Recommendations regarding setting up a website

[JCollins1964]

I am looking at setting up my own website with a .co.uk or .org address. Having seen the links to some of our members websites I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations regarding a good site to use. There are two companies which advertises in a lot of the photographic magazines, clikpic.com and photographers-portfolio.co.uk. Does anyone use either of these and if so what do they think of them? My requirements at the moment are fairly basic, however, I would like a proffesional looking site which potential clients could look at......when I have eventually got enough decent photos to post

Many thanks

Joe Collins

[Bioshox]

There are lots of places and people that could set you up a website.

My recommendation for the domain would be .co.uk for the main reason your a UK resident, .org's are normally for organizations.

You could go for a content management system for your website such as http://fusionstrike.co.uk/ | http://wordpress.org | http://joomla.com

Or you could get one fully designed for yourself from maybe a member or somewhere like http://templatemonster.com

But these don't come cheap, nor does hosting!

If I was you id find someone who knew what they were doing with websites and could give you some kind of discount/web template/hosting cheap, or maybe even free

[Paul Jones]

Hi Joe

I agree with Jacob about registering a .co.uk domain if the one you want is available. I went for a .org simply becuase the name I wanted had already been registered.

Your website can be as grandiose as your budget. If you want an easy way into it for little cost then something like http://www.clikpic.com might be a solution worth looking at.

[keith richardson]

I have been using the service at photium.com for the last year or so and as this is specifically designed for displaying your work I find it more than satisfactory.
(check out my site at http://www.keithrichardsonphotography.co.uk., or hit the link on the club pages).
You can display and sell your pictures and add news stories and messages, and it looks professional.

It is very easy to set up and update/edit and I find it very good value at around £7 a month.

regards, keith.

[Bioshox]

Kieth, at £7 a month it would be incredibly cheaper to buy your own Web Host and download a free HTML template from the Internet (Google Search, Free CSS Web Templates)

£7 a month for a pre-hosted website is just daylight robbery!

Web hosting can come as cheap as £3 a month with a .info domain at 0.93p a year if you know where to go.

[keith richardson]

I suppose it depends on your views, experience with web hosting and your financial situation.
Personally I think if you are willing to spend around £1000 on a camera, and probably even more on lenses, then it is comparatively little outlay to have a site that you are happy with. I pay a lot more than that for my gallery at Botany Bay, but as long as both the website and the gallery make more money than they cost, (which they usually do), then I am happy, and its worth the extra £1 or so a week that it costs to have a site that I don't need to work hard on to set up or maintain.
regards, keith.

[PhilipHowe]

I agree also.

I have four websites, two for work, one for personal and one for photography and host them all at wordpress.com. I don't pay a penny and they are all blog entries. One of them breaks out to an external free host (free as in free beer) but this is slightly slower and on that I can run whatever I want.

I like the approach Keith has taken and I like the fact that it has the ability to sell straight out of the box. If I was going down the selling route, then this is one of the easiest sites for customers to browse around. Setting all this up manually is a headache you don't need.

My advice is simple, if you are selling, go to the site Keith mentioned (as he has recommended it), if not, and you can get away with a photoblog, then go to wordpress.com.

I am highly competant in all aspects of computing having been a programmer for a number of years and working with databases for the last, well, ages. If it's not an interest you want, just go to the preconfigured sites. £7 a month does sound like a lot, however, if you can make sales, it's well worth spending the money instead of the time. That way you get to take and work on more pictures to sell.

[JCollins1964]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I have decided to have a look at photium.com
Like the look of Keith's site and I have downloaded the photium trial which seems fairly simple.
I know its not the cheapest way to get a web site but it seems like the way forward for me at the moment.

[Andrew Shepherd]

My website is hosted by heart internet and I just moved it from a paying service (home professional - around £11 a month) to their free web hosting package (without MySQL support and with limited bandwith - 100 mb per month). Unfortunately, I found that, with my website and the hits I was getting, I reached my bandwith within about 7 days and my website has been currently unavailable for the majority of this month. (When I show the initial images from a shoot to friends/families/clients/ADAPS, etc the 100mb bandwith will be gone in seconds!)

I therefore need to decide on whether to slim down my site (to get more out of the 100 mb bandwith) move to a paying service (their cheapest is around £40 for the year around £3.50 per month, but paid as a lump sum) or move elsewhere.

Any recommendations? (Keith's option sounds good but then I don't have many photos for sale as mine tend to be portraits and I do like the heart internet hosting packages, maybe I just move to the basic paying package.)

Cheers

Andrew

[Mike]

I use a host called IX Web Hosting. They give me plenty of storage, plenty of bandwidth, number of SQL databases etc. The cost is about £70 per year with 3 free domain registrations. If I were starting out I would suggest using something like iWeb (mac only) to develop your first website. Other systems you could use are CMS websites, they can be hard to get your head around initially (especially the setup) but then the management becomes quite easy. Until you want to create your own templates. Thankfully with things like Joolma you can get free templates.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

I am the same as Paul in the sense that I had to get an .org because the .co.uk was taken.

[Bioshox]

I use a host called IX Web Hosting. They give me plenty of storage, plenty of bandwidth, number of SQL databases etc. The cost is about £70 per year with 3 free domain registrations. If I were starting out I would suggest using something like iWeb (mac only) to develop your first website. Other systems you could use are CMS websites, they can be hard to get your head around initially (especially the setup) but then the management becomes quite easy. Until you want to create your own templates. Thankfully with things like Joolma you can get free templates.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

I am the same as Paul in the sense that I had to get an .org because the .co.uk was taken.

Joomla indeed does come with an array of themes but its very difficult to get your head around.

I currently develop a Content Management System with an extensive array of features, but much easier to use and easy to customize, http://www.fusionstrike.co.uk/live.html