Concerning Websites

[dvjproductions]

Left Wordpress (hosted by Hostgator) after 2 years or so, for Squarespace a few months ago.

Love it 1 Billion times more.

Thank you What are your big 'quality of life improvements' when you made the switch?

 

[Light Guru]

I use squarespace for a couple of websites, both my personal site and for a photography podcast I started.

You can literally get up and going with a nice looking site in under an hour.

One thing that you may want to know is that if you want to use one of the new domain extensions like .photo you will need to register that outside of squarespace because their "free" one does let you get one of the new extensions. I bring this up because I do recommend using a new domain extension like .photo because it makes it a LOT easier to get a short domain name that people can easily remember.

 

[SpikeyJohnson]

If you are comfortable with designing your own and have the creative suite, you can look into Adobe Muse. I use it to build websites for clients and it is extremely simple to use. It is almost a what you see is what you get editor and makes life really easy for me. I have made a great website with it for my own photography (although I haven't pushed it live yet to a host). If you want I could upload it to business catalyst for a while for you to see what it looks like.

 

[e.rose]

Left Wordpress (hosted by Hostgator) after 2 years or so, for Squarespace a few months ago.

Love it 1 Billion times more.

Thank you What are your big 'quality of life improvements' when you made the switch?

Image upload and organization is easier. My e-mail always works (I host that through Gmail for $5 a month), I don't have to deal with 5 Billion plugins, or buying templates every time I want to change up the look of my site or tweak it... I don't have to depend on template developers who may or may not have worked out all the kinks of a layout before selling it... or buying a template that I thought would do one thing and does another...

My site is retina ready...

And did I mention not having to mess with plugins?

I can do e-commerce on my site without anything extra...

It's just beautiful. Try out the trial. :sillysmi:

 

[HikinMike]

I bought a domain and hosting from ICDSoft - Quality Web Hosting since the 20th century (about $60/year). I installed WordPress (free). Picked and customized theme (free). Done.

 

[studio460]

I tried Wordpress, and found it difficult to rid its structure of its "blogging" roots. Then I signed up for Smugmug, and I think its great. They have few dozen nicely designed templates, all, very customizable. I have a portfolio-level account hosted at a custom domain. Register with their domain partner, and I've never seen a new URL propagate so fast (a few minutes). Smugmug is supported by both Aperture and Lightroom, making exporting client files directly from within Aperture or Lightroom a breeze. All accounts include unlimited storage and unlimited traffic. There's a custom mark-up database for print orders, and they offer multiple lab choices. But, for designing custom website front-ends, I think Freeway for OS X is the best thing since sliced bread.

 

[dvjproductions]

I think I am convinced to give Squarespace a full on crack at this point. Smugmug does sound interesting as well.

As for Wordpress, as someone mentioned, its blogging roots are hard for me to work with and it isn't the design option I would like to work with, at least, not the only level. I might have a blog, but I would make it somewhat backseat.

 

[studio460]

I forgot . . . view my Smugmug website here!

 

[e.rose]

I think I am convinced to give Squarespace a full on crack at this point. Smugmug does sound interesting as well.

As for Wordpress, as someone mentioned, its blogging roots are hard for me to work with and it isn't the design option I would like to work with, at least, not the only level. I might have a blog, but I would make it somewhat backseat.

You seriously should.

I tried it 3 times before I realized how awesome it was. 3 different trials.

But I also think it was updated between my 2nd and 3rd trial.

While there are STILL very minor things I wish I could tweak, my overall satisfaction is MUCH higher.

If you have any questions during your trial, let me know! But also make sure you utilize their chat support when you can! They've always been helpful. :sillysmi:

 

[dvjproductions]

I think I am convinced to give Squarespace a full on crack at this point. Smugmug does sound interesting as well.

As for Wordpress, as someone mentioned, its blogging roots are hard for me to work with and it isn't the design option I would like to work with, at least, not the only level. I might have a blog, but I would make it somewhat backseat.

