Question for ya:

You can get a bludomain site for $100-$400. Livebooks starts at $800 and goes up to $3000. Does anyone know off hand what the benefit is? Is it the fact that it's sllliiightly more custom?

Probably has something to do with the fact that you don't have to deal with bludomain. A quick search here will yield dozens of customer service nightmares with them.

That may be true. But- I've never had a problem with them. They've always responded to my questions within a couple hours.

bthatton wrote:
That may be true. But- I've never had a problem with them. They've always responded to my questions within a couple hours.

+1 to that, but i must be a lucky guy because i also have a tack sharp 1Dmkiii

bthatton wrote:
That may be true. But- I've never had a problem with them. They've always responded to my questions within a couple hours.

Sweet. How come you're thinking of switching then?

I got an email about a discount from Livebooks for visiting their booth at the expo. I'm also tired of my current site filling peoples screen without them asking. And- whatever engine blu uses to crunch jpegs down takes a definite swing at quality.

I got an email about a discount from Livebooks for visiting their booth at the expo. I'm also tired of my current site filling peoples screen without them asking. And- whatever engine blu uses to crunch jpegs down takes a definite swing at quality.

bthatton wrote:
That may be true. But- I've never had a problem with them. They've always responded to my questions within a couple hours.

+1 The same here. They always responded quickly so far.

bthatton wrote:
I got an email about a discount from Livebooks for visiting their booth at the expo. I'm also tired of my current site filling peoples screen without them asking. And- whatever engine blu uses to crunch jpegs down takes a definite swing at quality.

I use blu but am not a big fan. Saying that the things you cite above can be easily fixed. Looking at your site now it doesn't seem to full screen itself automatically. Do you see something different to me?

As to jpeg quality, there is a setting in the preferences to up the quality. If that fails let me know and I'll pull out where the manual setting of the jpeg library is. Failing that, you can always upload your own resized images and use those.

Alex

You may have seen my non wedding site which is not full screen.

had BD and switched to LB. the best sites out there..besides a 100% custom (which may be coming soon to a perspectiveye.com near you)

LB is all about your images...nothing super fancy, just a site that showcases your work and not the work of the flash designers..remember who you are trying to impress.

brides or fellow photographers

plus with LB, because you have to host your site through them on their servers their SEO is incredible.

anyway LB's is expensive, but so is camera gear, insurance, portfolio's, etc..it's all part of doing business and I can almost guarantee you, you will get more business with a clean and simple LB site.

good luck.

creativemotiondesign.com

Evan

Another good company out there (and the one I use) is clickbooq. When i signed on, their top end site package was very simliar to livebooks for a fair amount less. Their customer service is also top notch.

Check them out at www.clickbooq.com

Bigfolio is also really nice.

One thing though... allllll these flash sites are starting to look the same. Whether they be CM, Blu, LB, BF, ITDR, etc... granted some companies are better in the back end than others. However, a lot of the front end stuff looks exactly the same to me.

Are there any decent ones that allow you to use your own hosting?

Yes.. they are all starting to look the same. The one thing I've noticed though-- the cheaper the website, the cheaper the fonts seem to be. Have you noticed that? I dont know why that is as it certainly isn't any more expensive to the designer to put a classier looking type in. That said, perhaps that is just a way to up-sell you.

bludomain does allow you to use your own hosting

Dont use livebooks. Customizable they are not. Great that you can get the initial custom design up but after that they charge per hour. There are many other options out there. I went with livebooks and I don't see the value in spending 3K+ on my site. It was a bad business investment for me personally.

Does anyone use Show It, http://www.showitfast.com/


JR

tuannie wrote:
Dont use livebooks. Customizable they are not. Great that you can get the initial custom design up but after that they charge per hour. There are many other options out there. I went with livebooks and I don't see the value in spending 3K+ on my site. It was a bad business investment for me personally.

I see... good to know.

Wow, 3K is a LOT for a website. A lot of LiveBook websites, while being lovely and wonderful, don't really SHOW the extra $2600 over Bludomain. If they didn't have some comment like "Powered/Designed by LiveBooks", I wouldn't even know it's them and would just guess any of the usual suspects - and I wouldn't be too far off base.

I would LOVE a CUSTOM BLOG - like Jasmine Star's or Apertura's or something. A customized blog to fit your branding goes a long way and I could see myself paying 3G's for one if I had to. However, never for a flash site.

Seems to me like there is a constant arms race with this sort of thing. What is "cool" and "cutting edge" right now is going to be dated and frowned upon in two years it seems. Stay in one place for too long and you're left behind.

Yeah i am trying to decide whether to go for a custom site or a livebooks one, just that livebooks is so damn expensive.

Anyhow i'll ponder some more.

OR... you could just get SlideShowPro yourself instead of paying LiveBooks or anyone else to customize it for you. It's not that hard to build a custom site around it.

The thought of doing my own custom site always scares me. Seems like it would be a steep learning curve. Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm currently using one of the templates of portfoliositez.com and I've been using them for almost over 6 months now and I love it. Very affordable and great features. LB is just too much for me. BD is great but not the technical support. Below is my photography website and an Andy 1.0 template from PS:

http://www.santibabaran.com