Want my own website... smugmug?

[shakin360]

I've been thinking about getting my own website for a while. I'm going to be starting a graphic design/photography business on the side sometime this year. The purpose of the website would be to have my design and photography portfolios, place for people to order pics, my contact info, and some services/packages informations. Mainly for people to find more about me and what I do.

My question is mainly about smugmug. I am leaning towards their pro package and getting my own domain name. How easy is it to make a pro looking but simple site on smugmug? I don't know much about HTML or javascript. Would I be lost? Do they have any templates or anything like that.

What are my other options for that price range?

Thanks!

[langelis]

I went to Joker.com, got a domain name and then set up the site at Smugmug all in 30 minutes. They have a lot of templates for sides and are are customizable with a little practice. Here is my site, although I have not posted any pictures or designed it yet: http://www.frenchfryphotography.com . I hope to do the design this weekend.

[Big John]

They have templates to use and absolutely fantastic customer support! I am using the medium level of service and can customize my sight much more than I already have. I am not set up to sell off their site, but i am quite happy with having a place to direct possible customers for an online viewing.Take a look at my site below when you have a chance.

[tim]

IMHO smugmug sites don't look overly professional - look at the title of langelis's site, and the links down the bottom of the page. Personally I got a domain name, got a host, found a site I liked, "borrowed" their design, and put in my own words and pics. I use jalbum to do my galleries. Works well for me.

[aliflack]

I would strongly suggest using a hosting company (I use 1and1) and building your own site - its not as scary or hard as you might think, especially if you have access to programs like frontpage or dreamweaver.

There are loads of great resources on the web for how to create websites and tons of free tools to use. The drop-down menu system on my website was done using a free downloadable program, with the coding work limited to the simple copy and pasting of the code into my html pages...easy!

It's probably best to write a list of all the things you want to do with your website, then review that against the service offered by companies such as Smugmug. If they can meet 90% of your needs, ask yourself if the remaining 10% are important and if it's worth the investment to develop your own site to achieve them.

[lakiluno]

I have my own host and I have a gallery on there. You don't need to even design your own website - theres tons of PHP and MySQL galleries available, and a number of HTML gallery builders. The main drawback of an HTML gallery builder is that its tricky to add new photos, but PHP and MySQL galleries can do that, have user accounts, comments, and lots more.

I have found though, the best thing to use for a personal website with more than just a gallery is a CMS, in particular one called site baker (google it). You can install modules as well as gallerys, and its very customisable.

Anyway, my gallery is at http://gallery.rampen.ca, which is part of http://leo.rampen.ca

Leo

[zacker]

how much we talking per year for a pretty decent site? is something like $250.00 with the "sell by credit card" feature worth it?
-zacker-

[Halliday]

You can take a look at my website. At first I used another service for everything but was not happy with the results. I set up a Pro account on sumgmug and now the same address takes people to the pages there. I still use the old service for hosting low bandwith text pages.

It took some time to set up and was a bit confusing at times but was not bad overall.

[cforslund]

I would take a look at IXWebhosting. They were one of the top rated hosting companies last year. They have an economy plan that includes a domain name and 1 gb of space for $80.00 per year.

I have used them to host my site for the past year. They have excellent customer support.

www.ixwebhosting.com

Hope this helps.

[zacker]

i can get one from betterphoto, they have templats and you can choose your own name, like zacker.com or photosbyzacker or what ever you want (if its available) and you can even accept credit card payments all for like 250 per year.
-zacker-

[tbrasington]

I use www.34sp.com. Hosting is pretty cheap. I pay £15 a year for a gig of bandwith and 50mb of storage + php and mysql. Depending on how many photos you want to tick up and the quality you can buy more storage. Customer support is also really good.

I code my own gallery but www.hotscripts.com has a large collection of scripts you can use.

[dwterry]

I tried hosting my own website at first. Back then, it was only to display my images. I would use the site to post my "proofs" for weddings and portraits and such.

Then I got to thinking ... there are two different markets here. You have your direct customers (for a wedding, the bride and groom and their immediate family) and you also have customers who you may have never met before (could be extended family for a wedding, could also be spectators at a sporting event, etc).

So then I decided I wanted to be able to sell my images through my website because I could reach both markets this way. Most of my wedding sales treat the online images as proofs and my direct customer lets me know what they want to order. I then do touch-up work and sell directly to the customer.

But some images are sold, online, to people I have never met. In this case, smugmug works out great for me because they handle the ordering process, the credit card processing, and even the printing and shipping. I don't have to do anything except post the images online and set the prices (and then get the word out that the images are online).

