Help picking a website!!!

Crystalclearimages

Senior Member
Hi new to the biz and and wanting some advice on picking a website place. Was hoping for free or cheep since I am just starting out done have lots to spend. Thanks crystal
 

WhiteLight

Senior Member
Do you mean pick a website host?
It all depends on how much work you want to put in... and how much coding knowledge you have...

Broadly you can group the availability in 3 groups

a) do it all yourself - you need to be really good at HTML & CSS coding..
this is the best option in terms of getting what you need & customising all that you want
here you'll need a web host, buy domains & all the fun stuff

b) do it all for me - this is the kind that's made for photographers where all you need to do is upload your pics, choose a template & minor things from your end.
not a lot of customization available
everything is taken care by the hosts.. eg: zenfolio, smugmug etc

c) the in-between - you can choose a base platform like word press, drupal etc which have a lot more customization options than (b) above but not as much as (a). Unless you know some coding.. again
there are a lot of themes & plugins which will allow you to get as close as possible to your vision, but not fully :p
 

Crystalclearimages

Senior Member
Thanks white light I am new to all this stuff learning lots of the computer stuff. But I just love the photography and want to do it for a living and find a way to per mote my busness the best way and I know lots is done on line now days. Thanks again.
 
Since you posted in the ":Photography Business" section I assume you are selling your work on the site? If so you really need a paid site so it will handle the sales. I recently set up a site at http://zenfolio.com. With it I can post my photos and the customer can order the prints from there and they will have them printed and mail them to the client or you can handle printing and sales. YOu can set as many different price lists as you want. It is very flexible. If you are selling on the site you will need to do it this way since you have to have a secure site (HTTPS vs HTTP) you can do this on your own site but buying the https site can be more expensive than the site itself.

They have several plans and they are all pretty easy to set up and maintain. I have my own webserver and host and design a number of site and I chose this one because it does a better job than I can.
 
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