How are you building your websites?

[dpolston]

Hey gang!

It's been a very long time since I've been here but I need to rely on your wisdom as 'professionals'!

What programs are you using to build your websites? I have to admit that even though I have CS4 master collection (with flash, dreamweaver, blah, blah, blah), I am more simple minded. I want [need] a drag and drop program that will give me a clean site. I use a blog now (davidpolston.blogspot.com) but I want to build a more professional site (along the lines of: Jason Bell | Photographer ).

I can't find templates I really like in Lightroom or using Adobe Bridge.

What am I missing?

David

 

[newimage]

HTML Splash page which branches to Flash XML for the main site and wordpress for the blog.

 

[Christie Photo]

Blu domain has fully editable templates and there's no need to have any software other than a web browser. I use one of theirs for mine.

-Pete

 

[Rich D.]

It depends on how much time or money you want to spend.

ShowIt +Sites is a photographer platform that can has drag and drop templates to create a Flash site with an HTML copy site. You can choose to go into those templates and totally reconfigure them, like a web designer. It also has good SEO and mobile apps. Downside is monthly fee.

LiveBooks is also drag and drop to create a Flash site with an HTML copy site. It works a little easier than ShowIt. It has great out-of-the-box SEO. Downside is monthly fee, and they charge extra for blog and mobile apps.

I just dumped LiveBooks for WordPress, which is the blog platform. For my photography site, I'm uising the F8 Lite free theme, which I'm in the process of polishing up. It works like a blog and web site in one, but looks more like a web site. Plus, I'm using a free mobile plugin, so it looks good on nearly every device.

WordPress blows away anything else in terms of SEO capabilites. You simply grow your site by adding free plugins and tweaking them to get the desired result. If you've been using Blogspot, then you don't know what you're missing.

WordPress is free. I recommend downloading it and installing it on your web host account. It's much more powerful that way.

I also have the Cleanr theme set up for my new site www.WeddingPhotoAdvice.com, which contains articles written for photographers about building a wedding photo studio and sharpening your creative edge.

 

[shama]

I agree with Rich D. , it really depends of how much money yiu want to spend .

In addition to his suggestions , I can add PhotoShelter and PortfolioSitez.

If you have more free time you can go with WordPress and I can confirm that it has great SEO capabilites. My blog is WP based, and it drives me a lot of traffic.

 

[flea77]

Hey gang!

It's been a very long time since I've been here but I need to rely on your wisdom as 'professionals'!

Professional what? Photographer? Web developer? I happen to do both but it does make a difference.

To build websites I start with Expression Web for the general layout, Photoshop for the images, Video Studio for the video (H.264 MP4), and Javascript/PHP written in UltraEdit for the interactivity. I have not used Flash in years. Using this approach I can make one interactive site which works on just about any platform with no need for multiple pages for different devices.

Allan

 

[David Dvir]

This is a big issue for me. Because I consider myself a professional and want to be found in searches. So we built our website entirely on our own. We literally taught ourselves how to write HTML, learned Java and took a ton of time to create a great, custom website that only we have. I now love our website and am proud that it works on any platform.

It's a lot of hard work, but I found that it pays off way more than using some program. It's also free to learn .

Good luck!

 

[tirediron]

Notepad!