Website construction: Photo Shelter being considered

[Jay Gould]

Is anyone using Photo Shelter to maintain their personal website/sell images?

When I return in May I will be creating a website starting with the images from my time in Florida and South America.

Open to suggestions for website creation; I will be using my registered www.luvntravln.com url.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[David Fletcher]

Looks like you're having a great time Jay. Don't know of Photo Shelter personally, but whatever you do, don't go near a company called Mr Site.

[Mike Tracy]

Have you looked into a Smugmug Pro account ? They are considerably cheaper than Photo Shelter and at a quick glance seem to offer the same features.

The main hurdle I have encountered over the years is customization. The templates all the photo sites offer seem to follow roughly a same "theme". If you wish to stand out from the crowd you need to go with a company that offers the ability to insert code to tailor the site to your liking. If you are not adept at css, html, or the others then you have to either settle for a cookie cutter site, spend the necessary time learning it for a probably a one time application or hire some one to do it for you. I know there are guys on SmugMugs forums who will do a custom site for around $1,500 U.S.D.

I recently ditched the provider I was with for the past few years and am starting fresh with Smugmug. I am at the point in it's construction that I can not take it any further with some out side help but it is still functional.

I am just a serious hobbyist who wants a nice clean site to showcase my images, maybe sell a few along the way and present itself differently from the majority. I guess you need to determine your personal needs and objectives and in what direction the future lies for your photography.

Good luck as I am in the same boat and trying to steer it in the right direction. I also have more questions than answers.

[Dave Woeller]

Hi Jay, I am currently using Smugmug and I am far from CSS literate. They do have quite a few tutorials and some cut and paste code that you can use to customize your site and get away from the basic templates. I was formerly with Zenfolio, and my son is still with them. Zen has recently added quite a nice bit of customization to their package and is a couple bucks cheaper. I feel that Smug has a better shopping cart layout, but Zen does foriegn currency. Zen sometimes takes longer for a page to load than I liked and may make some customers give up and move on. Smug has a great customer support crew. I don't profess to be a top level photog, but Smug is working for me. If you use my Smug name to sign up you can get a small discount. They do have a free trial period and then you can decide which way you want to go. My Smug link is in my sig. I'll put in a link for my sons Zenfolio site so you can compare.
www.windshadowstudios.com
Regards..... Dave Woeller

[Nick Palmieri]

Hi Jay, I use Photoshelter but I still only have the basic package. It certainly works for my needs at the current time. In the next few weeks I will be upgrading to one of their actual website packages. Not sure of what your uses are but it seems to do a lot.

[Bill Coatney]

Photoshop User magazine has an article in the March issue about integrating Lightroom with PhotoShelter,Zenfolio,Smugmug.

The author thought all 3 were " run by dedicated staff focused serving their customers". The author gave PhotoShelter high marks for their free SEO kit and recommended that all photographers read it regardless of who they sign with for their web presence.

Sounds like there may be "no bad choice".

[Dave Woeller]

One detail that I forgot to add to my post is the print labs used by Zen and Smug. This may or may not be important dependant on whether you are going to do self fullfillment or have their labs do your printing. At any rate, Smugmug uses Bayphoto or Ezprint (your choice) and Zenfolio uses Mpix. Both offer color correction or no color correction, again your choice.

[Mike Woeller]

I am the aforementioned son, Mike, that Dave posted was using Zen. We do collaborate and learn from each other a lot so I can offer the flipside of the Zen/ASmug debate.

I have found, as a Zen user, that they have improved drastically, and having met some of their Staff at the PDN Photoplus show, I can see they are dedicated to making their users visions a reality. The same can also be said of Smug, especially in their tech support. Zen also runs a facebook page for developing news and runs contests there as well. Both have the ability (with Pro level accounts) to set pricing by formula or by set prices, both have an amazing array of product offerings. Zen has a two week free trial, while I do not know what type of trial Smug has (I believe it is the same).

Having helped Dad out on his site, I can say that customizing a Zen site is much much easier. There is no CSS/HTML code to know, and the editor is visual, as opposed to copy/paste code, reload, see if you like it. The images look stellar (but they do that on Smug, too) There are severall templates to choose from, or you can roll your own. An interesting feature, and the one I used to start, was the Pick a template to begin from, then tweak it to your liking. You can also work on your templates without making them "live" amd you can save multiples. Each gallery/group/collection can sport it's own theme. If you visit my site, you will see that the "Wedding" galleries have a different look than the rest.

Another great feature of Zen is password protected downloads. You can specify a size cap and password for individual galleries to allow others to download digital files. This helps if you have assistants or need to turn images over to an editor, yet still retain private and secure files for yourself.

With all this, there are some negatives. I am not as big a fan of the Zen shopping cart as I am of Smug's. Though it seems to offer more products, it feels more cumbersome for the user to shop with. Uploads also seem to be slower than Smug as well. Smug has an iPhone friendly version of your site included and there are several "Smug Apps" on the App store. If you use your site mobilly as a virtual portfolio, this is an AMAZING feature (yes, I help promote my dad's site with it when the opportunity arises). Smug also appears to generate much more traffic. I could attribute this to better publicity, but the numbers are too staggering of a difference to say that that is the only cause (a few thousand visits compared to a couple dozen per month). Zen has recently implemented Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools, but I have not gotten to try them.

Sorry for the long rambling post, and I know I should post more. I probably missed several features of both as well, but these are just my experiences in what I use. Hope it helps!

Mike Woeller
WindShadow Digital Studios
http://www.windshadowstudios.com