At what stage to switch to a new site?

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At what stage to switch to a new site?

ricardovaste
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p.2 #1 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Thanks to all for their input, it's appreciated.

Not meaning to be rude, or to ignore posters, I'm just looking over options and one thing came to mind...

Does prophoto/wordpress offer a checkout system for client galleries? If not, what to do for this?

At the moment I'm considering looking at it for a blog, with the idea of switching completely at some point. The area I'm unsure of is the SEO, so I guess I'd have to work that out somehow, or indeed "time" it well as mentioned before... I'm uneasy about using a splash page, as I know that immediately sends some people away :/

I'm using domainexpress for my domain, they offer web hosting for £4.49 per month (unlimited monthly data transfer, 4gb disk space, numerous email accounts), so I guess it would be easier to just use them for hosting (using one of my current domains, eg the blog one).

EDIT: One further thing. I was given free website 7 months ago with a bank account & I went through the process of trying to re-make my website then. This was moonfruit. So it ended in pain. It uses flash, and there aren't really any galleries for photographers, so it just wasted my time and effort. I guess that is partly where the initial reluctance comes from as well.

Feb 11, 2012 at 03:27 PM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #2 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Okay, I've read that domainexpress web hosting doesn't work so great with wordpress, so I think it would be best to just go with bluehost...

I think I'll look at making one in early March and see what I make of it before I actually decide what to do in terms of the domain. I think I'll likely use it as a blog for 8 or so months, and then as a main site.

Still haven't found any info on client galleries & prophoto, so if anyone has any input there it would be appreciated. I have found "Image Store" - seems like it could work, but I'm unsure of how compatabile it would be with prophoto installed? The other thing is whether you can change the currency too... as USD would be useless to me...

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/image-store/

Feb 12, 2012 at 02:07 PM

stevez32
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p.2 #3 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

ricardovaste wrote:
Okay, I've read that domainexpress web hosting doesn't work so great with wordpress, so I think it would be best to just go with bluehost...

I think I'll look at making one in early March and see what I make of it before I actually decide what to do in terms of the domain. I think I'll likely use it as a blog for 8 or so months, and then as a main site.

Still haven't found any info on client galleries & prophoto, so if anyone has any input there it would be appreciated. I have found "Image Store" - seems like it could work, but I'm unsure of how compatabile it would be with prophoto installed? The other thing is whether you can change the currency too... as USD would be useless to me...

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/image-store/

You can use zenfolio or smugmug to host galeries as a link from your blog, did you need to have wordpress galleries?

Feb 12, 2012 at 03:49 PM

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p.2 #4 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Whatever you do, don't buy a Livebooks site.

Feb 12, 2012 at 04:26 PM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #5 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Steve, I think ideally I'd like to have (with prophoto+wordpress) a site that functions as a homepage, with portolio galleries & then a blog seperately. That seems easily done from what little I've seen. That, nor smugmug (which I currently use) would solve the problem of client galleries with checkout/ordering system... I don't know about Zenfolio, but I have smugmug so I can't see myself buying a THIRD option. Perhaps if smugmug do finally introduce checkout for UK people I will have an option there, but I've waited years for that and nothing...

So it would be good to know if there are any "Image Store" users here, as it seems it might do the job okay.

cineski: okay, I'll take your word for that ;-)

Feb 12, 2012 at 06:16 PM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #6 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Quick question...

When installing wordpress on bluehost, I can choose a subdirectory to the domain I've already entered...

Can this be altered at a later point?

For example, I don't want it to take the blog domain right now, so if I put www.myblog.net/newblogtest will I be able to change that at a later date? Or once it's installed there, is that where it stays? :/

Feb 13, 2012 at 08:40 PM

PierreB
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p.2 #7 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

I'm based in the UK, use Zenfolio and I'm very pleased with them. I've been with them for nearly a year and have had no down time and great tech support. I used one of their standard templates as it worked for me but I know that with a little time & effort, you can design your site pretty much exactly how you want it.

I pay 100 pounds a year but the trial is free, why not give them a go?

Feb 14, 2012 at 12:41 AM

jefferies1
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p.2 #8 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

For me I would never want to rely 100% on referrals. In my area too many people move around. SEO and referrals are a great mix to have.

