Making a Person Site.

[CanadianMe]

I am considering making a small personal site for my photos, also my wife and daughter like me take photos for fun and I would make them each a section and have a good friend who does it for relaxation and he would take some space also(I wont be charging, I am setting it up and he is also a very close friend so I will be picking up the tab). I know how to use Dreamweaver somewhat, enough to do a personal site. What I would like to know is what you do for hosting your photos? As this will be a personal site and not business I am not sure what kind of monthly bandwidth I need to be looking for. What do other personal site photographers go with, what kind of packages do you get. I know the name, have a site in my mind that I can design and build. Before I go and spend all the effort to make it and set it up just curious what sort of hosting I will need. If you know a host you would recommend in Canada and how you find their service. Thanks.

 

[dbrandon]

Hosting should not be a problem for images, as they are relatively small.

Let's say each image on your site is 0.05mb (50kb), and lets say you have 100 images on the site, that's a total of 5mb space used by images. Then let's say you have 5gb of bandwidth on your hosting (which is pretty average and inexpensive with most hosts) that means you could serve the complete site 1000 times per month (ignoring other space used).

That equates to 33 visits per day (based on the fact that the visitor views EVERY image on the site).

It should be quite easy to estimate how much bandwidth you require. But hope that helps anyway :thumbup:

 

[skieur]

Information has a value and information about people is bought, sold, and stolen all the time. It can also and often is, used for less than positive purposes. Identity theft is common in some areas and the results are often credit cards and loans taken out in your name and a mortgage put on your house by the fraudster. It can take almost a year for the victim to straighten thngs out. One of my colleagues had her identity stolen which hits rather close and it was quite a nightmare.

My point is that the net is used as a source of information on people using data mining software. I have learned also that if you end up on either side of a civil legal action, that the opposition will look anywhere including the net for any info. that can be "spun" in a negative manner. One amateur photographer was told that he was not hired for a permanent position with a company because they did not like a photo they found of him on the Internet. My real name ended up on Google and my e-mail box was literally buried in spam for months before I figured out the reason and corrected it. Now my email box does not even contain my name.

So, there are a lot of, for some people, unforeseen consequences to having a personal web site. Consider the risks. It is probably better to have a site where only your friends know who owns it and whose photos are on it.

skieur

 

[Big Mike]

There are plenty of photo hosting sites, where you can just host your photos and have people view them there...no site building required. (Photobucket, Flickr etc). You could even use a Blog site and make your own blog.

If you do want your own site, you could still use an off-site host and just link your photos or you could place your photos onto your site. Remember that for web viewing, your files don't need to be large and you can compress the file size quite a bit.

As for hosting companies...there are quite a lot. I'm sure you could spend all day searching Google and reading opinions.

For a personal site, I doubt that you would need a lot of bandwidth.

 

[CanadianMe]

Thanks for the Info. I know I can do a google search for a host, but I prefer to deal with someone that others recommend. If not here I will talk to others and see who they host with. Prefer a referral from an actual user then trying to find out who is worth using on the hit and miss basis. And dbrandon thanks, that is very helpful.



Skieur: Thanks for the Heads up but Net Savvy enough to know what I am doing online. I have a Google email account, you think I would ever trust them with any real information lol. If your aware and reasonably cautious I am really not to worried.

 

[Big Mike]

I use 4web.ca for a host. They are Canadian but fairly new. I don't have any other experience for comparison...so it's hard to make a recommendation. Their service seems to be pretty good because they had a billing problem when I first tried to sign up...they called me right away and I ended up getting a year's free hosting.

 

[CanadianMe]

I use 4web.ca for a host. They are Canadian but fairly new. I don't have any other experience for comparison...so it's hard to make a recommendation. Their service seems to be pretty good because they had a billing problem when I first tried to sign up...they called me right away and I ended up getting a year's free hosting.

Thanks, I will look them up.

 

[JoannaWilcox]

I use bluehost.com. The staff are quite helpful and their rates include the domain. It was $100 for the year.

 

[CanadianMe]

I use bluehost.com. The staff are quite helpful and their rates include the domain. It was $100 for the year.

Thanks, and you have a nice clean good looking site, loads fast.

 

[Rhys]

I host all my own stuff on my own site. Until recently I was restricted to 2GB/month badnwidth but I decided to pay for more as I intend to put photos on the site.

 

[photopoa]

I trialed zenfolio and smugmug for 2 weeks. In the end I really liked the ease of zenfolio because of these features:
+watermarking
+easy to manage
+no code skills writing needed
+fast
+can sell from the site and set your own pricelists

Here's my site for a zenfolio example: Peter Stanley Photography

If you go with zenfolio, here's a code to save $10: HQ4-WJD-WHY

Cheers
Peter