I'm just getting to the stage where I would like to set up a website and I wondered if anyone out there has had experiences of buying a photographers website template. Any good companies to recommend - any dogs to avoid!?
I think it depends on what exactly you want from a website. Is it just for display? In which case something like pbase.com might be worth a look for the very small annual fee. If you want to run something yourself, and are planning on having a larger gallery, then Coppermine is pretty good for a free piece of software and it is what I am using right now. If you want to sell digital images and prints, things get a bit more complicated. I am currently evaluating http://www.theimagefile.com/?Action=AP&padv=1 as I want a site where I can sell both images and prints, a one stop shop. Photium.com is another good one which is also UK based. Other places like Zenfolio and places of that ilk also do printing but the results, IMO, tend to be utter rubbish compared to what a pro lab generates.
This is really helpful. I had a look at Photium but will check the others. I think I'm looking for something to display imagery and act as an online portfolio for prospetive clients - somewhere I can send them if they are interested in seeing what I can produce.
Photium are good, but the only capability they offer is online digital sales, they are not tied to a printing house so therefore if a customer wants to buy an image, it is up to you to arrange the print and get it sent to them.
Theimagefile offer tiered packages, hosting and display only, for quite a low monthly cost and setting up the site and slideshow should be pretty simple, especially if you don't have much experience with html or css to start from scratch. Plus, if you ever wanted a sales side then it's just a case of paying more.
Most of my work is done for magazines, event organisers etc., so until now I only kept a website going for viewing and advertising of the sort of stuff I do. My problem is that image sales are increasing and I have neither the time nor motivation to have to action every order myself.
They can either host for you in the US (which can be a problem as far as Google goes) or you can buy hosting here in the UK, they will install it, and you simply configure it for the modules you need. I am doing the admin demo at the moment and it looks very impressive, but it's not a one stop shop as I would still need to get the print sorted... decisions decisions...
For us folks here in Europe, as I mentioned before, there are not many options for a one stop shop for display, image purchase and print ordering. There are a couple such a snapfish, photoboxwhatever but IMO they are going for making a beautiful image taken with expensive gear look like it was shot with a P&S.
