Galleries on My Website

[kirbym2]

Hi All,

Looking for some advice. Starting a website for my photography in hopes to develop into a side business. I want to include galleries of photos. I have two questions

1) I'm using iPage to host my website. Their plan allows for a certain amount of pages, and I'm thinking the best solution would be to include "links" to my galleries. Do you know of a site (like Flickr) that I can prepare galleries. I find the look of Flickr just isn't as appealing. Ultimately I want to dedicate a page of my site to links to my gallery hosting account (if that makes sense).

2) I want to upload photos I took at a wedding reception. I was doing this for experience, but didn't obtain any sort of release. I'm in Canada, so not certain if that impacts things. I want to post the photos to promote my services. Not sure if this is okay. I've got shots of bride/groom, guests, bridal party etc.

Thanks!

 

[KmH]

#1 totally defeats having a dedicate web site.

In the US release statutes (laws) vary by state. I don't know if that is also true about Canadian provences.

 

[Big Mike]

Forget about iPage or whatever. If you want to look professional, get your own website.

First, buy a domain name. Since your in Canada, you might want to choose a .ca domain.
Then buy your hosting. I use Hostgator and highly recommend them.
The get the actual web site. Most hosting companies have free web builder tools and templates, but you could also buy a nice template (or build your own site).

There are many site templates that allow for image galleries. But you could also use a gallery creator program to create the galleries and then just load them onto your site and put the links in place.

If you want sophisticated client galleries, where they can browse their photos and order prints from you, look at something like Photocart. Pictures Pro - Photography Shopping Cart | Online Proofing | Photo Cart

As for using the photos from the wedding....I'm not 100% sure of the rules/laws...but I don't think that putting photos on your website (to promote yourself) counts as commercial use, so you are very probably OK to put them up without release forms.

 

[shootermcgavin]

I live by the it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission... I highly doubt you will have problems uploading photos, if you do they will just say take them down. I know someone who had problems once but it was with a HUGE company and they basically copied everything about the company and made it look like they were a division, even then they just closed the site down but had already made millions from site traffic and will continue to from leads. I don't know about Canada but the courts here take years to settle simple disputes. It doesn't sound like you have much to worry about, it's some pictures at a wedding, facebook would be shut down if things like that were a problem.

 

[kirbym2]

Thanks for the feedback!

@BigMike - I've secured my domain name through iPage (I did end up with a .ca name). They have a drag and drop builder as part of their package ($3.50/mo). Had to pay for 2 years, so I'm into it for about $85. I could probably transfer my domain name, but not certain.

I want a professional look, so I'm definitely interested in anything that provides templates to work with. I've played around with this a little bit, but don't want to start promoting my website until I've got all the elements in place.

Any gallery making programs that you would suggest? Would these simply require an html link to connect to?

Also, trying to achieve a simple yet effective look - any thoughts/suggestions as for what I MUST include in my site, and what I should avoid? I see people that include Blogs, or a big "About Me" section - any MUST haves?

Thanks for the help!

 

[shootermcgavin]

Thanks for the feedback!

@BigMike - I've secured my domain name through iPage (I did end up with a .ca name). They have a drag and drop builder as part of their package ($3.50/mo). Had to pay for 2 years, so I'm into it for about $85. I could probably transfer my domain name, but not certain.

I want a professional look, so I'm definitely interested in anything that provides templates to work with. I've played around with this a little bit, but don't want to start promoting my website until I've got all the elements in place.

Any gallery making programs that you would suggest? Would these simply require an html link to connect to?

Also, trying to achieve a simple yet effective look - any thoughts/suggestions as for what I MUST include in my site, and what I should avoid? I see people that include Blogs, or a big "About Me" section - any MUST haves?

Thanks for the help!

A title! Is the most common mistake to name a title of a website the name of your company and leave it at that. The title is one of the most relevant things google looks at for searches. You can definetely transfer your domain, it's a pain once you have a site built so I would get on the right server in the beginning, I don't know anything about ipage personally. I have used godaddy, fatcow and hostgator.. hostgator is the best but they all have great support.

 

[tirediron]

I live by the it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission...

Tell that to the judge when you wind up in court!

 

[tirediron]

I agree with the others, build (or have someone build for you) your own stand-alone website. As far as must-haves go, I think that you must have a clean, simple, fast-loading, easy to navigate 'site above all else. It should includ a sampling of your work, a brief biography indicating where you are and how to contact you (Spend some time searching photo 'sites, it's amazing how many people don't put any sort of geographic location information in). People tend to be about equallly divided on whether to include pricing information; I do, many choose not to. It's also important to clear define what sort of work you do.

With respect to the issue of using the wedding images on your website, I would do the bride and groom the courtesy of asking them at least. Given the nature of the event, I don't think you would have any legal issues, but you also don't need the bad press that could arise from someone complaining about your having done that when they really didn't want you to.

 

[Big Mike]

I want a professional look, so I'm definitely interested in anything that provides templates to work with. I've played around with this a little bit, but don't want to start promoting my website until I've got all the elements in place.

I hope that part of your 'elements in place' is being a proper business. Getting a license etc.

As for getting/making a professional looking website, check out the Supporting Vendors here on the forum. At least two of our vendors sell nice templates for photography websites.

On my website, I used 'Simple Viewer' to create some of the galleries. I used a free version, so it keeps a little link back to the Simple Viewer site, but it's pretty small and unobtrusive. For a more professional look, I could purchase the software. You can even use software that you might use already. For example, Adobe Lightroom can export a web gallery/slideshow very easily.
One thing you want to think about, if you make/buy a website, and that is how easy it is to change/update. If you don't already know all about HTML programing, you probably don't want to learn it, just to be able to add photos and a link to your website.
And that is where a blog comes in for many people. Most blog software is made so that it's easy to make new posts...in other words, it's easy to add new content to your site. So one common way to do it, is to have a very nice looking website, but maybe it doesn't get updated very often...but you also have a blog that gets updated all the time.
A common question is whether to have your blog hosted right on your website (it's part of your website) or whether to just use one of the common blog sites and just link back and forth with your site. For example, like many people, I host my blog with blogspot (blogger.com) and I just link to it on my site...and of course, the blog links back to my site. It's not a perfect solution and probably doesn't give the most SEO, but it was fairly easy to set up and it seems like a popular way of doing it.

Another thing to consider is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is big...it's probably a lot more important than how your site looks. Because if people can't find your site, they won't see it. The success of a lot of businesses, comes down to them being able to get onto (and stay) on the first page of a Google search for their keywords.

 

[kirbym2]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks again for the insight.

@BigMike - I did go about getting approval on a name, and registering the business as a sole proprietorship in BC. Although I'm not ready to fly on my own with it, I figured it would be a safe bet to ensure I had this piece in place.

I'm going to check out the sites you've recommended re: Galleries & Blog - I've got to look at a few websites to get a sense of what information I should be writing about (I'm terrible at that sort of thing). I do plan on looking into this further, but I do use lightroom, so curious as to how to create/export a gallery on to my page. How is the link made between my gallery and my website? Is it a link of some sort?

Thanks for taking the time...

 

[kirbym2]

Oh... and SEO - I'm sure there's a ton of info on the web about this. My website settings allowed me to put in SEO info (Website Title, Tags). Is this enough? What else to I do here?