Looking Into Starting A Website, Completely Lost

[Automaton25]

Hello Everyone,



My wife and I are looking into starting a website. I got a deal on a Zenfolio site for Black Firday, but in the process of setting it up, I've become highly dissatisfied with the whole process. My primary concern is with the printing options. Each Vendor only offers some of the print options and none of them offer all. To add to it all, you can only choose one vendor. For example, Miller Professional imaging offers paper, canvas, and metal, but no acrylic. They also do not offer a calibration profile for your monitor. You have to submit photos then they send you 4 prints and you compare to your monitor...this has to be a joke...Bay Photo on the other hand, only offers paper prints, yet their website offers acrylic, metal, canvas, paper, and much more.



I looked into having a site hosted by Godaddy, but have read horror stories of people getting nickle and dimed after the fact to add all of the features you actually need to secure your website and sell products.



Does anyone have any insight into your process and/or where to go?



Photos below are just for fun.



Cheers!

 

[elfroggio]

I looked into having a site hosted by Godaddy, but have read horror stories of people getting nickle and dimed after the fact to add all of the features you actually need to secure your website and sell products.

Does anyone have any insight into your process and/or where to go?

Photos below are just for fun.

Cheers!

Congratulations, very nice photos.

My recommendation is: Do NOT use GoDaddy.

Being nickled and dimed is definitely not pleasant, as a friend of mine found out: $750 later. The real problems are:

1. Regular outages that last for weeks on end especially on the 'shared plans'.
2. Viruses, especially on their wordpress platform, that either the can't remove or are not interested in dealing with.
3. Email service outages that last for days with all the emails being lost.
4. Once setup, they make it extremely difficult to leave to another provider.

Instead take a look at https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-web-hosting/ or some other reviewers.

Carefully with some of the reviews, especially if the hosting platform does heavy advertising with the reviewers.

Personally, I use hostinger which has good support. But I know what I'm doing and I control everything.

Here's my website (very fast): https://www.sritch.com

--
Thanks

The Dogs of Vancouver

The Dogs of Vancouver & Photography

www.sritch.com

The Dogs of Vancouver, BC

 

[Gato Amarillo]

First off, my site is with SmugMug. I chose them because they had templates I like. In the past I did my own design and wrote code, but I no longer have the patience for that -- not to mention the problems of being sure a site is mobile friendly.

https://jrsprawls.com/

I find the templates reasonably easy to use, and while they do limit me some on design the do assure that the site will work well on mobile -- which is the majority of the audience these days. I have found them helpful the few times I have not been able to work through problems my self or find a quick solution online.

I don't offer prints at this time, so I'm not fully familiar with their options -- you'll need to research that yourself. I do suggest you keep your offerings reasonably simple. You may confuse buyers and lose sales if there are too many choices.

Finally, I suggest you keep your domain name -- your URL web address -- separate from your website. If the host does not work out you at least still have your .com name. My domains are with GoDaddy, they then redirect to my site. Over the years I've had four different web hosts. One shut down, one just never worked well for me, and one was slow to adapt to mobile browsing. But the .com name is still with me.

Gato

 

[John Jennings]

Check into your local community college and take a beginning web design course. It will make a huge difference.

 

[owenleve]

Spend the money on someone that does squarespace or word press sites and learn how to edit from the starting block. Once you have your template set you shouldn't need to make any major changes. It shouldn't be that expensive to get going.

 

[Shabang]

We are using an old laptop running Linux that my wife setup to share our clients files. Each client gets their own folder that we share with them. They can download the files from there. This works well and saves us a lot of money. The old laptop fits nicely in a kitchen cabinet. We are working on getting a shareware photo app to work but for now just share the files.

It all comes down to the investment, which we are trying to minimize if it gets us no return.

 

[John Jennings]

We are using an old laptop running Linux that my wife setup to share our clients files. Each client gets their own folder that we share with them. They can download the files from there. This works well and saves us a lot of money. The old laptop fits nicely in a kitchen cabinet. We are working on getting a shareware photo app to work but for now just share the files.

It all comes down to the investment, which we are trying to minimize if it gets us no return.

