websites- how did you make yours?

melekalikimaka

right in process of setting up website/blog, tried out wordpress and blogspot, leaning towards blogspot at the moment, but open to opinions, as for the website, i have looked at the template sorta ones wix and the sort, and they all seem a little mneh to me, what do ya'll use, I can in theory make one myself, its the actually workload of doing it thats putting me off tbh.

tan11ie

Something i need to do also...so i shall be following this!

I have started with wordpress ..........now who told me it was easy!!! feck maybe I'm just short on patience

oshead

Choose the easiest option that will give you acceptable results. I spent a lot of time configuring my selfhosted wordpress blog only to find it difficult to completely finish it (time wise). A lot of test images in there now. Maybe I'll finish it before the summer. :pac:

melekalikimaka

oshead wrote: »

Choose the easiest option that will give you acceptable results. I spent a lot of time configuring my selfhosted wordpress blog only to find it difficult to completely finish it (time wise). A lot of test images in there now. Maybe I'll finish it before the summer. :pac:

aye the blog is gonna be simple, the website however, i can do flash galleries, no prob, link right into them, its the actual index page that i'm finding so hard to think how to execute nicely

oshead

You could have a look at and create an account on about.me. Just a suggestion.

OctavarIan

Are you hosting this site yourself Melekalikimaka?

If so I would recommend Wordpress. There are a tonne of excellent free photography themes and it'll give you the scope for future expandability in case you ever want to add a blog, landing page or portfolio. The developer community behind it is huge as well, so it has a massive range of plugins and support.

Wordpress also fares very well in search rankings, much better than Blogspot.

Basically it's a powerful and easy to use system.

[edit] Squarespace is also great but it's quite expensive.

melekalikimaka

OctavarIan wrote: »

Are you hosting this site yourself Melekalikimaka?

If so I would recommend Wordpress. There are a tonne of excellent free photography themes and it'll give you the scope for future expandability in case you ever want to add a blog, landing page or portfolio. The developer community behind it is huge as well, so it has a massive range of plugins and support.

Wordpress also fares very well in search rankings, much better than Blogspot.

Basically it's a powerful and easy to use system.

[edit] Squarespace is also great but it's quite expensive.

yup hosting myself

Prenderb

OctavarIan wrote: »

Are you hosting this site yourself Melekalikimaka?

If so I would recommend Wordpress. There are a tonne of excellent free photography themes and it'll give you the scope for future expandability in case you ever want to add a blog, landing page or portfolio. The developer community behind it is huge as well, so it has a massive range of plugins and support.

Wordpress also fares very well in search rankings, much better than Blogspot.

Basically it's a powerful and easy to use system.

[edit] Squarespace is also great but it's quite expensive.

Where is a good place to find the free themes? On the wordpress.org site? I'm curious about this aswell, would like something with a nice index page, some galleries and an "about me" and some links page.

Abelloid

Have a look at some premium Wordpress themes too, some are really well presented and put together yet cost as little as $30.

My website, http://shanemaguire.ie/, is a wordpress site and i think it looks alright.

I don't know the first thing about websites, but with a boardsie from the tech forum helping me figure out how to use FTP software, i had the site started and finished in a couple of days.


I got in on a deal with OVH hosting for two years free hosting (which is the only reason I bothered with the site in the first place) so it hasn't cost me a penny. That, in my opinion, is the most important thing! :P

OctavarIan

Prenderb wrote: »

Where is a good place to find the free themes? On the wordpress.org site? I'm curious about this aswell, would like something with a nice index page, some galleries and an "about me" and some links page.

Smashing Magazine is probably the best place to find the free ones. Best Wordpress Themes is good too but not updated very often. Wordpress.org is good as well, but you've to wade through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff.

Wordspop have a couple of good photography themes. One is more of a blog, but the Fotofolio theme seems to have most of what you mentioned there. An index page, links to galleries, an 'about me' and also spaces for Twitter and testimonials.

wpshower have awesome themes but aren't really aimed specifically at photographers.

Just be wary of the site you're downloading from though, quite a lot of sites insert malicious code into the themes. The ones mentioned above are legit.

Thecageyone

I use wix, I like to have most things done for me. No messing with code or anything. I've yet to buy a proper URL for it, it's still a w.i.p

RoryW

I used Joomla for the work website

gloobag

Probably going to take the plunge with a site/blog soon myself. I'll probably go with something from themeforest, some seriously talented designers uploading stuff there. You could get a pretty decent theme for about €30, and it's a community, so you can always ask for help, even from the designer of whatever theme you're using.

ozzirt

I tried WordPress, and it has a moderate learning curve, but it is forgiving enough that you can start using it virtually straight "out of the box" and gradually add your bells and whistles as you find the need for them.

I feel that it's best point, is that there are literally hundres of designs (themes) and addons available from other WordPress users that are easy to download and install. These will give you a huge variety of things that you can do with your site.

I never went on with my site, http://spicrosoft.com/blog/2010/03/13/hello-world/
as I was offered the opportunity to run a forum for our small country town, which gave me even more variety.
http://forum.jamestownevents.com/index.php

Never the less, I feel that I could have gone a lot further with my WordPress site had I have stayed with it. I really enjoyed tinkering with it as much as putting my stuff out there.

Prenderb

OctavarIan wrote: »

Just be wary of the site you're downloading from though, quite a lot of sites insert malicious code into the themes. The ones mentioned above are legit.

Thanks for those, that was my main concern - I've seen quite a few but am wary of them, you've confirmed my wariness! Will have a look at your links, thanks.

