Building a New Website - CMS Options

I am building a new website for my photography and I'd like some advice on what to use to build it. I have 3 options available for a CMS system: Wordpress, Joomla and Concrete5. I have some Wordpress experience, but haven't used it in quite some time. Does anyone have experience with Concrete5? I couldn't find anything searching the forums. I see that some folks use Joomla and are happy with it. I think that Joomla would probably be better than Wordpress for managing the entire site, though if Wordpress is good for doing all this stuff (described below) nowadays, then I could definitely be convinced to use just the single system on my website.

My Requirements:

• Hosting on my own personal domain. I already have the domain name registered and hosted. With this in mind, whatever I use to build the website, needs to give me full control. I want to be able to access the code directly when necessary.
  
  
• Gallery Software - Back in 2007 I built my own gallery software, to serve two purposes: 1) teaching myself PHP & MySQL, and 2) being able to FTP my photos directly to the website from my Nokia N95 phone and have it automatically generate thumbnails. However, it's not professional looking.
  
  I want something that is a quality, robust gallery app to display my portfolio. I am considering using Lightroom to build & export web galleries. I plan on having several galleries separated by style and subject. For instance a real estate gallery, an astrophotography gallery, a landscape & nature gallery, and a city & urban gallery. So while I think it would be easiest to be able to export web galleries from LR, if one of these CMS solutions has a nice gallery plugin/extension/theme​, I could probably use that for layout and still export my images from LR and easily upload to my site.
  
  
• Client Area - When I do a job for a client, I want to place the deliverables behind a password. Currently I do this with a subfolder on the domain using the .htaccess to give clients their own login to their own folder where they can download their files. It would be nice if I could display their work to them in a gallery as well as provide them a link for the zip files. But mainly I just need to control access and provide the zip files. This is pretty easy to do by hand, but wouldn't mind using a CMS solution to simplify it.
  
  
• eCommerce solution for selling prints - I am not looking for a service that will fulfill the prints themselves. I just want to take the orders and payments. I have a lab I use for my printing and depending on the order will either have the prints shipped to myself and finish the work before delivering to the client (for instance mounting, framing, etc.), or if the client just wants prints I can drop ship direct from the lab. I am looking at using Zen Cart to handle this, but have also begun to look at plugins/extensions for the various CMS solutions like Ecwid.
  
  
• Blog/Journal - I will probably use Wordpress for this part of the site. Basically something that I use to write an article here an there about a gallery, about a trip, a tutorial, etc. It should be easy enough to install Wordpress to a subfolder and use it just for this, even if I use Joomla or Concrete5 to manage the rest of the site.
  
  
• SEO - Whatever I use, I want to be able to optimize for SEO, even if that requires me to go into the code and do a few modifications myself. But whatever software I use should probably handle image alt tags, page titles and descriptions at the least. I can go in and insert H1 & H2 if necessary. If this requires a plugin/extension, like Yoast, so be it. I just want to make sure I take care of this when initially building the site.
  
  
• Responsive - In this day and age, people aren't always (or even often) accessing websites from a desktop or laptop computer. So the website needs to respond to the device the visitor is using and present itself in a way that displays correctly on the user's screen.
  
  
• Final Thoughts - So generally I'm thinking that I want some kind of software for the gallery/portfolio, much like Wordpress is used for blogs, which may be an extension/plugin for the CMS system or might just be the LR web exports. I would have something like a landing page at domain.com with the menu, introductory paragraphs, an image or few; the portfolio at domain.com/portfolio; have the eCommerce/purchasing built-in to the gallery ideally, or just a link that they can click on for the image to go to the eCommerce module and choose their print size, etc.; and I will likely use Wordpress at domain.com/blog or whatever for writing articles/updates/etc.
  

I was just having a discussion with some very smart people this weekend about word press. One conclusion we came to was that modifying someone else's templates and plug ins can yield unexpected results. Back in the day, when everything was based on a single page width and one layout, tweaking things was not that hard. Now with responsive designs, it is much more of a pain in the neck.

That said, word press is still a great option. It's SEO options are very robust. Development for the main code base, galleries and Plug-ins is robust.

I am not familliar with Joomla, but from what I know, your decision probably lies with the amount of custom work you want to do vs just plugging in and letting it do its thing.

Wordpress can certainly do all the things you want. There are a host of different gallery plugins and ecommerce solutions. I did implement ecwid on my site and it was quick and easy to set up. However I have since switched to woocomerce because ecwid had (what some considered to be a stupid design flaw) and when people asked for it to be changed the developers replied with "we don't think you really want it changed". Think shopify is another popular one but I have zero experience with it.

WordPress is going to get you where you need to go! Do not go with Joomla! You want a wide range of themes and plug-ins to choose from and WordPress is the name of the game. I'm happy to help you with any questions and recommend the best plug-ins. I've been building sites with WordPress for 14 years...

Thanks for the replies, I'll take them one by one.

