Web Hosting - Know Of Any Sites With Templates Available?

natalieyoung · Sep 4, 2008

Hi there,

Since I am a new photographer I only have started a little basic site Visit My Website with Freewebs.com just to get myself out there. However, because it's free hosting there are ads (that I've been told are distracting and don't allow the picture to fit properly on the page when viewing) and very few changes you can make to the template itself and/or the page names, etc. I don't necessarily want to get a professional site yet as I'm still learning and I think I should wait until my pictures are a little stronger.

SO, my question I guess is, without having to re-learn code right now does anyone know of any other hosting (I'd be willing to pay if the templates are adjustable and have classic, clean, simple looks) sites out there that give you a good amount of space, bandwidth, meta-tag capability, etc that aren't too expensive? OR should I just keep this site and pay to get rid of the ads?

Thank you!

Natalie

Chris of Arabia · Sep 4, 2008

There are dozens of templates available - try this one --> http://www.oswd.org/

Big Mike · Sep 4, 2008

You don't have to buy a template from the same place that you are hosting with. Google for 'photography website template' and you will have plenty to choose from.

There are lots of hosting companies as well. I recently switched to HostGator and am happy with it so far.

jakedoza · Sep 4, 2008

First.. your site looks pretty good how it is.. good job!

I have a photographer friend that uses bludomain.com.. I checked it out, but for me its not editable enough. I'm actually looking for a good flash template that I can re-edit with flash and dreamweaver. I have my domain and hosting through godaddy.com.. half my site is hosted there and the guest book part of it is hosted right here in my living room. I created it with dreamweaver, photoshop, and flash from the ground up.... now I'm looking at changing it. I know there are a lot of choices out there, but it also depends on how savy you are on web design.. and how much you are willing to spend for a good template and hosting.

I think I spent something like $200 for 2 years hosting and 2 years for my domain at godaddy.. but all they provided for that was a place to put a webpage.. I had to design it myself... and just beware.. web design is expensive!

Good luck!

jenn76 · Sep 4, 2008

If you happen to use a Mac like I do, you could get a Mobile Me (like old .mac) subscription, and they give you lots of space for a website, with lots of choices for templates. I love mine!
http://web.me.com/flygirl76

Crimsonandwhite · Sep 5, 2008

oh incoming shameless plug.....

my company does web design and web hosting. www.echoesmarketing.com Shoot me an email and make sure to let me know you are a TPF'er and we can work up a great deal!

We could also do you a very nice Wordpress site to blog with that a lot of people are using these days for a website resource...lots of possibilites.

good luck either way

William Petruzzo · Sep 5, 2008

Ahh, cheap host and Zenphoto. It's simple, clean, free and easy to use. Plus, you can write your own template later if you want.

AussieDee · Sep 5, 2008

jenn76 said:
If you happen to use a Mac like I do, you could get a Mobile Me (like old .mac) subscription, and they give you lots of space for a website, with lots of choices for templates. I love mine!
http://web.me.com/flygirl76

Good 'ol Mac! I just created a site for a Gift Shoppe using the templates from iWeb. Great program. And if you don't wanna host through .mac (.me) Then purchase a domain and find a host to upload the files to.

Angelo · Sep 5, 2008

Hi,
I think your web site look very good.
I got my template from www.portfoliositez.com. I'm happy with it, easy to use and cheap.

www.merconephotography.com

Angelo

joyride · Sep 5, 2008

Im going to second oswd.org. There are a ton of good templates on there, and you can almost infinitely modify them to your liking. I have used templates from there on 4 different web pages.

martyn · Sep 25, 2008

Hi Natalie,

Take a look at my site - Martyn Feller - I used a company called Picaholic - they have templated flash sites which are hosted by them, so their fee covers the site and hosting.

You dont need to learn any code as its a simple admin area which is super user friendly.

Cheers,
Martyn

lockwood81 · Sep 25, 2008

Also, www.smugmug.com is a pretty good photo hosting site.

mrodgers · Sep 25, 2008

Big Mike said:
You don't have to buy a template from the same place that you are hosting with. Google for 'photography website template' and you will have plenty to choose from.

There are lots of hosting companies as well. I recently switched to HostGator and am happy with it so far.

For a photo gallery template, I was going to suggest SimpleViewer. Then I looked at Big Mike's site and his gallery, and I see he is using SimpleViewer

.

I haven't set anything up yet for myself. I've been wanting to do that and I just found out about SimpleViewer the other day. It looks quite nice and... well... simple!

chrisburke · Sep 25, 2008

RE: The comments about Mobile Me (dot mac) it's great... personally I hate the templates they give you (they just seem so blah to me) I like to create my own themes from scratch in iWeb (and publish to dot mac) it's a lot more personal that way... I'm actually planning on releasing my new site in about a week or so.. I've put a lot of time into this one (using iWeb and mobile me) and I'm so very happy with it..

I once had a site with Photobiz.com they were very professional looking... but you pay for it.. they arent cheap...

photographybygray · Sep 26, 2008

photobiz is professional looking and really easy to use, plus you can swap templates on the fly. the downside is the flash templates aren't the greatest for search engines and as mentioned before, it's not a free service.