Starting a website

[Victor Soares]

Hey everyone,

I am looking at creating a website to display some of my current and future work but since I am cluless at websites and all things related, I was hoping that someone could shed some light here:

1 - Are there websites that I can use as templates (photo intensive), then change them to my liking and use?
2 - How do I go about actually publishing or getting my website hosted?
3 - What am I looking at cost wise?

Thanks for your help
Vic

[Bob Decker]

Hey everyone,

I am looking at creating a website to display some of my current and future work but since I am cluless at websites and all things related, I was hoping that someone could shed some light here:

1 - Are there websites that I can use as templates (photo intensive), then change them to my liking and use?

There are templates available. Possibly the easiest route though is to go with a blog-site. These are getting very popular and are quite easy to set-up. Most folks use wordpress as a base for such sites. There is a plethora of free template available for wordpress based sites. You can also find a wide variety of add-ons called plug-ins or widgits for photo galleries, search engine optimization (seo), anti-spam, search engine submission, etc. You can either self-host www.yourname.com (http://www.yourname.com), or do the free wordpress hosting thing. There are definate advantages to self-hosting. Some example of blog-sites would be: http://carolinafootprints.com, http://jaredlloydphoto.com/. There are a lot of wedding, portrait and even fashion photographers going this route these days.



2 - How do I go about actually publishing or getting my website hosted??


There are lots of companies that offer domain name registration and hosting options. I use directnic.com for all my sites. GoDaddy.com is another, well known service. Basically you find a domain name that's not owned by anyone else, register it for a small fee and arrange for hosting (usually a monthly or yearly fee). Upload everything and go from there. Do make sure the hosting plan is compatible with the type of site you'll be putting up. For example, with directnic I use the "premium service" so I have everything I need to self-host a wordpress blog. The basic sites lack things like sql capabilities.


3 - What am I looking at cost wise?


I think I pay around $15 US per year for domain name registration, $3 or $4 a month for hosting. For two of my sites I'm using free wordpress templates. For my wedding and portrait business I'm using a flash-based website template... that one cost a pretty penny. Depending on what you choose for a template it could be anything from free to thousands of dollars. A custom designed site get especially expensive.



Thanks for your help
Vic

Your welcome. Hope I didn't confuse you.

[Arthur Morris]

Great stuff by Bob above. Thank you sir. I would offer that a blog is a different animal than a web site... First I would ask you what is the intended purpose of your site?

[Jamie Douglas]

Try www.wix.com (http://www.wix.com), very easy to set up and easy to use.

My attempt (work in progress) http://www.wix.com/jimdoug2010/jamie-in-progress

[Ulli Hoeger]

If you already use Lightroom it is a snap to create web galleries. There are quite a few templates that come with Lightroom, more can be found on various websites. All you have to do is tweak and customize the layout, pick the images you want to use and lightroom will do the rest. There are other programs that can do the same or similar, but that's what I used lately. Creating a simple start page to link to the galleries isn't rocket science, with a WYSIWYG html editor its pretty quick to learn.

Folks already told you about domain registration and web hosting. Just stick with one of the established companies, even if that charge a bit more per month. The really cheap ones may be gone from one day to another and your website with them. Don't go to basic (space and espcl. traffic volume wise), photos tend to be large. Some of the free hosting services have drawbacks as they can be slow and/or add commercials. These were reasons for me to invest in my own domain and server space.

A self made website can cost you as little as ~$10/month for domain registration and hosting. For this kind of money some even offer unlimited traffic volume, so no surprises should your site become suddenly very popular. If you hire someone to design and program your site the sky is the limit.

Ulli

[Nancy A Elwood]

Hey everyone,

I am looking at creating a website to display some of my current and future work but since I am cluless at websites and all things related, I was hoping that someone could shed some light here:

1 - Are there websites that I can use as templates (photo intensive), then change them to my liking and use?
2 - How do I go about actually publishing or getting my website hosted?
3 - What am I looking at cost wise?

Thanks for your help
Vic

Vic for example my photography website is through Smugmug, which you can customize as much as you want or start out with their templates, but I bought a domain name of naturesportal, so my website is http://www.naturesportal.net . For my new product the Quick Action Harness, I used a blog type format through Wordpress, but still bought my own domain name of quickactionharness, so my website for the harness is http://www.quickactionharness.com . We got help to set up the harness website, but now set up it is pretty easy to keep up. I bought my domain names through Joker.com, and were around $22.00 for 2 years. Hope that helps a bit.