All About Photography Website Design

Cool 2010 Photo Contests

2010-09-24T01:29:00.000-07:00

If you are fond of photography and full of creative ideas there is a great chance to try your hand at photo contest and showcase your best art works to the world. Except expressing your own point of view and being noticed by the other professionals from all over the world you also get the possibility to win some honorary prize or a pretty sum of money. You don’t have to be obligatory a master of photography since even if you are a newbie there is a bunch of great contest to take part in.

We’d like to familiarize you with the relevant photography competitions of 2010 which you can enter just right now. They are both free and member fees based but you have an opportunity to make yourself known and share your talent in very enjoyable way. So here is an overview of 10 photo contest of 2010 which are still waiting for your participation!

1. The National Geographic PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST

National Geographic runs a photo contests inviting you to take part and win $10,000 with your photo publication in National Geographic magazine. Your task is to submit qualitative and creative photos corresponding such categories as People, Places and Nature. You can submit as much art works as you want but the entry fee is $15 per photo.

Deadline: November 30, 2010, 9:00:00 a.m.

Prizes: the First Place winner in each Category will each receive US$2,500, and his/her winning photograph will be published in National Geographic magazine. One Grand Prize winner will receive, in addition to the First Place prize, US$7,500 and a trip to the District of Columbia, USA from Jan. 11 to Jan. 14, 2011 to participate in the National Geographic Photography Seminar.

Info: the photos must be in digital format and only online entries will be eligible. The photograph need not be taken with a digital camera; scans of negatives, transparencies, or photographic prints are acceptable. The photographs must have been taken within 2 years before the date of entry and may not previously have won an award in the National Geographic International Photography Contest or any National Geographic Traveler photo contest in the last three years.

2. Travel Photographer of the Year 2010

If you want to be the Travel Photographer of the Year 2010 you need to submit the most striking two portfolios from 3 categories - Encounters, World in Motion and Amazing Places. However, there is much more chances in other categories of the contest!

Deadline: 9th October 2010

Categories:
- three portfolio categories - Encounters, Amazing Places and World In Motion
- a One Shot category - Adventures
- First Shot (for less experienced amateur photographers) - Festival of Colour
- New Talent (if you want to start a photography career) - Sell It!
- Young Travel Photographer of the Year (two age groups) - Big World Small World

Prizes:
- trips to South East Asia, Botswana, India and Nepal with Intrepid Travel
- TPOTY cash bursaries
- Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom® software
- a Wacom Cintiq 12WX interactive pen display and Intuos4 and Bamboo Fun pen tablets
- the latest Lexar® Professional CompactFlash® memory cards and card readers
- LEE filters, customised leather portfolio books from Plastic Sandwich
- fine art Giclée exhibition prints from Genesis Imaging and copies of the latest TPOTY book, Journey Three.

Prizes for new and emerging photographers include Young Photographers Alliance portfolio reviews and places on the YPA mentoring programme, the chance of representation from Axiom Photographic Agency, and Photo Iconic photography tuition and image critiques.

3. The Sony World Photography Awards

The Sony World Photography Awards welcomes amateur and professional photographers to show their best talents to the world! There is both professional and open competitions for you to choose.

Professional Competition
Deadline: 5 January 2011
You need to submit your photo to become the new Professional Photographer of the Year and win the coveted prize, L’iris d’Or, as well as prize money of $25,000.
Submissions must be based on a body of work and may contain from 3 to 10 images. Image entered in to any of the 15 professional categories must have been completed or first published in 2010.

Open Competition
Deadline: 5 January 2011
If you are a true photography lover you get the chance to win capturing the perfect moment. No ages and levels of expertise restrictions. Whether your passion is animals, places, people, sport, or travel, you get an opportunity to win $5,000 and a trip to the next Sony World Photography Awards ceremony and World Photography Festival in London!

4. The Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011

Nikon holds free photo competition both for newbies and professionals who are able to amaze the world by the most creative and inspiring shots.

Deadline: Tuesday, November 30th, 2010.