You seriously should.

I tried it 3 times before I realized how awesome it was. 3 different trials.

But I also think it was updated between my 2nd and 3rd trial.

While there are STILL very minor things I wish I could tweak, my overall satisfaction is MUCH higher.

If you have any questions during your trial, let me know! But also make sure you utilize their chat support when you can! They've always been helpful. :sillysmi:

Thank you! I certainly will

 

[HikinMike]

I tried Wordpress, and found it difficult to rid its structure of its "blogging" roots. Then I signed up for Smugmug, and I think its great. They have few dozen nicely designed templates, all, very customizable. I have a portfolio-level account hosted at a custom domain. Register with their domain partner, and I've never seen a new URL propagate so fast (a few minutes). Smugmug is supported by both Aperture and Lightroom, making exporting client files directly from within Aperture or Lightroom a breeze. All accounts include unlimited storage and unlimited traffic. There's a custom mark-up database for print orders, and they offer multiple lab choices. But, for designing custom website front-ends, I think Freeway for OS X is the best thing since sliced bread.

I do have a Smugmug site as well, but even after I customized it....to me it still looks like a Smugmug site. So I guess it goes both ways...LOL!

 

[studio460]

I do have a Smugmug site as well, but even after I customized it....to me it still looks like a Smugmug site. So I guess it goes both ways...LOL!

Yeah, nothing's perfect. The closest I came was Freeway for OS X. But that's a build-it-all-yourself HTML-authoring app (though, completely WYSIWYG), very similar to Adobe InDesign for print. The main thing I'm always looking for is type control . . . and I'm really only interested in one typeface: Helvetica. The entire family (extra light, light, medium, heavy, black, outline, condensed, etc.). Many templates won't allow much type control, and even fewer templates seem to offer a good version of Helvetica. I chose one particular Smugmug template because it happened to have kerning (letter-spacing) control. But, there's still a lot left to be desired in a web-based design app. Someday I may build a front-end to Smugmug in Freeway, or see if other template-based sites offer more type choices.
.

 

[HikinMike]

I do have a Smugmug site as well, but even after I customized it....to me it still looks like a Smugmug site. So I guess it goes both ways...LOL!

Yeah, nothing's perfect. The closest I came was Freeway for OS X. But that's a build-it-all-yourself HTML-authoring app (though, completely WYSIWYG), very similar to Adobe InDesign for print. The main thing I'm always looking for is type control . . . and I'm really only interested in one typeface: Helvetica. The entire family (extra light, light, medium, heavy, black, outline, condensed, etc.). Many templates won't allow much type control, and even fewer templates seem to offer a good version of Helvetica. I chose one particular Smugmug template because it happened to have kerning (letter-spacing) control. But, there's still a lot left to be desired in a web-based design app. Someday I may build a front-end to Smugmug in Freeway, or see if other template-based sites offer more type choices.
.

Before Smugmug "updated", you can control more things (Javascript, @font-face, etc) but not anymore. You can have more fonts, but they have to be Google-fonts.

 

[jsecordphoto]

I use smugmug and love them. Easy to set up, I can use bayphoto for my printing, and they include the customers email when I get a sale confirmation. I like that because I can email the customer saying thank you and to have them let me know if there are any problems (hasn't happened yet) which makes the buying experience a little more personal.

 

[studio460]

I use smugmug and love them. Easy to set up, I can use bayphoto for my printing, and they include the customers email when I get a sale confirmation . . .

I think for photographers with clients who order prints, Smugmug is an excellent choice (I also chose BayPhoto as my default lab--good to hear of your positive experience with them). Smugmug's print-ordering interface, and pricing database seems pretty flawless. For me, the direct-export from within Aperture is a real time-saver. I think Smugmug certainly serves its main purpose well, so I'm likely to stick with it. I just started resuming work on resurrecting my WordPress blog also, so maybe I'll get some incentive to build my Freeway OS X front-end to Smugmug someday soon.