If you build a new site, assuming you stay away from a flash site 95% of what makes it rank is off site and not changed by the new site. Again assuming you continue to use the exact same page names. For example www.bigtimephotographer.com/bridal.html.
If you remove the bridal and now call it bridalportraits.html then you just took a piece of your SEO and trashed it.
If you are ranking well and don't understand basic SEO then the chances of you ranking again are very slim. Something out of your control happened to rank you so unless you know what that event was it would have been a one time thing. Of course if you understand SEO then you can make it happen anytime you want so ranking an existing URL that has some age to it would take about 4-6 weeks for most local markets without a lot of others doing SEO and around 60 days if they are.For national ranking it is more like 3 months for easy terms and as long as 9-12 months for popular terms. Changing a site can be good because it is good to add content while keeping the base site structure. I try to add a little every 4-6 weeks.

Feb 14, 2012 at 01:09 AM

jefferies1
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p.2 #9 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

For the blog question you can move from a directory (.com/blog ) into the home page position any time. Instructiuons are at wordpress.org under changing directory or moving blog to new directory. Google will take you to the page. Again this would ruin any SEO done to that site while the blog was in the old directory. It would be lost forever.

ricardovaste wrote:
Quick question...

When installing wordpress on bluehost, I can choose a subdirectory to the domain I've already entered...

Can this be altered at a later point?

For example, I don't want it to take the blog domain right now, so if I put www.myblog.net/newblogtest will I be able to change that at a later date? Or once it's installed there, is that where it stays? :/

Feb 14, 2012 at 01:10 AM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #10 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

PierreB wrote:
I'm based in the UK, use Zenfolio and I'm very pleased with them. I've been with them for nearly a year and have had no down time and great tech support. I used one of their standard templates as it worked for me but I know that with a little time & effort, you can design your site pretty much exactly how you want it.

I pay 100 pounds a year but the trial is free, why not give them a go?
Thanks Pierre. Having stuck with smugmug for so long though, I think Zenfolio would be a move sideways rather than a step up for me personally. I think Zenfolio is better from what I hear, but the prophoto+wordpress has won me over I think, and it too is pretty affordable... I'd purchased it before reading your comment...

Feb 14, 2012 at 11:33 AM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #11 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

jefferies1 wrote:

For the blog question you can move from a directory (.com/blog ) into the home page position any time. Instructiuons are at wordpress.org under changing directory or moving blog to new directory. Google will take you to the page. Again this would ruin any SEO done to that site while the blog was in the old directory. It would be lost forever.

ricardovaste wrote:
Quick question...

When installing wordpress on bluehost, I can choose a subdirectory to the domain I've already entered...

Can this be altered at a later point?

For example, I don't want it to take the blog domain right now, so if I put www.myblog.net/newblogtest will I be able to change that at a later date? Or once it's installed there, is that where it stays? :/

The temporary solution I made was to use my .co.uk... which I bought at the beginning but doesn't really do a lot, only linked you to .com I think. It was only the .com that did anything in the search engines too, so no harm there.

Feb 14, 2012 at 11:35 AM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #12 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

jefferies1 wrote:
For me I would never want to rely 100% on referrals. In my area too many people move around. SEO and referrals are a great mix to have.

If you build a new site, assuming you stay away from a flash site 95% of what makes it rank is off site and not changed by the new site. Again assuming you continue to use the exact same page names. For example www.bigtimephotographer.com/bridal.html.
If you remove the bridal and now call it bridalportraits.html then you just took a piece of your SEO and trashed it.
If you are ranking well and don't understand basic SEO then the chances of you ranking again are very slim. Something out of your control happened to rank you so unless you know what that event was it would have been a one time thing. Of course if you understand SEO then you can make it happen anytime you want so ranking an existing URL that has some age to it would take about 4-6 weeks for most local markets without a lot of others doing SEO and around 60 days if they are.For national ranking it is more like 3 months for easy terms and as long as 9-12 months for popular terms. Changing a site can be good because it is good to add content while keeping the base site structure. I try to add a little every 4-6 weeks.

