I am thinking of setting up a pro account on Smugmug and offering images for sale through it. I have a domain name of my own and hosting, but have not invested in learning to write modern code, or hiring a webmaster, so it's really just a placeholder. Smugmug seems like it would be within my abilities, and I can use my domain name. But before jumping in I'd sure love to see what some of you are doing with it, it's competitors, or other approaches. As well to hear what you think of Smugmug. I thought I remembered some folk used to post up their sites in the critique forum for comment, but I didn't find any on search.

Seemed like it might make an interesting thread.

Suggest you:

Give us the link to your site
Say how you put it together, host and manage it
Offer any thoughts about your approach that you wish to share

Thanks,

Jan

I use a template from Portfoliositez.com. The templates are fully customizable and easy to update. They are also smart phone friendly. The customer service they provide is about the best I have ever experienced from any company which means a lot to me.

Here's mine: www.elmsphotography.ca

My site was professionally designed, and runs from an ExpressionEngine content management system (CMS). I host three different web sites at Powweb.com, and have done so for several years.

Adding an image gallery is as simple as clicking on "New Gallery," typing the text and uploading the photos to my server.

My design goals were to make it simple to add new galleries without coding new pages, and to have a clean, consistent look across all the galleries. Blog entries are as easy to create as galleries, with the CMS taking care of the formatting details.

Here's my main site: www.guitarphotography.com

<Chas>

Very nice Chas I like that. Wow you certainly have found a niche that I honestly never would have realized existed...Well done!

"Give us the link to your site"
Since I market nationally I like to stay private. The reason for no web link.

"Say how you put it together, host and manage it"
I use IX hosting because they offer up to 15 unique IP addresses. My photo site uses 4 of them. One for the basic web site. One for a blog and one I use for a wedding site plus blog if I ever what to start weddings again. Don't like to mix business images with weddings. I use Dreamweaver to build my sites. Only because I know the program. It is not user friendly so I would not recommend it unless you know the basic HTML process used for web sites.

"Offer any thoughts about your approach that you wish to share" This is below.

A lot has to do with what you want to use the site for. If you want to do Search Engine Marketing online then stay very far away from flash. Not to mention flash does not work with I phones or I pads and that is not going to change so you are at a disadvantage from the start. Search engines don't read it either.

You can purchase at low cost a template for Wordpress and that would be a very simple site to use. Simply download the template and install it.Almost any host has a auto install feature that gets wordpress installed then add the template after that. After installed fill in the empty spots with text and images.Very simple.

Drupal.org is another free source that many web designers use. Free and paid Templates available but you need to install it on the server.Easy if you can follow instructions as a lot are on You tube and other places. I can't so that is way I have not done it yet. A few host have it as an automatic install which would make it easy so research that if interested. You can purchase templates for it or find free ones and it is a fill in the blank system if you have the correct template.


My goal building my site was to have it on top of the search engines both locally and nationally, which it is. Nothing fancy, just clean and to the point. It is used to draw in new business. Not for selling prints or anything else.

If your goal is to get business I would design one site for that then buy anohter name such as XYZphotography-sales.com and build that one for selling prints. Simply link from the main site. Reason being doing my style of SEO I would find it hard to work on most of the sales sites I have seen.

Here's mine. It's a SmugMug site. I've done all the programming myself.

http://www.fineimagephotography.com/

Wow, those set the bar very high! All of them work great and all of them have great work! It's clear that they are focused to your particular businesses as well.

Thanks for posting!

I edited a template for wordpress on my website.

http://www.kliphotography.com.au

I've used www.Wix.com, it has a SEO wizard included. Simple templates fully customizable.
Here is mine: www.Deepbluephoto.com

www.starved-artist.com

I used apple iWeb for this sit:. www.havanaworkshops.com It couldn't be more simple, although Apple will no longer host the site in a few months and I will have to pay for hosting elsewhere. I do love the look and the ability to update anytime. Very user friendly.

dan

Jan....

My site is a simple site produced using Smugmug. I did all the coding by using the "very limited" knowledge I had and by using the SmugMug Dgrin Message Board
I asked tons of questions and read about tips and ideas from members. Very helpful individuals on this board that can help you mold your site to your desires.

Photography by Joey Wilson

Good luck and make sure you post a link to your site when you finish it!!

-Joey

I have a very simple portfolio site thru I web www.debalkophoto.com as Dan mentioned above I will have to change my hosting in the next few months, I think I will be using Zenfolio, I use them now for web galleries so it makes sense to use them for the web site,

My travel photography site was put together with a combination of Php, MySQL, Perl, and is running on a linux server. I spent a *lot* of time coding the site but the benefit is complete control over the presentation.

I did use iWeb and there is a real problem using it as you cannot get into search engines. I decided on replacing it with Rapidweaver. www.spcphotography.com is the site. I still have some work to do as I want to get rid of the Flash that displays the images. A little confused with the add on options for a slide show that runs in HTML5.

I use Godaddy for the hosting and have had no problems in the 6 years I have been with them. I had thought of Smugmug but as I had prepaid for Godaddy Service it is still on the back burner.

It's a Zenfolio site. I'm in the middle of culling as it is getting heavy, but I like how simple and quick it is to use. I started with a template:

http://oasisbill.zenfolio.com/

Great idea for a thread. My site is a Photocrati template for Wordpress and I host with Media Temple.
http://www.bennorth.com/

www.ken-m.com

Hosted by Squarespace. Designed using one of their templates with some custom adjustments.

It isn't exactly what I wanted when I started out but it's as close as I could get after trial and error with a handful of full service web hosts and even template providers using my own servers. Issues I had were that I wanted images to be 800 pixels wide. For some reason it's at 740 and I could never figure out why. But that's really good enough. Also the thumbnails are along the top. I wanted the page to be full of thumbnails when entering galleries and then galleries scrollable by clicking the image but couldn't figure out how to make that happen.

I would also have liked to have the option of adding a proof page and to possibly sell images online as I do about a handful of weddings per year but Squarespace doesn't offer those services.

Overall I'm happy with the site. It's a moot point now but Squarespace had flash free templates that looked and worked great. Their design tools were the easiest I've used, and Squarespace was one of the first full service hosts to offer a dedicated iphone/ipad version of your site. The hosting service and the design serve their purpose. I don't sell a lot of individual images, I work mostly for publications rather than individuals and my website is more of a reference for my working style and a way to display my versatility as a photographer rather than a way to sell myself to customers.

Wow!

Been away for the holidays and just got back to this thread. Lot's of great sites and everybody has approached it differently. Seems to me the key would be to focus on the business model, develop a concept to market that model, then seek the tools that best enable the concept to be executed.

I was sort of starting from the wrong end... focusing on tools before I had developed the concept.

For a variety of site designs which are fully customizable (and great customer service), check out www.aphotofolio.com.

My site: www.photoreporters.net