Categories:
- free subject: works that convey your unique perspective and creativity.
- energy: works that capture the energy of sights and subjects that inspire, motivate or excite you or viewers.

Prizes:

One Grand Prize:
-Nikon D3S D-SLR camera
-AF-S NIKKOR 24mm f/1.4G ED
-AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED
-Winning photo to be included in the Mini Gallery on the Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011 website

First place (1 award from each category):
-Nikon D300S D-SLR camera
-SB-900 Speedlight
-AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II
-AF-S NIKKOR 16-35mm f/4G ED VR

Second place (5 awards from each category):
-Nikon D5000 D-SLR camera
-AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/3.5G ED VR

Third place (10 awards from each category):
-Nikon D3000 D-SLR camera
-AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR

Emerging Talent Award (4 awards, regardless of category):
-Nikon COOLPIX P6000 digital camera
-Photos to be included in the Mini Gallery on the Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011 website

Emerging Talent Award (Runners-up) (16 awards, regardless of category):
-Nikon COOLPIX S1000pj digital camera
-Photos to be included in the Mini Gallery on the Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011 website

5. The International Aperture Awards Competition

Capture the most exciting moment and submit your eye-catching work to win a great cash prize! The International Aperture Awards Competition offers all photography lovers to compete for the profit!

Deadline: 15th October 2010.

Prizes:
1. Major Amateur Awards Prize: Nikon D5000 DSLR with 18-55mm and 55-200mm VR Lenses valued at $1,500 RRP and a GigaPan EPIC PRO valued at $1,495 RRP.
The winner of of each of the 3 Amateur Categories will win;
1st - Pixel Purity Online Mentoring Package RRP $1,700.00
2nd - Polaroid 300 camera. RRP $150.00

2. Major Open Awards Prize
The image with the highest score will be awarded,US $20,000.00 cash prize.

6. The People & Planet International Photography Competition

People & Planet: Social Justice & Environment Diary & Calendar 2011 looks 55 captivating photos of people, places or things which tell a story about a social-justice or environment issue. Hurry up to become one of the authors!

Prizes:
-1st Prize: $1,500 AUS
-2nd Prize: $750 AUS
-3rd Prize: $250 AUS
-All 55 winners will recieve a free copy of the 2011 People & Planet Diary.

Info: you can submit portraits, landscapes and animals photos, but up to 4 works per entrant. All submitted photos must have 2-5 sentences describing the image and the social-justice or environment issues which are raised by the photo. The images can be colour or B&W, but should be at least at 300 dpi resolution, supplied in JPEG format, with a maximum file size of 10 MB. We like minimal Photoshop-ing, and will usually exclude photos where Photoshop-ing is obvious.

7. International Year of Biodiversity Photography Competition 2010

International Year of Biodiversity Photography Competition 2010 is open for amateurs in photography art of 5-11, 12-17 years and adult which want the world to estimate their talent. The task is to illustrate an aspect of the biodiversity found in Devon over the summer months.

Deadline: September 30th, 2010

Prize:
- for the youngest category: a bird watching trip on the River Exe with the local ranger, for them and their family.
- for 12-17 years category: a private tour of a closed Devon Wildlife Trust reserve accompanied by the Warden, for them and their family.
- for the adult category: winner will win a trip to Lundy Island, with a tour accompanied by the island Warden, along with three of their friends or family.

8. Image International Photo Contest 2010

Photo Life and Photo Solution Canadian magazines present the Image International Photo Contest 2010 and invite every photographer from a newbie to a master from any country to participate.

Deadline: November 2010

Categories:
-People: Friends, Family, Strangers
-Nature: Scenery, Animals, Environment
-Varia: Choose your subject, use your imagination!

Prize: image publication in Canada’s leading photography magazine and more than $40,000 in prizes including some of today’s hottest photo equipment and a Grand Prize 9-day cruise expedition for two to the Arctic (estimated at $10,500) sponsored by Cruise North Expeditions Inc.

9. BJP's International Photography Award

BJP's International Photography Award is not dedicated to any particular theme - use your imagination! You are allowed to submit photos in any format and style.

