)?

Gallery is a great piece of software if you want to go that route. It is very powerful and has a large number of plugins and a community big enough to get you through most technical hurdles.

I eventually opted to go the photoblog route where the leader for self-hosted photoblogs is probably Pixelpost. Pixelpost is quite elegant and easy to use but I found it too limiting for my own site (this wouldn't be a problem if I could code and modify it myself).

Ultimately, I opted to use Wordpress with the Yet another photoblog plugin. This does everything Pixelpost does while offering the flexibility and power of Wordpress. I've been very happy with it so far.

 

[ProwlingTiger]

Mmkay I'll give those a look. I dont intend to hand build the gallery, but the main site, index page, contact page, etc, will be in CSS and PHP by me.

 

[wheezy]

I've integrated Wordpress and Pixelpost into my own website pretty nicely and am pretty pleased with the functionality of it all. What's your main goal for your site though? Mine is just my own webspace to put whatever I want on there; not really to 'attract' business or anything, maybe a fan or two.

Photoblogs are the most widely used type of photography website, but I would say whatever route you choose be sure to include an RSS/Atom feed to.

 

[ProwlingTiger]

Yeah, thats pretty close to my goal too. I do some pro shooting for certain events and businesses but I'm not looking to attract more business necessarily. I'll look into PixelPost today. I plan to have a prototype of the site up by tomorrow afternoon.

 

[apearlman]

Good sites will do it for you.

PBase is popular among serious photographers. Flickr or Google's Picasaweb are easy and popular among more casual shooters. Unless setting up your own site is fun and super easy, I'd check those out.

 

[ProwlingTiger]

Well, I already have most my site layout done, in a fashion. I'm messing with ZenPhoto right now, hoping it works.

 

[jizwood1]

Sounds great....

 

[huskydsl]

I use movable type for one of my photo sites... for the other i use iWeb. I have a friend using rapidweaver. All are great. Since you apparently have some experience with web tools, you should really consider movable type. It's a template based blogging styled website content tool. It works great as my photoblog. If you are just looking to post albums to the web, go the easy route and just use iphoto published galleries.

just my two cents...

 

[kjs862]

Try http://www.pbase.com out. There really a great!

Heres mine...

http://www.pbase.com/kjs862

What you think?

 

[slinky0390]

I'm going to have to say go with SmugMug, it's one of the best out there. They have many customizable "gallery styles" much like iWeb themes. However, if you know how to code HTML, Java, and CSS, or you are good at following tutorials to learn how to do the sort, you can have a completely custom site.
Heres mine as an example http://www.slinky0390.smugmug.com