Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Creating A WordPress Photography Portfolio: Plugins, Themes, Tutorials

Among existing photographer website platforms WordPress definitely is not the one to be overlooked. The latest releases of this software showed that WordPress extended its potential far beyond the blogging base getting more and more popularity as a comprehensive content management system.

Being armed with a set of image gallery related plugins a photographer can turn WordPress blog into a full-functional photo blog or even personal portfolio website. While photography website software like Ready Photo Site offer some easy-to-handle online photo site solutions for the creatives with little to none designer and programmer knowledge, WordPress platform requires some more advanced skills. Although WP engine becomes more user-friendly and simple-to-use with every new update, still you have to get your hands a bit dirty in some coding, plugin installation and theme configurations choosing it. If you are not ready to this, you’d better search for some CMS based flash photo website solution. However, if you are ready to spend some time and effort digging into the WordPress specs, you can create a professional photo website without any money expenses and in a matter of a few hours.

This article is aimed to help those who consider WordPress as a platform for website photo gallery or personal portfolio. Here you will find the list of useful photo gallery plugins, WP portfolio themes and tutorials. All materials and resources featured here are free to use and download. Besides, you can drive the inspiration from the collection of beautiful WordPress photo websites showcased in the end of the post.

Free WordPress Photoblog & Portfolio Themes

Using a pre-built WordPress theme is a reasonable solution for a start-up photography website. You can try the general system and see if you are comfortable with WordPress as a platform for your online photo gallery, and then you can switch to an exclusive commercial theme. Besides, very often free design layouts look very stylish and have a kind of premium look, so perhaps you will find the best photo site to your taste in this theme category.

ShutterThemes Free Photo Gallery Theme | Demo | Download

shutterthemes

PhotographerDream WordPress Theme | Demo | Download

photographerdream

Watercolor | Demo | Download

watercolor

Hair Tyson | Demo | Download

hair-tyson

Page-photo | Demo | Download

page-photo

AutoFocus | Demo | Download

autofocus

The Unstandard WordPress Theme | Demo | Download

the-unstandard

Fotolog theme | Demo | Download

fotolog-theme

Reflection | Demo | Download

xyloid

Viewport | Demo | Download

viewport

Grace | Demo | Download

grace

Fotofolio | Demo | Download

fotofolio

Grain | Demo | Download

grain

WP Pix | Demo | Download

wp-pix

Linguist | Demo | Download

linguist

WordPress Image Gallery Plugins

1. NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN Gallery is a comprehensive Image Gallery plugin for WordPress which includes such neat features as: flash slideshow, quick-to-sort http://webphotocms.fileave.com and albums, watermark function, tag support for http://webphotocms.fileave.com and many other cool options. This is one of the best solutions for organizing a full-fledged photography gallery based on WP.

2. Yet Another Photoblog

This is a full incorporated plugin that will help you convert WordPress into a handy photoblog system. It may come in handy if your theme is not of a portfolio type and you don't know how to tailor it to your needs. Yet Another Photoblog plugin allows practically every theme become a photoblog in virtually no time. Among usable options it provides are easy image upload, controllable thumbnail generation, EXIF data processing and output, out of the box sidebar widget and much more.

3. AWSOM Pixgallery

This is a native WordPress plugin, it doesn't require any file changes or external integration tools to be configured. All options can be managed within the regular WP Admin panel. It includes such features as Automatic Watermarking, captioning using the Visual Editor or HTML, sorting, auto-thumbnailing, Comicpress theme support, per image/gallery commenting and more.

4. Lightbox Gallery

The Lightbox Gallery plugin changes the view of galleries to the Lightbox, plus it displays the related metadata with the http://webphotocms.fileave.com. The associated caption for each image is viewed through a tool tip when you hover a mouse on a thumbnail.

5. Carousel Gallery (jQuery)

This plugin tweaks the WordPress gallery tag replacing it with a jQuery powered carousel.

6. PhotoSmash Galleries

PhotoSmash Galleries enables to create multiple photo galleries in posts or pages that your visitors can upload http://webphotocms.fileave.com to.

7. FlippingBook WordPress Gallery Plugin

This is a fully integrated image gallery plugin for WordPress with page flipping effect. It allows creating flash flipping books directly from the administrator panel via a specifically designed interface. The free version of this plugin is limited by GPL license.

8. IImage Panorama

This is a neat plugin which helps you create a 360 degree panorama picture to add to your blog.

9. Picasna

Picasna is a fullscreen flash photo gallery plugin that uses Google's Picasa 3 for editing and managing your photos. You can upload http://webphotocms.fileave.com directly to Picasa Web Albums and they will appear on your website in seconds.

10. Flickr Gallery

This plugin allows you to quickly upload Flickr photos on your site.

11. Featured Content Gallery

Featured Content Gallery is a customizable WordPress plugin that builds an automated rotating image gallery of your posts or pages for use anywhere within your theme.

Tutorials

1. WordPress Portfolio Theme Layout

In this tutorial you will learn how to put together a quick, simple but effective layout for WordPress based website photo gallery. This is a portfolio design, but the techniques and strategies used in this design could be applied elsewhere across the Web as well.

2. WordPress Gallery Tutorial (as seen on Ma.tt)

This tutorial explains how to create a WordPress image gallery similar to the one on Matt Mullenweg's website using nothing but core WordPress functionality.

3. How To: Plugin Free Photo Galleries in WordPress

In this tutorial you will find information on how to create a plugin-free image gallery in WordPress.

4. WordPress Image Galleries

By means of this tutorial you will learn how to make a Lightbox/Slideshowesque display of your gallery http://webphotocms.fileave.com without any custom coding but just with a couple of plugins and tweaks.

5. WordPress NextGen Gallery Tutorial

NextGEN is a great plugin to use to create WordPress Galleries. This is the introductory tutorial from the series that will walk you through each step of the NextGEN plugin integration.

Beautiful WordPress Photography Websites

Here is a collection of exquisite WordPress powered photography websites for your inspiration.

Rannie Turingan

rannie-turinagan

Charlie Stout

charlie-stout

Enrapture

enrapture

Justine Ungaro

justine-ungaro

Ryerson Photography

ryerson-blog

Stennie Photography

stennie

Portfolio/Photography

portfolio

Utzel-Butzel Photoblog

untzelbutzel

Jorg Jackel

jorg-jackel

Ericksmithrocks

ericsmithrocks

Eggraphy

eggraphy

As you see, you can easily create a decent portfolio with WordPress. If you expect your website to be more dynamic and interactive, consider flash platform like Ready Photo Site or Foliolink as a basis for it. Ready Photo Site flash photography website is a reasonable solution - you can build an attractive flash site using an intuitive graphic interface and content management system.

3 comments:

  1. Perfect lists! All are cool, useful for everyone having their photography blogs! Thanks for this post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks a lot for another marvellous article. I am always on the look-out for original WordPress tips to suggest to my own readers. Thank you for posting this tutorial . It's just what I was searching for. Truly marvellous post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks a lot for yet another amazing post. I am always on the look-out for fantastic WordPress tutorials to recommend to my own readers. Thanks for taking the time to write this article. It's exactly what I was looking for. Truly awesome post.

    ReplyDelete