What would you like from this forum

[Peter_AUS]

in regards to Web Design and Internet information.

[Photo-John]

I'd like to see some technical help for photographers and other people working on the Web. But even more, I'd like to see people sharing their Web sites and ideas for Web design. I think it would be neat for us to build some community around photographers' Web design, as well as photography itself. For instance, I need to build my own personal site, but I can't even figure out how to get started. I'm pretty good at busting out some code and doing product Web work. But I'm finding that starting from scratch on my own site is really, really hard. I guess it's a question of how best to represent and promote myself as a photographer. This is the type of thing that interests me.

And by the way, thanks for taking charge of this forum, Peter. And thanks for asking this question. It's a great way to get things rolling and find some direction for this forum.

Oh yeah - featured Web sites! Featuring creative and well-structured Web sites, whether they belong to community members or not, is a good way to inspire us - errrr, me

[Peter_AUS]

I can totally relate to that Photo-John about building own personal sites, it is hard to decide where to start. I hope more people will post to this sticky to get some meat in the Sandwich and then we can all take it from there.

I suppose from a Photography point of view, the best way to start is deciding what the audience is that you are going to try and address with your website. It is going to be a site where you can share images with friends and family, or is it going to be leading hopefully to a commercial enterprise and making money.

If it is for friends, then the KISS principle is probably the best way to go. There are many sites around that people can download templates for website at little or no cost to them, to use as a basis for a website. This entails changing the dummy info with information that pertains to yourself and then build on it from there, using the dummy page/s as defaults and renaming them when you have completed editing them.

If the website is for a commercial enterprise then that might entail getting a website developer to build one for you and then you can maintain it yourself or them, but yes that is a costly way to go, but if you are earning money from it, then that becomes a cost of doing business and is tax deductable from the income earned, and so is your computer and the internet connection that you pay for each month.

I hope that is a start for all of us to add to.

[mtbbrian]

Welcome to moderatordom Peter.

Discussions and constructive feedback on websites would be great!
There are few places out there that offer such things. Maybe even some basic HTML threads too. I for one have little understanding for HTML, I am THANKFUL for wysiwyg in Dream Weaver!

John please stop coming up with all these great forums!!! When am I ever going to get any work done at work?

Brian

[mtbbrian]

I would recommend looking around at photographers that you admire for ideas on a website. That is kind of what I did, when I was really getting serious about mine.
Of course I posted a thread or two here too, and got some great ideas and suggestions.
I get 2000+ hits on my site, it is listed on every post I make here and on mtbr, and a few other biking related websites. My site has caught the interest of others who have asked if they could display my photographs on their websites.

Come on John! You can do it!
Brian

[another view]

As someone who's gotta make some time to get my own site started, I'd like to see some basics. We're all at least somewhat computer literate (we're on a web forum about digital photography, right?) but everyone has their own comfort level and ambitions.

I have registered my domain name - mainly because I'm doing business cards (hopefully the design will be back soon, I have a graphics arts friend) and need to take the next step. For now, I'll probably just have a "coming soon" page with one image and an e-mail link. Next phase will be to have maybe 3 galleries of 6-8 shots each and a bio page (not too vain, is it?). Down the road, see where this takes me - maybe on-line proofing that's password protected, maybe print sales. Along the lines of champagne taste on a beer budget, I want a professional looking site that I can maintain myself (maybe asking just a little too much, but hopefully I can change the images periodically).

I guess it's important for me to leave options open. I don't want to take any steps in doing this that I'll regret down the road. I don't have a clue what that would be, but for example if I was getting into photography with an eye towards digital, I wouldn't want to gather a bag full of Canon FD stuff - if that makes sense.

[Peter_AUS]

Another View,

I think you are approaching that logically and yes it is good to register your own domain name, selecting a good one is the hard bit to start. Graphics from a friend is great hopefully saves you money, and business cards are good as well. Getting the right web host is the challange as it is always an unknown entity even when recommended by someone you know. There site might be great for what they have but not necessarily for what you want. Trying to find the good and the bad reports about hosting companies is the next challange, and usually one that is missed 95% of the time be most people.

Deciding what program/s you are going to use to design your site is the next step after finding the hosting company as you then know what sites they can host for you. No good building your site on PHP or ASP etc and finding the hosting place doesn't support that.

When you have your site registered, hosting company in place and then ready to rock and roll, posting an Under Construction page with an email address is a great idea. Including an image maybe of your work, something powerfull to get people to return is another idea that works well.

Bio page I think is important depending on the purpose of your site, Contact info is important too, not just email address. Some people like to contact in other ways besides email, I certainly do.

Building the site is the next challange and is usually a bit of a fluid idea. If you want your pages to basically have the same format then it is a good idea to create a template that can be used to base new pages on. Can be fiddly at first but becomes easier with practice. Me I like frames on my home page and change the info in just one frame as people click through, leaving the basic pages the same and only needing to change just the info displayed by clicking. Others hate frames and use tables to build their sites.

WYSIWYG programs are great for the novice to use and becomes easier as you develop. The beauty of these is that you can usually see what the page will look like as you are developing the website and make changes based on viewed page, instead of having to post it up to the website all the time to see it in production.

I think it is always a good idea to test a site fully before posting it up live to try and iron out little things that slip through the construction. That way most things are usually ironed out early.

Limiting the amount of shots to a page I think is a good idea, allowing for easier viewing by the browsers, without having to click to see a bigger image and wasting their bandwidth unnecessarily. I know I find it frustating to see a large amount of little images, not being able to see them properly without clicking and loading a larger image not the way I would do it. But then each to their own.

Hope you have your site up and running soon.

[another view]

Thanks for all the advice, Peter. Can you recommend a basic program (WYSIWYG type)? Sounds like it might be best for me to start with that, then depending on where I go with it and what I decide to do with it, go for something like the Adobe program (can't remember the name off hand) later.

[Sebastian]

Thanks for all the advice, Peter. Can you recommend a basic program (WYSIWYG type)? Sounds like it might be best for me to start with that, then depending on where I go with it and what I decide to do with it, go for something like the Adobe program (can't remember the name off hand) later.

Steve,

Check the FAQ, we have several recommendatiosn listed there.

[Peter_AUS]

Another View, you are talking about Adobe GoLive latest version is the CS version.

There is Hotdog, Dreamweaver (I recommend this one, not cheap but get an earlier version off of ebay and get the upgrade cheaper that way), Frontpage (not my favourite), AceHTML (Visicom Media a Canadian Company), NoteTab Pro (Fookes Software) this is pure HTML although it does have a sidebar that allows you to pick up the headings into the page and then prompts for data input to get information in, Coldfusion an expensive hard to use for the Novice and also what's in the FAQ's as Seb said above.

Me I use Dreamweaver after trying a lot of the above after forking out the Money for them. I also use NoteTab Pro for somethings as well.

[mtbbrian]

DreamWeaver is the shizzle bizzle!
Once you understand it, you will never want to use anything else.
If you are a total novice with HTML and doing web stuff(Like I was, when I began my site), it will take a little more time to learn the program.
Brian

[fiona]

Generally, the topic interests me.. Plus there are some who shares lots of vital information...









___________________
discount printing

[Axle]

Dreamweaver is my absolute personal favourite.

[.Lupo.]

I think the site should try and incoporate more info like a child forum. I.e Html, PHP, action script tutorials etc. Or have a gfx section so people can request photography sigs.
Just an idea

[CitizenM]

Nice gallary mtbbrian. How did setup the html part?