Website Development for Wedding Videographer

whiz

Hi Guys, I am a newbie to website development. I do a number of wedding videos and I have some of these on youtube.com. I would like to develop my own wedding site that shows the wedding video services that I offer and some previous wedding videos that I have shot. I was wondering what advice you could give me to set up own website etc base on this business ?

I asked a friend for advice and he recommended me to set up a website through dreamhost.com and use their wordpress option, how easy is this option and is wordpress difficult to use ?

Any responses do the above, would be much appreciated.

yenoah

Just setrup a facebook page, website hardly worth the hassle anymore tbh.

nager

Yes - wordpress would be the way to go IMOP.
Buy a domain, get a hosting package, install wordpress (you can usually do it through a one-click install on your hosting package), and you can purchase a theme from lots of places - I usually use themeforest. You can get a theme for about $35 - well worth the investment.

The great thing is that there is lots of support out there for wordpress.
Good luck.

tadcan

You could try squarespace.

http://www.squarespace.com/?channel=sem&subchannel=msn&source=squarespace_em&campaign=us_brand_alpha&subcampaign=squarespace

tricky D

Many Irish hosts have easy installs of WordPress and are competitive enough. There's a list of good Irish hosts here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=53028341&postcount=2

That's about the extent of hosting talk allowed on Boards.

In addition to nager's rec, you'll need some extras for WP such as making the URLs SEO-friendly [the URL mysite.com/?p=15 isn't good for SEO but there's plugins which will translate the URL to something better like mysite.com/wedding-videos.html], other SEO plugins, some anti-spam ones and more depending on what you want to achieve.

Do a good bit of research first on WordPress and also check out reviews of wedding photography/videography websites to avoid many of the common mistakes people make.

jimmiesner

I use a size called videozoom for my video company. The support for it is excellent. It takes some time to get use to wordpress but a lot of it is pretty intuitive too.

Jim Miesner
[snip]

whiz

thanks guys for your responses, as there is some good info that has given me ideas. I was wondering ;

1) is there any free themes available for wordpress ?
2) how do you install themes on wordpress ?
3) it was mentioned there is ' plugins which will translate the URL to something better like mysite.com/wedding-video ' where can you get these plugins ?
4) Jim you mention videozoom, am I right in saying that this this firm only provide you a theme and you have to host elsewhere ?

Any responses or other information is much appreciated

jimmiesner

Here is a free theme I used to use: http://www.wpmods.com/wp-mods-video-theme/
This one also looks decent, http://www.obox-design.com/themes_page.cfm/theme/selecta

Installing themes can be tricky, but once you know what you are doing it is not to hard. Find a good host first, I use godaddy and it is adequate. Once you have wordpress setup on your host you will just upload your themes.zip file to the themes section and you can test out your theme.

Plugins can be searched for in the plugins section of your wordpress site once it is setup.

And yes, you will need to host a theme like videozoom yourself. You wordpress.com will host your site with its generic themes but you can't use it to host third party themes like videozoom.

Jim
snip

Liam Byrne

Depends on what you're aiming for.

In the same way as you would (rightly, I'd assume) tell someone that you're better than a "newbie" with a camera, a professional would be able to offer you a proper site that's SEO-friendly and easily updated.

Lots of people seem to be of the opinion that a proper site is no bother to throw together, which would equate to someone getting Uncle Joe to video their wedding.

Kavrocks

whiz wrote: »

3) it was mentioned there is ' plugins which will translate the URL to something better like mysite.com/wedding-video ' where can you get these plugins ?

You don't need a plugin to do that.

Instead of asking so many questions for which the answers most likely won't help or mean anything to you, download MAMP or XAMPP depending on what operating system you are on and install Wordpress and start playing about with it.

MAMP and XAMPP create a server environment on your own computer or laptop and will let you play around with Wordpress without having to pay for a hosting package or domain so you can get your site looking how you want it to before spending anything.

If you need help understanding either of those programs or installing Wordpress any number of people will help and I'm sure there are tutorials online and probably even video tutorials if you just google it.

Oh and installing themes is not tricky unless you find clicking a button, searching for a zip file on your computer and pressing another button tricky. Getting them to play nice with your website or look how you want them to look can be tricky.

ressem

whiz wrote: »

3) it was mentioned there is ' plugins which will translate the URL to something better like mysite.com/wedding-video ' where can you get these plugins ?

Any responses or other information is much appreciated

After you install wordpress, you will make most of your changes in the admin control panel. Go to "Settings"in the Menu, then Permalinks.

Choose Custom Structure.
/%category%/%postname%

is one convenient option that means that the URL will resemble the Page names by default (though this can be changed to your taste on each individual page.)
Click on the link on "A number of tags are available " link on the permalinks page to view other options that might be of interest.

Regarding SEO, you need to take care and pay attention to the keywords and descriptions that you use on each page. Don't have them all the same on every page.
And set up a google webmaster account (free) and bing webmaster, attach it to your web site. Set it to target Irish customers (instead of the global default) and regularly view and tune the keywords and phrases that are bringing customers to your site by way of searches. Try and get friendly reputable businesses / clients to reference your site's link on theirs.

I like the genesis theme manager for wordpress (http://www.studiopress.com/ Not Free) which allows child themes making for safer experimentation on the CSS and php as a beginner. Your mileage may vary.