Ok, i know nothing about web design but learn damn quickly so has anyone got any tips for my site from scratch. i.e. right from buying the name to constructing and running the site. Basically just want a site as an advert for my photography with a decent gallery section, a comments section and preferably a buying section for my work that's on there and price list for shoots. Thanks for any help guys.
do you really need your own site? could you not use deviantart.com to exhibit your wears? if not, it sounds like you will need a database driven site if you want to be able to easily add photos and have people log in or just comment on them. You could use buy it now buttons via paypal to sell your work. Domain name choosing is difficult to advise on. Normally your business name if you have one? Or if you are after a name there are two schools of thought - firstly something catchy like jamjar.com but this doesnt portray what your about....... so secondly something like weddingphotography.com which does and will also help your google positioning because the name contains what people are going to search for. I see your are also from the UK, so consider a .co.uk instead. Use domainspricedright or godaddy for a .com who charge about $7 US for the name which is about £3.50 in real money. UK sites tend to charge a hell of a lot more!! If you need any help drop me a PM, I am from not very far away.
If you're a professional photographer, I would suggest getting a .com and customized website design. How many webpages are you requiring and how many photographs will be in your site? I'm assuming you'll be needing a CMS where you can easily edit everything correct? (you might want to look into joomola). These factors will determine the price..
well seeing as how you're no too familiar with it or anything i would suggest wordpress and a custom theme with a gallery plugin or something. http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Images ... from there you can use the paypal buy now buttons to sell your work or whatever. and then you have the option of hiring a professional to do it for you. i would be happy to do a full blown dynamic website with an administrator panel and payment gateway for you but i'm not very cheap in that retrospect.
Thanks for all the replies guys. I am a starting professional. I'll be having a lot of pics on the site, thousands and growing! I want my own site as it will look more professional than a deviantart one or anything else like that. Already have a business name but not registered as of yet but is available so i'm ready to go with that. Thanks for the expensive offer but cameras and parts are already expensive enough. I'm saving up for a £4k camera at the moment so wanna keep costs low! Keep it coming as i'm a bit of an information sponge and need some more.
Hi I'm seconding the comment above for 123-reg. I've bought all my domains from them and had no trouble at all. A .co.uk costs 6.99 a year I think if I remember rightly. As someone else said though - a .com might be best as it's for your business. For hosting personally I use Lunarpages. I've had no problems with them at all - for a basic package it works out in the region of £90 a year. They are a US company. If you are going to teach and do it yourself then I'd also go with Wordpress. I've only just started with that and got my head around pretty fast - and lots of people can help you out here. If you choose a nice theme and obviously get your own header designed (or use a collage of your photo's or whatever) than it could look very nice as a start up page. When you have the cash available maybe look into getting a professional to get the site how you want it exactly. As a photographer you obviously have great skills at 'what looks good' so I'm sure you'll have something up and running in no time. I'd love to come and have a look when you're done too. Good luck with it
hehe i know what you mean. i'm saving for a d80 or a d200 myself. they're not cheap. would love to have a d2x though but damn that price gives me the shakes.
theres a lot of ready made gallery site/scripts available some free some priced, hotscripts and such provide a dir of such software you may want to check it out as someone mentioned deviant is alright, flickr too take it easy