AnCatDubh

wrote my own blogging platform - meh, it was a slow night that night....

minimalist approach.

my design goal was to make a dynamic blogging platform (for me) without using a database but which would allow for some customisation should I want to implement itterations of it.

Then I wanted to tie together a few bits and pieces so I put a page together. Again, I thought, why do I need a content engine for such a small design brief, so with the assistance of a web editor template which was modified, I generated the page content I wanted. For now, this is all I need, so it's fine - no major plans to do anything else at present.

pullandbang

I've no idea what ACD just said but it sounds complicated!

For my blog I used an existing theme, wordpress and bought a hosting package from Blacknight. I've founfd WP so easy to use, even for a complete muppet like me.

For my shooting site, I bought a template package from WYSIWYG - big money so it was - all of about €30. I also did quite a few other sites with the templates and host them in the one package.

nilhg

If you just wanted a portfolio site and use Lightroom then something like TTG Pages from theturninggate.net is worth a look, not expensive and gives a nice integrated workflow if you're a Lightroom user.


My own photoblog (and a few others of folk on here I think) runs off pixelpost, it's built from the ground up as a photoblog and works very well, installation and configuration is quite similar to wordpress so no worries there, however development is currently stopped and support on the forum is slower than before but that doesn't stop it working well still.

The Snipe

I origionally designed mine using HTML & CSS, however am in the process of recreating it using Joomla - which I have used for a few years for a number of other projects, I would highly recommend it, Its free to use and there is hundreds of templates!

ditpaintball

If your self hosted and want realatively quick and easy, I would suggest wordpress and pay for a decent theme. That way you spend less time trying to work on your site and more time working on content and taking pictures for it.

My site is fully wordpress, more of a blog for now though http://www.richie.ie

Abelloid

ditpaintball wrote: »

If your self hosted and want realatively quick and easy, I would suggest wordpress and pay for a decent theme. That way you spend less time trying to work on your site and more time working on content and taking pictures for it.

My site is fully wordpress, more of a blog for now though http://www.richie.ie

Nice site, interesting too. I like how you've shown the lighting set ups as well as the final pics, that's something I haven't come across in my (short) time looking through portfolio sites/blogs.

ditpaintball

JustinOval wrote: »

Nice site, interesting too. I like how you've shown the lighting set ups as well as the final pics, that's something I haven't come across in my (short) time looking through portfolio sites/blogs.

Cheers. Ya I put up my set up shots to share with others how I work and what I learn. Sharing is Caring

Deliverance XXV

I'm using Wordpress myself now for the last few years and really warming to it despite the back/admin end can be quite slow and sluggish at times.

I'm creating my own WP theme here at the moment but it's not completely finished yet. It's aimed at the whole photography/portfolio side of things
so it has a nice dark theme with support for large images. At the moment it has messy code, stretched test images, filler text and plenty of bugs but sure
have a look anyway - you'll get the gist of what I'm trying to do. Loads to change but hope to finish it in next couple weeks but moving house isn't exactly what you call time-friendly...

relichd

Deliverance XXV wrote: »

I'm using Wordpress myself now for the last few years and really warming to it despite the back/admin end can be quite slow and sluggish at times.

I'm creating my own WP theme here at the moment but it's not completely finished yet. It's aimed at the whole photography/portfolio side of things
so it has a nice dark theme with support for large images. At the moment it has messy code, stretched test images, filler text and plenty of bugs but sure
have a look anyway - you'll get the gist of what I'm trying to do. Loads to change but hope to finish it in next couple weeks but moving house isn't exactly what you call time-friendly...

I love it! The only trouble I can see that the text colour is a bit too dark on a black background. It's ok on my IPS display but with most of the guys out there having TFT LCDs with low contrast ratio, this could be limiting.

Beautiful images there, too!

Hugh_C

I've switched between a whole bunch of different platforms, started with a self-hosted Wordpress but never seemed to find a theme that I completely liked, then moved to PixelPost, which I sorta liked but then decided I didn't, but now I'm using viewbook which I'm reasonably happy with. I'm just pointing my domain at their hosting area for my stuff, reasonably easy to set up and the development seems to be progressing nicely. Only problem is that I spend a lot of time doing other stuff and can't dedicate sufficient time to making the website really pop. It's costing me US$19 per month. I may switch back to wordpress

Bodie Broadus

i've heard that you cant just use images off the internet for your own website for legal reasons. i've made one myself but before i can get it working i'll need to get some pictures on it. Anybody know how to go around this or a site that has free to use images of celebrities and things like that?

melekalikimaka

Bodie Broadus wrote: »

i've heard that you cant just use images off the internet for your own website for legal reasons. i've made one myself but before i can get it working i'll need to get some pictures on it. Anybody know how to go around this or a site that has free to use images of celebrities and things like that?

just use blank images, or look for royalty free images

Bodie Broadus

thanks i've used blank images in making the site but i'm hoping to put it online soon and it needs some pictures of celebrities and politicians. i found a site called free domain images but its all very generic! nothing specific like that

melekalikimaka

Bodie Broadus wrote: »

thanks i've used blank images in making the site but i'm hoping to put it online soon and it needs some pictures of celebrities and politicians. i found a site called free domain images but its all very generic! nothing specific like that

unless you can source them for free, be prepared to pay

DotOrg

have a look at:

http://www.digitalphotogallery.com/

its brand new and the photos scale to fit the screen, it's also an online store for your hi-res photos and it works on ipads and iphones perfectly

my beta site up there is at:

http://aaaphotos.dpg.cc/