"Blogsite" vs. website & blog

[bleahyphoto]

Curious if anyone has any experience setting up and running a "blogsite" by which I mean a blog style setup that you can also sort by gallery and type, it's a little strange to explain, but I'm sure many of you know of Jessica Claire, www.jessicaclaire.net. I LOVE her setup and it totally makes sense for me that she only has one place to update on a regular basis, but its still professional enough to send her potential clients to. I definitely don't want to copy her style, but I'd love to be able to post new photos or recent projects and update my portfolio at the same time. Any thoughts?

[Picture North Carolina]

Never heard of her, but I think the site is an example of what NOT to do... at least IMHO.

It took too long to load, even on my 8 meg cable. The reason is that she has way too many images on a single page in a linear fashion. It would be even worse for people with cable with less capacity, DSL users, and God forbid - modem users.

A bad design.

[sevillafox]

I am running one at the moment with my galleries linked to my flash site.

Also, portfoliositez has a couple templates available.

[jen19806]

You should check out some of the wordpress themes like prophoto or the ones by tofurious. Also, woo themes and elegant themes have some photoblog themes. The prophoto theme can very easily give you something very similar to the site you posted. It may not be able to do the flash lead in (which I didn't love because it seemed to take too long) but they have slider headers so you can have a dynamic slideshow at the top.

[bobbyz]

Doesn't it look like ShowIT thing?

[AleksRachael]

It did not take long to load for me!

[OdiN1701]

I think you need to enter the Blagosphere and do a Blag on the intertubes. Blags are better than a regular old wobsite, and you can be a part of the interblag community.

[tim]

Check out the ProFoto theme - I think that's what it's called. Bobby Earle uses it too, but i'm not sure if he has a blogsite or blog + website.

[Tessa]

I have both a website and a blog. The main site is purely for galleries, nothing else, while the blog (powered by WordPress, hosted on my site) is used to post a few pictures and some text about recent shoots - with a link to the appropriate gallery.

[darosk]

I don't like the setup - too many pictures on a single page.

Aesthetically it's got a nice crisp design - but no, the layout and concept don't work for me. I happen to like that blogs and websites are separate.

[jonwhite]

Check out the ProFoto theme - I think that's what it's called. Bobby Earle uses it too, but i'm not sure if he has a blogsite or blog + website.

Bobby Earle has a Showit Sites (http://www.showitfast.com/) website and a Blogger blog Tim. I think he plans to swap his blog over to wordpress+pro photo but he hasn't done it yet.

There is quite a few of the other wedding togs over on the wedding foto forum (http://www.weddingfotoforum.com/forum/) that use Wordpress+Profoto (http://www.prophotoblogs.com/) though, myself included, its a great blog theme for photographers imo and also very good for SEO.

My own and a few others that I know that use Wordpress+Prophoto


http://boundlessphotos.com/blog/

http://perfectexpressions.co.uk/blog/

http://www.tonyfanningphotography.co.uk/blog/

http://simonrevill.com/blog/

http://ofdphoto.com/

[bnlearle]

Never heard of her, but I think the site is an example of what NOT to do... at least IMHO.

It took too long to load, even on my 8 meg cable. The reason is that she has way too many images on a single page in a linear fashion. It would be even worse for people with cable with less capacity, DSL users, and God forbid - modem users.

A bad design.
Just because it takes a second to load doesn't make it a bad design. And I have TERRIBLE internet and it loads instantly for me. Just sayin...

Jon, you're right that I use showit sites (http://www.showitfast.com/) and blogger :) And it's been you and Nick that have actually been quite influential in making me switch to wordpress! Thanks :D

Now I just need to actually do it...

[damonb]

"Curious if anyone has any experience setting up and running a "blogsite" by which I mean a blog style setup that you can also sort by gallery and type, it's a little strange to explain,"

Wordpress has a ton of ton of different themes available specifically for photographers (some free, some paid) so that might be an option if you're looking to get your own up and running.

While Flash looks great on blogs or websites, Flash does create some problems around load times & Flash isn't SEO-friendly (one of the problems with her site).