Comments on: Photography Website Templates: Features and Cost

By: joe

joe — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:13:01 +0000

Easy enough. The Wordpress Simpleviewer plugin has a really nice GUI interface for all of the layout options including caption info -- screenshots here. Unfortunately the function that allows you to go back and edit captions once the gallery is published isn't working right now.

By: Troy

Troy — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:24:56 +0000

I use Dreamweaver to edit the .xml files and write captions. It is very similar to how BBedit used to work with its color-coded text/code blocks.

By: joe

joe — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:17:05 +0000

Troy – My site was done with Simpleviewer awhile back, but entering the caption info was a pain and I never updated the site. Hopefully the tools have improved. The Simpleviewer WordPress plugin I use for the blog galleries is easy to use but a little bit buggy. What do you want for free though?

Brad – Blog vs. Website totally depends on why your work is online and the audience you want to reach. I want to go after galleries and curators — this requires an excellent website that ties in to print portfolios, and email/print marketing materials. Horses for courses as they say!

By: Brad

Brad — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:41:53 +0000

Joe,

Have you thought about hosting your regular website/galleries on another blog? Using a suitable gallery-oriented template, that you might further modify getting into the CSS for tweaks for size, color, etc

Galleries can be set on static pages, Paypall shopping/commerce can be set up, etc. It really doesn’t have to look like a blog with daily updating etc.

I haven’t updated my website in 3 years cuz it’s a PITA to make changes. Will someday move the galleries over (after a ton of editing) to my blog as static pages; and then kill the website – don’t see the point…

Hosting costs me $3 or so a month…

By: Troy

Troy — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:30:43 +0000

It’s the work that matters, not the whizbang site.

I’m about to launch a new LostAmerica.com site done with a $50 simpleviewer interface. It’ll be a vast improvement over the old html site. Plus people won’t be able to just drag images off the page to their HD.

Shopping carts? Paypal is cheap and easy to use.

I don’t really care about iPhone compatibility. Anyone who’s seriously looking at photography to spend $ on it won’t be doing it from an iPhone anyway. I plan on simply linking out of the site to flickr sets for those not using a flash reading browser.

I find flickr to be fine for google searches. My image “Behind the Green Door” on flickr has had almost 1000 hits since Marilyn Chambers died. It’s an image I’d never have bothered to put on the lostamerica.com site, but there it is pulling in more people off the street . . . to not buy anything.