How much money do you estimate you’re saving with your approach? Thanks, I’m try to quantify.

 

[BAK CDN]

I see you have not responed to anything.

Anyway, for the benefit of any lurkers that may be interested in web sites, here are a couple of things to think about.

You may be fine with a web site that is hosted by an internet service provider that doies not print pictures.

Use the site to promote your business, encouragee people to hire you, and display pictures that you already have for sale, and pictures that you take on behalf of a client.

The idea is that the client / prospect visits your site, sees the shots they want priints of, and order the prints they want, from you.

Your site lists the sizes you choos to offer, and the printing media, format, etc.

The prospects / clients send their money to you.

You, in turn, pick any of the on-line printing labs and services that offer the particular services. They make the prints, and drop-ship them to you customer.

You pay the lab.

You'll need a comprehensive web ste from a good host, not just a spot on a paid host display site.

For the comprehenvie web site, for ease of you and resonable pricing, I suggest Square Space and WIX.

Square Space has a lot of photographers as clients, including Fro (Jarod Polin) and Chelsea and Tony Northrup.

My consulting company has used WIX to create several web sites for our clients, and have been very happy.

Both companies ca arrage for the sales pages and payment systems your need.

BAK

 

[Shabang]

We are using an old laptop running Linux that my wife setup to share our clients files. Each client gets their own folder that we share with them. They can download the files from there. This works well and saves us a lot of money. The old laptop fits nicely in a kitchen cabinet. We are working on getting a shareware photo app to work but for now just share the files.

It all comes down to the investment, which we are trying to minimize if it gets us no return.

How much money do you estimate you’re saving with your approach? Thanks, I’m try to quantify.

We save maybe $5k per year. All we pay for is our URL from GoDaddy for $3.99 per year. Sometimes we just give our clients the IP address of our server and don't bother with the URL. A good thing to remember is that the website gets used after the sale is made and the bill has been paid, so there is no reason to throw money after that point.

 

[juanj1964]

I looked into having a site hosted by Godaddy, but have read horror stories of people getting nickle and dimed after the fact to add all of the features you actually need to secure your website and sell products.

Does anyone have any insight into your process and/or where to go?

Photos below are just for fun.

Cheers!

Congratulations, very nice photos.

My recommendation is: Do NOT use GoDaddy.

Being nickled and dimed is definitely not pleasant, as a friend of mine found out: $750 later. The real problems are:

1. Regular outages that last for weeks on end especially on the 'shared plans'.
2. Viruses, especially on their wordpress platform, that either the can't remove or are not interested in dealing with.
3. Email service outages that last for days with all the emails being lost.
4. Once setup, they make it extremely difficult to leave to another provider.

Instead take a look at https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/best-web-hosting/ or some other reviewers.

Carefully with some of the reviews, especially if the hosting platform does heavy advertising with the reviewers.

Personally, I use hostinger which has good support. But I know what I'm doing and I control everything.

Here's my website (very fast): https://www.sritch.com

Hello Syv - Very website and photos. Do you always do b/w?

Thanks for posting the link about hosting sites reviews. My wife & I used to have a smugmug site but we didn't use it much & forgot to renew & it got deleted.

We are thinking of building a new site.

Anyone use smugmug?

--
JuanJ
-------------------------
Visit J & L Images or Flickr at JuanJ.

 

[HughIpi]

Beautiful wildlife photos wherever you end up sharing them!

 

[elfroggio]

Hello Syv - Very website and photos. Do you always do b/w?

No, I don't just do B&W, but I show B&W because that's what I prefer and try to make the customers want it. They buy what they see.

Thanks for posting the link about hosting sites reviews. My wife & I used to have a smugmug site but we didn't use it much & forgot to renew & it got deleted.

We are thinking of building a new site.

Anyone use smugmug?

I used to have a smugmug site, but then they started to raise the prices and then changed the different tier levels. It's in US$ which made it even more expensive.

Smugmug is worth it, if you have a volume high enough and if you need all the features that are nickeled and dimmed.

The support through the help and through dgrin.com was excellent.