Deadline: September 30th, 2 p.m.

Info: international participants are invited to submit their work for the contest by using the on-line facility. You can also participate by regular mail using the Official Participation Form found within the pages of Photo Life magazine or by downloading, printing, and using the PDF file of the Official Participation Form.

10. International Observe The Moon Night Photo Contest

The Moon gives you a great chance to become a famous lunar photographer! All you need to do is to capture the Moon till September 23th, 2010 and submit it to become a winner.

Deadline: September 23th, 2010

Categories:
- landscape
- wide-angle
- narrow-angle

Info: the top five images from each category will be chosen by the InOMN coordinating committee. The winners from each individual category will be chosen by online voting from the public. Voting will take place through theMyMoon website beginning September 27 and ending October 1, 2010. The winners from each individual category will become finalists for the grand-prize. The grand-prize winner will be chosen by online voting from the public. Voting for the grand-prize winner will also take place on the MyMoon site between October 4 and October 8, 2010. Winners will be contacted by email. Announcements of the winners will be placed on the InOMN website’s Contest page by October 12, 2010.

Great Photography Wesites Review

2010-02-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

Just posing a small update that presently we are working on a big comparison table of all photography solutions reviewed on our blog that should be complete in about 2 weeks time. If you would like some website reviewed do not hesitate to contact us at webphotocms at gmail.com!

Printroom Review

2010-01-27T06:45:00.000-08:00

Company name: Printroom

Website: http://printroom.com/

Printroom is another integrated solution created to solve both frontend and backend photographers’ issues. This company entered the market in year 1999, so it has a solid experience in the industry. Printroom provides photography products, web services and pro lab solutions. The overall number of offered features is divided into groups which make up 3 levels of membership – Classic (Free), Pro ($10/mo or $99 yearly) and Premium ($20/mo and $199/yr).

Choosing a Classic plan you get 300MB image hosting, custom HTML storefronts, print offering, pro photo lab and galleries to display your photos. Pro account gives you an opportunity to create a customizable Flash website, link images to Facebook, create slideshows and gain some more options. Upgrading to the Premium membership level you get premium support, custom photo and gift product templates, e-commerce plugin, possibility to build flash websites for customer events, etc.

There is a live preview of the flash homepage tool available, so you can play with the admin interface right away – no registration required. Of course, I couldn’t miss this opportunity and took a look at the admin panel. At first, I was pleasantly surprised with the editing environment – it’s completely WYSIWYG-based. You just fill in necessary data into the small pop-up window and all changes are immediately displayed on the page, no need to click on “preview” button or switch to another window. That’s pretty cool. However, I was not that impressed by the system’s functionality. In fact, it offers rather limited opportunities: 15 images in the slideshow, 3 content pages, no ability to upload a background image and boring design elements that can be fully customized. Hopefully, the general site building application is more flexible and well-executed.

I browsed several websites built with Printroom application and all of them have very simple, primitive designs. But I guess we should take into account the fact that Printroom is not a full-blown flash photo website CMS, and as a part of integrated photography business solution it works quite well. Unfortunately I didn’t find any testimonial section or forum on their website, it would be very useful to know what professionals think about solution provided by Printroom.
If you are on the lookout for a serious business organizing solution, examine Printroom carefully and decide whether it might fit your needs.

Pictage Review

2010-01-27T06:41:00.000-08:00

Company name: Pictage

Website: http://www.pictage.com/

Pictage is a complex solution for professional photographers, which includes image hosting, printing and sales solutions. It’s geared mostly at wedding photographers and covers various features a photographer might need both online and offline.

Among Pictage’s major features are: online proofing, end-to-end order fulfillment, full album solution, photographer directory, professional lab, slideshows and album design. Unfortunately, you can preview neither website samples, nor admin interface of online proofing and slideshow solutions. To get an access to the product demo you have to register and email to the Pictage assistants.

