Web hosting software (take 2)

Hi,
I am looking for web hosting software. Since last time I asked, I think I refined what I am looking for, hence the new thread. I am not a professional, so I don't want to pay too much, but I am not limited to free options.

Here is what I need:
1. Password protected gallery
2. Prevent download of the photos by default
3. Possibility to download with a different password than the gallery password. Ideally download of the entire gallery would be possible in a single click.
4. Prevent Google and other similar service to search my photos (I don't want them to be on images.google. com or other services).
5. Allow comments that I can filter first (or delete them after if they are not appropriate).
6. Option to make slideshow.
7. Option to display large photo, close to full screen.
8. Hierarchical storage (Group (set of gallery), gallery).

Optional:
1. Be able to use the software on two different domain name (same server)

I could continue with my zenfolio, but I need to pay yearly and storage is starting to be limiting. I thus have to option to switch to my web server and get an appropriate software.

Wordpress theme is definitely an option, but I am lost in the themes (photocrati, WIdely, touchfolio, asteria, etc.). I just don't have time to test them all until I find one that fits my requirements. Any help would be appreciated.

Maybe I am too picky.

Which software would do most of those things?

Simple answer. Wordpress.

The themes are simply the front end that you pick or customize to your liking (e.g. layout, colors, graphics, etc). The majority of the freely available themes will allow you to do most of your list. What isn't available, can be accomplished via plugins.

Are you planning on hosting this yourself?

drvnbysound wrote in post #16833441
Simple answer. Wordpress.

The themes are simply the front end that you pick or customize to your liking (e.g. layout, colors, graphics, etc). The majority of the freely available themes will allow you to do most of your list. What isn't available, can be accomplished via plugins.

Are you planning on hosting this yourself?

I agree. You can do this with Wordpress.

Hi,
I will self-host if I go the Wordpress route.

Can you point me to a tutorial or something that would help me fill up the points mentioned above?

Can you recommend a theme that would do all that "out of the box"?

Thank you very much.

A couple of things to consider when self hosting:
Does your ISP allow enough bandwidth for viewers of your site to have good response times? Understand that as people are browsing your site, your internet speed will be decreased.

Is your firewall robust enough to handle additional traffic and intrusion attempts?

The latter can become a very sticky point. All websites are susceptible to 'hackers'. Wordpress is no different, and can often times attract more attempts simply because it's so widely used. I don't want to tell you what you should and shouldn't do when it comes to your own network security, just wanted to make sure that you understand that it should be a consideration.

Personally, I choose to pay for hosting because I'd rather the hosting company assume the hacking risk than enable someone to use my own webserver as a proxy to launch attacks on my own network.

Regarding the capabilities, as I stated above, most all of that can be accomplished via the default Wordpress installation. A bit of searching on Wordpress will provide step-by-step instructions on how to do everything you need and more.

Regarding themes, here are 2,400+ free ones:
http://wordpress.org/t​hemes/

I'm using one of the Twenty [Something] themes, simply because I liked the default style and it closely matched what I was looking for with regard to layout and styling. I modified it a bit by creating a child theme.

Here is a gallery plugin that you will probably want to consider:
http://wordpress.org/p​lugins/nextgen-gallery/

Thanks a lot!

Actually when I said that I will host myself, I meant that I will rent from hosting site and manage it from there.

I already install the Wordpress on the website, I just need to go through the learning curve (it is always steep at the beginning).

Do you have any plug-in that you would recommend?

There are interesting feature that you can see in the examples of theme, but they don't tell you how to achieve them (e.g. starting a pseudo slideshow on http://www.themeskingd​om.com/demo/widely/ when you click on a photo)

Best regards,

wallace1837 wrote in post #16837818
Thanks a lot!

Actually when I said that I will host myself, I meant that I will rent from hosting site and manage it from there.

I already install the Wordpress on the website, I just need to go through the learning curve (it is always steep at the beginning).

Do you have any plug-in that you would recommend?

There are interesting feature that you can see in the examples of theme, but they don't tell you how to achieve them (e.g. starting a pseudo slideshow on http://www.themeskingd​om.com/demo/widely/ when you click on a photo)

Best regards,

Self-hosting generally means that you are hosting the webserver yourself; either at your residence or business. Your ISP and network would be utilized to access the website.

Shared hosting, generally means that you are renting server space from a server farm; most (if not all) hosting providers use virtual machines on servers to allow multiple people to rent space from a single piece of hardware.

Anyhow, there are literally thousands of plug-ins that can be installed which will enable all sorts of various capabilities. These are just the ones listed on the Wordpress site:
https://wordpress.org/​plugins/

drvnbysound wrote in post #16838728
Self-hosting generally means that you are hosting the webserver yourself; either at your residence or business. Your ISP and network would be utilized to access the website.

Shared hosting, generally means that you are renting server space from a server farm; most (if not all) hosting providers use virtual machines on servers to allow multiple people to rent space from a single piece of hardware.

Anyhow, there are literally thousands of plug-ins that can be installed which will enable all sorts of various capabilities. These are just the ones listed on the Wordpress site:
https://wordpress.org/​plugins/

I am on the shared hosting side then.

My issue with the thousands of plug-ins is that I don't know where to start. When I look at a website, I find something I want to do, but I don't know which pug-in is required to do it. Even if I find the right plug-in there are usually so many option (tweaking) involved that I could not replicate it.

Any suggestion on how to find what the others are using, even in the theme demo of the free themes?

Not really.

I'm not sure what browser you are using, but I'll say that Firebug with Firefox will be your friend; Chrome has it by default I believe. You can right-click on items on any site (including your own as you are developing) and select the option to "Inspect Element". It will bring up a window that shows the code of the page and specifically point to the item of your choosing, within whatever file.

Unfortunately, there is no good way of knowing (that I know of) what plug-ins someone else is using. The Inspect Element may provide some clues, but I doubt they'll provide the whole story.

Last year was my first attempt at using Wordpress. It took me a couple of weeks to get my site customized to my liking and fully built out; I re-built from scratch a few times.

drvnbysound wrote in post #16840457
Not really.

I'm not sure what browser you are using, but I'll say that Firebug with Firefox will be your friend; Chrome has it by default I believe. You can right-click on items on any site (including your own as you are developing) and select the option to "Inspect Element". It will bring up a window that shows the code of the page and specifically point to the item of your choosing, within whatever file.

Unfortunately, there is no good way of knowing (that I know of) what plug-ins someone else is using. The Inspect Element may provide some clues, but I doubt they'll provide the whole story.

Last year was my first attempt at using Wordpress. It took me a couple of weeks to get my site customized to my liking and fully built out; I re-built from scratch a few times.

You can view the source code and most time you can see what plugins are used and also the theme used.

Just to add... You can take a look at the Portfolio Press theme. I'm not using it on my site, but did help refine a friend's site.

Any guide for dummies to build a website with wordpress, domain name and 3rd party hosting?

thanks