RocketCowboy
Senior Member
I've had a couple WordPress sites for awhile, as well as a personal SmugMug site for sharing travel photos. After doing a couple nights of event photography, I'd like to have a client proofing area where people can check images from the previous night's event, flag and pay for what they want to purchase.
WordPress seems to give me the most control over the options I choose, and how I piece things together. The biggest challenge or risk with WordPress is that it's on me to keep everything together. I do my own web hosting today, but it's the ongoing support or possibility of having to dig into PHP code as WordPress evolves and templates/plug-ins come and go. The upside is that I hear SEO and analytics options are the best with WordPress, so that could provide some payback for the extra care and feeding in the site.
SmugMug I'm familiar with and seems to be the most straight forward. They aren't known for being good in the SEO and analytics fronts, but if I separated the blog from the marketplace and had galleries and purchases hosted with SmugMug, that might be fine. SmugMug also doesn't seem to offer any flexibility over the lab used, and I haven't seen a way that I can flag files for approval before an order is processed. As I understand it from the other event photogs I'm working with, they tend to go SOOC to their gallery for viewing, and then will do additional post processing on purchased prints to make sure they are up to quality. It means getting the exposure mostly right in camera, but I don't see an option within SmugMug for intercepting orders for retouching before they go to the lab. I've seen a few write ups on how to integrate SmugMug into a WordPress site so that you can get the best of both ... analytics and SEO from WordPress and the sales backend from SmugMug, but then I still need to work through the template and CSS integration to make that as seamless as possible.
Zenfolio is new to me, but seems to be a hybrid. A little better SEO than SmugMug, a few more options around the selling side of things, but still not fully customizable like WordPress. It's hosted with them (like SmugMug), but so far doesn't seem to be as open to cross integration with WordPress like SmugMug is. It looks like Zenfolio has a better blogging platform than SmugMug, but if the SEO and publishing tools aren't there, it might just be a better compromise/starter site than anything.
I haven't mentioned other options like Wix or SquareSpace, because to my knowledge both are lacking the e-commerce backend and are even less flexible than WordPress (though hosted on their own platforms), so seems like a step in the wrong direction.
What are others using? Maybe I'll make this a poll ... what's your preference for a photography business/portfolio/sales platform?
WordPress seems to give me the most control over the options I choose, and how I piece things together. The biggest challenge or risk with WordPress is that it's on me to keep everything together. I do my own web hosting today, but it's the ongoing support or possibility of having to dig into PHP code as WordPress evolves and templates/plug-ins come and go. The upside is that I hear SEO and analytics options are the best with WordPress, so that could provide some payback for the extra care and feeding in the site.
SmugMug I'm familiar with and seems to be the most straight forward. They aren't known for being good in the SEO and analytics fronts, but if I separated the blog from the marketplace and had galleries and purchases hosted with SmugMug, that might be fine. SmugMug also doesn't seem to offer any flexibility over the lab used, and I haven't seen a way that I can flag files for approval before an order is processed. As I understand it from the other event photogs I'm working with, they tend to go SOOC to their gallery for viewing, and then will do additional post processing on purchased prints to make sure they are up to quality. It means getting the exposure mostly right in camera, but I don't see an option within SmugMug for intercepting orders for retouching before they go to the lab. I've seen a few write ups on how to integrate SmugMug into a WordPress site so that you can get the best of both ... analytics and SEO from WordPress and the sales backend from SmugMug, but then I still need to work through the template and CSS integration to make that as seamless as possible.
Zenfolio is new to me, but seems to be a hybrid. A little better SEO than SmugMug, a few more options around the selling side of things, but still not fully customizable like WordPress. It's hosted with them (like SmugMug), but so far doesn't seem to be as open to cross integration with WordPress like SmugMug is. It looks like Zenfolio has a better blogging platform than SmugMug, but if the SEO and publishing tools aren't there, it might just be a better compromise/starter site than anything.
I haven't mentioned other options like Wix or SquareSpace, because to my knowledge both are lacking the e-commerce backend and are even less flexible than WordPress (though hosted on their own platforms), so seems like a step in the wrong direction.
What are others using? Maybe I'll make this a poll ... what's your preference for a photography business/portfolio/sales platform?