If you want to become a Pictage member, there are two plan options available – Pictage Lite and Pictage Pro. The first plan includes 10 basic features, including unlimited event and image upload, online proofing, complete order processing, Pictage in-house pro lab and others. This package costs $199 yearly and right now they have a discount period which allows you to pay $99 for the first year. Pictage Pro package contains some more advantages, such as two free directory listings, fully automated payment solution, multi shooter sub accounts, slideshows and album design service. A more advanced plan will cost you $99 per month. (now you can pay only $19/mo for the first 6 months). You can view the complete feature comparison and pricing on the official company’s website.

You can see that Pictage is a rather expensive service, but the number of specific photographer oriented features makes it worth to be taken into consideration. The company was founded in 2000 and by this time it has developed into a powerful and comprehensive solution for professional event photographers. It has its own community and judging by numerous testimonials we’ve found on their website, Pictage does justice to itself. If you are a wedding or reportage photographer, you can consider Pictage as a tool for organization your business workflow.

OtherPeoplePixels Review

2010-01-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

Company name: OtherPeoplePixels

Website: https://otherpeoplespixels.com

OtherPeoplePixels (OPP) provides both Flash and HTML website templates for photographers and artists. All templates are customizable and don’t require professional skills in coding.

On the company’s official website you can find a step-by-step presentation of the system, glance through the design previews, browse live websites built with OPP, familiarize yourself with the prices and sign up for the 14 day free trial.

I’ve subscribed to the OPP in order to check what advantages this provider can deliver. From what I saw, OtherPeoplePixel is a quite accessible and handy service that enables to create photo websites with no big efforts. The website management system is designed in a minimalist way – it’s a vertically scrolling list of hyperlinked text divided into categories. There are 12 flash template themes to choose from. Nice thing that OPP guys don’t pretend to offer a world-saving service – when you are about to select a flash design for your website, they honestly notify you that flash-based skins are not the best solution for SEO and your site may not appear in the search results for your name or other keywords. OPP recommends you to choose HMTL templates instead.

Admin panel for HTML template differs from the one for flash photo template. It’s shown as web page sketch with captions for each page segment. You need to click on those captions to edit a certain section. This system reminds a website builder and looks fun to work with. I loved the variety of default fonts that can be applied to the website title. Tag cloud available in each section editor considerably simplifies the process of better solution search.

OPP is a hosted solution, so you can’t host your website on your own server. However, you are free to choose a domain name, you can order it at OPP or buy it anywhere else. There two plans available – Standard and Multimedia. Both packages are almost equal: ability to upload sound and video artwork and bigger space for content is what makes Multimedia plan differ. With this, Standard price plan will cost you $16/mo or $160 per year, while a more advanced Multimedia package costs $26 monthly or $260 yearly.

OPP is definitely an option to keep in mind. Of course, it’s not the most affordable solution I’ve seen, but if spending $160-$260 yearly sounds good to you, OtherPeoplePixels website management application is worth your attention.

ReadyPhotoSite Review

2010-01-26T07:11:00.000-08:00

Company name: ReadyPhotoSite

Website: www.readyphotosite.com

ReadyPhotoSite is a combination of nice user-friendly designs and powerful backend. This photography website management system was created by a team of photographers, designers and flash developers to satisfy both the design and functional requirements of photographers and people of art seeking for stylish, professional and still easy to update portfolio.

ReadyPhotoSite photography websites do not require any professional skills to manage the photo galleries or add content on pages, all you’ll need is a computer with your photos and the browser to login to the admin area which gives you full control over your website.

ReadyPhotoSite is pretty new on the market. Presently they offer 6 websites design to choose from and plan adding 2 new designs every month starting January 2010 so we can expect a great collection of designs available quite shortly. The list of functionality offered by ReadyPhotoSite includes text pages builder (to create and manage unlimited number of text pages), menu and background management (you can change the order of the menu and set a separate background for every page), unlimited number of photo galleries (you can edit your photo on the fly and enable/disable save, enlarge and watermark options) and video galleries (upload video from your computer or point to an external location). There are news and events editors available, as well as password protected galleries and Paypal based shopping cart allowing sell photography online. They also plan changing the structure of the code to be 100% indexable by the search engines and thus same SEO friendly as usual html/css websites.