So anyway, that's why I like smugmug. I wish, at times, for a little more flexibility in designing the page or in being able to host something other than images (like a video, for example). But for the most part it is handling my needs.

[zacker]

Hey David.. I just looked at your site...Very, very nice...
looks good.
-zacker-

[Vega$50]

The templates on Betterphoto look very similar to smugmug...and the price is $375 a year...kind of pricey...

[langelis]

I choose Smugmug for the credit card processing. For $99 a year, it's a good deal. My site right now sucks because I have not put for the effort yet to design it. I am still laying it all out on paper and playing with the logo. I also choose Smugmug after I researched other peoples work to make sure the site could be made more professional, instead of having that "file-sharing" look. Check out this example of what you can do: http://riverwild.smugmug.com/
Note: Doing you own site is better in my opinion also; however, it may be time and cost prohibited, and setting up the credit card transactions can be troublesome.

[aliflack]

If people are concerned about credit card payment processing, have a look at http://www.paypal.com. They have a range of services and the one that I intend to use is the self-billing invoice system - my customers (when I get some!) can fill in an order form on my site, then I'll send them an invoice which they pay via PayPal...

not that I've tried it out yet!

[MazerRakhm]

Wow dwterry, I think that is the best arranged SmugMug site I have seen to date, it's very nice. (As is your photography :wink: )

I've been with SmugMug for about 2 years, and havn't had a problem yet. Yes hosting your own site isn't all that daunting anymore, but it does take a lot of time. For $100 a year I get; unlimited storage, quite a bit of bandwith, they take credit card purchases with custom prices, handle all printing/shipping to customers, rss feeds, and quite a bit of site flexibility, all which can be set up and done in under 30 minutes to an hour.

In that amount of time I wouldn't even have a site coded decently to display a gallery.

[zacker]

I just set up mine on sunday morning, it takes more time to process and upload imiges than to actually do the site, I bought mine after seeing the great sites here.. thanks all!
-zacker- broken fence photography.

[jeff_b]

Monthly hosting is typically a negligible annual advertising expense compared to other areas like the phone book. Good site templates cost hundreds up to thousands of dollars. Consider having a web designer build you a simple, unique, custom site. You will have more control over the final product and a more impressive final result. Look forward to the day when your "small" website needs to be grown. That is a good day.

[shakin360]

I was just thinking. Couldn't I register a domain name and get a host for my site except link to a smugmug page for my gallery and for ordering. Since I wouldn't need to put too many pics up on the hosted site, it really wouldn't cost too much. Get what I'm saying. I think one of the examples that some gave a few posts before did that.

[Halliday]

I have my photos on smugmug but have a few extra pages hosted on another server and linked from my smugmug bio. Works for me.

[DeannaH]

this is a battle im having at the moment....there are a ton of nice winklet sites and others...that enable you to have a wonderful gallery on your own site....but is it cheaper than smugmug? nope, but I bet they are close...at least your hosting is covered..then you can add whatever you want to your site..because its yours...phew..what a hard choice..

[PhotosGuy]

online hosting and selling
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=99121

[Vega$50]

If people are concerned about credit card payment processing, have a look at http://www.paypal.com. They have a range of services and the one that I intend to use is the self-billing invoice system - my customers (when I get some!) can fill in an order form on my site, then I'll send them an invoice which they pay via PayPal...

not that I've tried it out yet!

I would be very wary about PayPal....They will freeze accounts for very minor infractions...For instance if a stolen card was processed, they would freeze our account, and you have to jump through hoops to get your money back. In addtion they have direct access to your accounts....There are better processors out there than paypal... google - paypal sucks and read up...it is scary..

[drookie]

They have templates to use and absolutely fantastic customer support! I am using the medium level of service and can customize my sight much more than I already have. I am not set up to sell off their site, but i am quite happy with having a place to direct possible customers for an online viewing.Take a look at my site below when you have a chance.

BigJohn,
Nice Smugmug. How did you set up the Small Medium Large Picture window with the translucent background with the thumbnails behind?
Mike

[vcutag]

I currently use DreamHost (http://dreamhost.com), where for $10 a month I get something like 30 gigs of storage and a terabyte of bandwidth (which I'm nowhere close to using), as well as installation support for Gallery 2 (see my gallery link, I just upgraded to it), weblog software, etc. Eventually I want to set up the eCommerce module for Gallery 2, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

I'm working on getting the actual site up, for right now all I have is a test directory with a splash page at http://tagphoto.org/test/. I've done all of the design myself, and it's tedious. But I'm a control freak, so I don't like templates. :)