Thanks Jeff. This is an important question. I have a basic understanding of SEO and it works in my area. I followed some basic advise from my friend that does it part time and it worked with the site in mention. HOWEVER, I have no experience in switching to a new site, and maintaining that SEO or more importantly the "page names". I'm guessing the straight www.mywebsite.com will continue to rank about the same if I keep the same structure with the page title, metadescription, meta keywords...? But I'm unsure of how to do specific links, will this be straight forward with the SEO options in prophoot?

For example, if I want this to first replace my blog site first, which is a .net, the posts that are on my blog do rank okay for some of the venues/locations. So would I be able to keep that link structuve? So when I copy over my blogger posts onto wordpress I will have each post, will I be able to assign a specific url? Like putting "2011/07/helena-outdoor-portraits-shropshire.html" to a post. Does that make sense

Many thanks for your advise.

Feb 14, 2012 at 11:49 AM

jefferies1
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p.2 #13 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

I would bet that most of any SEO done to your site is on the index page . While that is not the best way to really do it that is the most common. If this is the case then removing other pages and not replacing with the same name (URL) may hurt you for a short time but not long as the attention is only the home page. Now if your site only is found when searching for your name then that is nothing to do with SEO. If found for 2-3 or 20 different keyword phrases then that is due to SEO. Being found when Searching by personal name or site name is not from SEO, just normal Search engine scans documenting what is on the page.Very big difference.

I have blogs but have never used as a web site because for SEO I feel I have more control using a traditional HTML page. I don't require the fill in the blank templates wordpress offers and don't care to learn how to build my own so I avoid them. So what I am saying is I don't know how much control you have on naming the pages.

Feb 14, 2012 at 11:42 PM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #14 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Thanks jefferies.

There are a few different keywords that it picks up on so I guess that counts as SEO. These all bring up my homepage though, with perhaps a couple of exceptions.

One good things I've found: if I import my blogger posts into wordpress it keeps the exact same URL sub domain. So the few blog posts I have that rank okay with venues/locations will be unharmed in that area. So... I can safely switch to prophoto for a blog (using my current blog domain) without any harm.

The problem comes with switching to wordpress/prophoto for my website as well (over the next several months if possible). Is it possible to have one website with multiple domains? :S I imagine that could make things messy. So I either abandon the blog post ranking (less important, I guess) or the website ranking (more important)... neither sound terribly appealing right now. Unless there is some third option I'm unaware of

Feb 15, 2012 at 11:52 AM

Chris Fawkes
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p.2 #15 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Unless you are raking home the dollars from business you are picking up on seo i would not care about ranking. Just get the best blog site you can.

If you are getting tons of work from google leads ignore that.

Feb 15, 2012 at 01:49 PM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #16 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Chris, as I'm just starting out most of my leads do come through google. That's why I'm confused as to exactly how to go about it.

Feb 15, 2012 at 03:47 PM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #17 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Has anyone else had trouble with bluehost before?

I've just seen they took $217 USD out of my account, certainly seems more than we agreed upon, I was never given a breakdown that said that :S

Feb 16, 2012 at 02:37 PM

joosay
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p.2 #18 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Never had a problem with blue host, been using them since late 2010..

Feb 17, 2012 at 02:09 AM

jefferies1
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p.2 #19 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

You lost me on the 2 different domains. You could do a redirect so one will point to the other all the time but not sure if that has anything to do with the question.

If you want I can take a look at your site and should be able to tell you what pages are really important to keep in place (url names) Even though Google is making it harder to do research I still have a couple programs that do an amazing job. PM your URL info if interested. This is what I do when modifying my site to know what to keep and remove safely.

Feb 17, 2012 at 04:56 PM

ricardovaste
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p.2 #20 · At what stage to switch to a new site?

Thanks for the offer Jefferies, that's kind of you. I think I will be okay, there really weren't a lot of links that were relevent for SEO, so I've managed to tie them together (still some more to do, but mostly done).

Yesterday, I decided to stop wasting anymore time with it and just switched completely to the prophoto blog as a main site & blog in one. Still pieces to put together and make work better, but I think it's already a better place: www.rharris-images.com

Will hopefully make life easier (definately on the blogging side of things). I have yet to try out the client galleries but hopefully that will be relatively straight forward, and if not I still have smugmug for 3 more months.

Feb 22, 2012 at 06:39 PM


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