ReadyPhotoSite offers 3 packages to choose from: basic ($99), advanced ($149) and ecommerce ($199) and there is no other additional fees involved (installation is free). You can choose your own hosting or order domain name registration and hosting service from ReadyPhotoSite for $100.

According to website testimonials and online reviews we managed to find they have great customer support. You can also order design changes to the website chosen and they will be performed at a small fee. There are also special promos available all the time, like holiday discounts and 20% discount if you have an old photography website and exchange it to the new one by ReadyPhotoSite.

There is a free7 day trial available where they will create a test website for you to play around. The functionality is not limited and you can try all the features available.

Overall, ReadyPhotoSite websites are nicely designed, have great functionality and are 200% affordable. The only thing I can think of is the small number of website deigns available at the moment, let’s hope they’ll have more in the nearest future.

Zenfolio Review

2010-01-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

Company name: Zenfolio

Website: http://www.zenfolio.com

Zenfolio is a well-know company providing web space for photographers to organize, display and sell their photos online. With Zenfolio you can create an HTML photo gallery with integrated proofing system and individual Flash elements. It was launched in 2004 and has gained many fans since then. Let’s see what Zenfolio can bring to photographers.

To check the application, I’ve registered and create a trail account which will expire in 14 days. The website management system is versatile enough, nice feature is that it displays a step-by-step guide so you could feel cozy and not get lost. When creating a page you can choose from 10 page layouts and 20 themes. You can switch among themes and layouts whenever you want. This is surely a nice touch. In general, design themes look a bit outdated, there are few really nice though. Zenfolio template galleries are rather flexible and quick to update. However, if you want some powerful customization mechanism, Zenfolio is not what you are looking for. What I didn’t like is the layout schemes, most of them are vertical and you have to heavily scroll the page in order to browse photography collections and website sections. This method has been often discusses lately and many experts consider it to be unusable. I’ve browsed photo website built with Zenfolio and I can agree with this point – galleries look a bit cluttered and navigation is inconvenient.

Despite some limits in design, Zenfolio has an obvious advantage – you can store full-size photos with no need to restore, plus you can easily organize images into different groups, galleries and collections. For all this the system provides rapid image loading and navigation. By means of right-click protection and watermark, Zenfolio also works well in terms of protecting your images. Built-in shopping cart allows photographers to sell their photos online, the e-commerce feature is implemented very well here. Fullscreen slideshow function is good for showcasing photos.

Taking into account the price, which varies from $25 to $100 per year, Zenfolio pays off well. “At Zenfolio we believe that a beautiful photograph requires an equally impressive viewing experience.” You are absolutely right guys, but “impressive viewing experience” is not your strong point. Zenfolio shows an excellent quality/price ratio, nothing more, nothing less.

Pixelpost Review

2010-01-21T08:13:00.000-08:00

Company name: Pixelpost

Website: http://www.pixelpost.org/

Pixelpost is a niche open-source application for effective photo blog management. This is a quite neat service that does exactly what it says. If you want to regularly post your photos on the web like a blog, Pixelpost sounds like a great solution.

Among the features offered by Pixelpost are smooth install assistant, fancy admin stuff, multi-lingual support, addons and spam filter, feed options, free template gallery and others. No doubt, the major and the coolest thing in Pixelpost is that it’s free and open source. Therefore, this application is very flexible and customization-friendly. You can browse the Featured Sites category to see Pixelpost in action. You can also look through the template gallery and read user reviews that will help you make the right choice.

It’s good that you can look at the system before download it. It has a simple, easy-to-handle interface which made a positive impression upon me. If you don’t have professional skills in web development, you will make pretty well using the basic template and pre-built functionality. Of course, a uniquely designed, featured website will require some more advanced knowledge. However, you can always consult experts from the community – Pixelpost has its own forum. Besides, they provide users with necessary documentation.

