Any better alternatives to SmugMug?

I registered for SmugMug and have a free trial for a month. What I have found is that it is not user friendly whatsoever. I have a decent amount of knowledge in building web pages, but this is more of a hassle than anything else.

I would like a site that has custom themes that I can select and then build from there.
All I want it for is to be able to showcase my photos in albums. Maybe a simple homepage, gallery page, and contact page. Simple.

Have you checked out dgrin.com? It has an entire section for support, hacks, and help with Smugmug. If you look at the bottom of this page there's more thread suggestions too.

flowrider wrote in post #17132733
Have you checked out dgrin.com? It has an entire section for support, hacks, and help with Smugmug. If you look at the bottom of this page there's more thread suggestions too.

Kind of wanna get away from SmugMug at the moment. I don't care too much for the ability to allow people to purchase prints off of there and all that.I like being able to print myself, matte myself, and ship if necessary. Like I said, I just want something to act as a simple showcase.

If you want to self fulfillment then choose a Power account not the Pro. Power and the basic can both have shopping carts but you can't control the pricing at all. I turn the cart off altogether and just have them order through me.

flowrider wrote in post #17132800
If you want to self fulfillment then choose a Power account not the Pro. Power and the basic can both have shopping carts but you can't control the pricing at all. I turn the cart off altogether and just have them order through me.

Hmm, I'll have to look around some more on SmugMug i guess. It doesn't seem to be very user friendly as far as editing pages and adding content goes.

It's not bad. It does take time to customize. It helps if you know CSS and they no longer support Javascript which is a bit of a bummer. I'm constantly working on my site. Just tinkering a bit here and there.

If you want easy, look up wix.com. Drag and drop.

flowrider wrote in post #17132825
It's not bad. It does take time to customize. It helps if you know CSS and they no longer support Javascript which is a bit of a bummer. I'm constantly working on my site. Just tinkering a bit here and there.

If you want easy, look up wix.com. Drag and drop.

I used to mess around with CSS but that was ages ago. I'm not in the least bit interested in even starting that again. I'm no web designer, I simply want to pick a theme/layout and not have to tough the html/css. Again, simple photo display as a portfolio. Flickr is nice, but old shots get lost in a long photostream. Plus people don't take the time to go through galleries on flickr.

I basically want people to be able to go to my future site and be able to click on "Mt. Rainier National Park" if they want to see my shots from there. Or be able to click "Cityscapes" to see all the photos in that category, etc.

Why not WordPress. I use the self-hosting version. I picked a free theme, and customized it. I have some plugins that run the e-Commerce.

Zenfolio is very user-friendly and easy to use. It'll be very easy for you to set it up to do what you want.

Hikin Mike wrote in post #17134446
Why not WordPress. I use the self-hosting version. I picked a free theme, and customized it. I have some plugins that run the e-Commerce.

Can you turn wordpress into a custom domain (get rid of the xxxxxx.wordpress.com)

Hikin Mike wrote in post #17134446
Why not WordPress. I use the self-hosting version. I picked a free theme, and customized it. I have some plugins that run the e-Commerce.

The problem I have is not being able to figure out how in the heck to make things appear in the Nav bar. When hovering over the nav bar, the sub folders appear (ex. Hover over "portfolio" in nav bar which brings up more options like "landscape" "portraits" etc.) How in the world do you set up that hierarchy system?

JM Photos wrote in post #17135446
Can you turn wordpress into a custom domain (get rid of the xxxxxx.wordpress.com)

Yes, the self-hosted version allows that. The 'xxxx.wordpress.com' is the free version. Like I said previously, if you already have your own domain, you need a host.

JM Photos wrote in post #17135495
The problem I have is not being able to figure out how in the heck to make things appear in the Nav bar. When hovering over the nav bar, the sub folders appear (ex. Hover over "portfolio" in nav bar which brings up more options like "landscape" "portraits" etc.) How in the world do you set up that hierarchy system?

In your WordPress Dashboard, find 'Appearance > Menu'. Select the menu you want to edit. You can add menu items, and also you can move the "boxes" to create nested menus:

^ thank you for the help! I'm going to keep swinging away with SmugMug to see if I can get the hang. If not, I'll give Wordpress a go.

JM Photos wrote in post #17136462
^ thank you for the help! I'm going to keep swinging away with SmugMug to see if I can get the hang. If not, I'll give Wordpress a go.

I do have a Smugmug site too, but I don't promote it.

ceegee wrote in post #17134459
Zenfolio is very user-friendly and easy to use. It'll be very easy for you to set it up to do what you want.

+1 for Zenfolio. I use it 100% and love it.