Left Handed Brisket wrote in post #18633369
I was just having a discussion with some very smart people this weekend about word press. One conclusion we came to was that modifying someone else's templates and plug ins can yield unexpected results. Back in the day, when everything was based on a single page width and one layout, tweaking things was not that hard. Now with responsive designs, it is much more of a pain in the neck.

That said, word press is still a great option. It's SEO options are very robust. Development for the main code base, galleries and Plug-ins is robust.

I am not familliar with Joomla, but from what I know, your decision probably lies with the amount of custom work you want to do vs just plugging in and letting it do its thing.

I hear what you are saying about responsive websites, and modifying the templates for them. That's also one requirement I have, and I will edit the op to reflect that I do want the website to be responsive (adjusting its display for whatever device the visitor is using to show correctly on that device).

With the SEO in WordPress these days... do you still need to use a plugin, like Yoast, or is the built-in SEO strong enough to not require that anymore? I'm not too worried about having the chops to do custom work, I have a fair amount of tech experience and skills, but obviously the less that is required the more time I have for photography and other life activities.

Dan Marchant wrote in post #18633464
Wordpress can certainly do all the things you want. There are a host of different gallery plugins and ecommerce solutions. I did implement ecwid on my site and it was quick and easy to set up. However I have since switched to woocomerce because ecwid had (what some considered to be a stupid design flaw) and when people asked for it to be changed the developers replied with "we don't think you really want it changed". Think shopify is another popular one but I have zero experience with it.

Woocommerce was on my radar but I hadn't looked at it directly yet. Giving it a quick cursory look it seems like a good option. I like that it is free rather than spending a monthly fee on Ecwid. With the blog and ecommerce being in WordPress it seems like it would be a good idea to just use WordPress for the entire site rather than trying to manage multiple CMS solutions. So I guess then one big question I have is what to use to run the gallery. Are there some good plugins I should evaluate, or just let Lightroom build it? I'm not totally opposed to paying for these things, though I would prefer a one-time fee for a plugin rather than a subscription service.

jainlemos wrote in post #18633790
WordPress is going to get you where you need to go! Do not go with Joomla! You want a wide range of themes and plug-ins to choose from and WordPress is the name of the game. I'm happy to help you with any questions and recommend the best plug-ins. I've been building sites with WordPress for 14 years...

Thanks for your thoughts, and welcome to POTN! What plugins would you consider for the gallery functionality? As I mentioned, one option I'm considering is using Lightroom's Web module to create the galleries, but it is really not difficult to just export the images at the correct resolution and format and then FTP or upload via the backend of some WP plugin. So if there are some really good plugins for the gallery in WP, I would love to compare them. I don't want to use a Flash gallery, HTML is much better for SEO and responsiveness. And just to repeat some of my reply above: is SEO in WP these days good enough, or should one still use a plugin like Yoast? Do you also like the Woocommerce plugin Dan mentioned above? I'm still learning about it, but I do like that it is free in comparison to Ecwid.

I recommend looking through WP themes that are designed for displaying galleries. Just do a generic search for top WordPress themes for photographers and you'll get a ton of suggestions. This way, the theme has a gallery function already built in and you don't have to use a plug-in for the gallery. Do you want/need to have captions on every image or is there a text block that introduces each gallery? Do you have a mix of verticals and horizontals in each gallery? That makes a big difference in how the gallery responds and the features you'll need. Take a look at MetaSlider: https://www.metaslider​.com. Most gallery plug-ins use shortcodes, so I'm not sure how a Lightroom gallery is going to work unless it allows for that. Be sure to size your images to 1920 on the long side so they always look great at full screen size, and then compress them for web (on top of a Photoshop "save for web") without loss so they all load quickly. You want images to be under 300KB whenever possible. I use https://compressor.io. If you want to disable right click, use the plug-in WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click. There is NO reason to use Flash in a gallery or really anywhere on your site!

A note about responsiveness: All good WP themes will be ready to go from the start so you don't have to worry about this. Be prepared to pay about $80-$100 for a good WP theme pro-version. Are you going to do all the backend work yourself? I use Divi and Divi builder a lot because building and editing is so easy, but that will take some pre-thought on laying out your site, and might be too much horsepower for what you need. I also recommend SiteGround for hosting, they are really reasonably priced and well run. GoDaddy isn't bad these days, either, and their CS is pretty good. But if you want custom domain emails you have to pay extra on GoDaddy.

I use All in One SEO for my plug-in. I used to use Yoast but I like this one much better. Good luck and keep us posted!

Edit: Here is a list of WP themes I just came across: http://www.topdesignma​g.com …tography-wordpress-themes

Another vote for Siteground for hosting. I use them to host my site https://danmarchant.co​m which uses the Oshine theme (includes various portfolio/gallery options) and works automatically with Woocommerce (I am just in the process of setting up a print shop).

I am using WordPress to build a website and having a lot of trouble making it work the way I want - in addition, I admit, am pretty tech dumb. If anyone is proficient in WP, I have a job for you .... help me fix it the way I want it to work. Will pay reasonable fee. Site is not complex and is not a retail selling site.

PM me or email me w p d 4 4 at h o t m a i l Thx Or advise me if you have a contact.