You can read the information on releases, updates and other application related reviews in Pixelpost’s blog. Bugs and fixes are also announced there and like in any open-source projects, bugs happen sometimes. As for hosting, you can host your photo blog with any provider that meets the requirements of Pixelpost.

In conclusion I’d like to admit that if you are looking for a full-blown CMS or regular blog solution, Pixelpost is not for you. But it’s a brilliant photo blog solution that takes specific requirements for this type of websites into consideration. Pixelpost can be used by both beginners and pros - it’s open source so the level of customization totally depends on your technical savvy.

CreativeMotionDesign Review

2010-01-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

Company name: CreativeMotionDesign

Website: http://www.creativemotiondesign.com

CreativeMotionDesign offers customizable flash websites for photographers. The service brings a positive impression, so let’s look more thoroughly at what this company offers.

There two main website template categories available: Classic Gallery and Elite Gallery. The first one consists of 9 designs to choose from, $95 each. For this money you get customizable design, unlimited pages, free blog, FTP storage, multi-track music player, iPhone friendly HTMl mirror site, client upgrade account and splash page. The service provider also promises you will experience an easy content management, which you can by the way test during a free 10 day trial. To check the system from the inside, I’ve signed up for the trial period. Everything looks fine in general, however, I think it’s sort of exaggeration to call section “Design Settings” when it contain only Logo, Company name and Font settings. In spite of rich feature-set mentioned above, everything looks much plainer when you enter the CMS. Thus, I can’t rearrange menu bar, I can only choose its position on the HTML version of the website. Besides, you don’t have much to do with pages, too little options are offered.

When we move up to the Elite Gallery, we see 11 design themes to choose from. Each one costs $295. Designs have a minimalist, clean style which corresponds to the modern trends well. The list of features is now enlarged with proofing/shopping cart, video page and editable backgrounds. Neat options, indeed, but not sure whether this addition equals $200 value.

All flash photo templates have website statistics feature and are SEO-optimized. Uh-oh, gotcha CreativeMotionDesign! After we’ve tested a couple of your websites (http://tarastatonphotography.com/ http://www.peterkarp.com.au/) we found no SEO-friendliness there. Intro page is the only page that is indexed by Google, but this is surely not enough. However, Blogspot blogs attached to the sites are indexed, but this is not fair – all blogs appear in Google index and it’s a cheat to call this “SEO-friendly”.

Flash photography website templates by CreativeMotionDesign look great, but when it comes to the content management system, it’s not that rich. As a result, you don’t have many possibilities in terms of website customization. In case you like the template as it is and don’t plan to apply many changes to it, CreativeMotionDesign can be a decent solution for you.

Evrium Review

2010-01-18T09:22:00.000-08:00

Company name: Evrium

Website: http://www.evrium.com

Evrium offers manageable website software for professional photographers. It has 2 software packages to choose from – Fluid Galleries 2 Basic and Fluid Galleries 2 Professional. These products are geared at creating and managing a standalone photo website. You can choose whether to host your website with Evrium or any third-party provider. This is surely a positive moment.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the products. In the provided product duo, Fluid Galleries 2 Basic is more affordable. The number of features provided includes 15 image galleries, 40 photos per gallery, visual customization area, copyright protection, secure administration login, photo descriptions, 1 font and logo/background upload. As you see, the list of opportunities is quite regular, nothing extraordinary is supposed. Good thing is that you can check the admin system via the live demo. You can preview two example websites as well. Design looks rather boring and so is the CMS itself. Both interface and functionality are rather plain. Basic software package costs $230. This is a one-time fee, you won’t have to pay any monthly fee. Weighing the price and the “stuff” of this solution we see that it’s somewhat overpriced.

Fluid Galleries 2 Professional is a more advanced photo website software solution. Beside the aforesaid options it includes a few more: photo description links, custom pages, editable meta data, 3 fonts to choose from. All this increases the price to $430. You can add more fonts to your website, $20 each. Not that affordable either.

Evrium provides a multi-level support which includes installation guide, help documentary, email and phone support. Unfortunately, no free trial available and we didn’t find a note about money-back guarantee. However, they’ve got a cool offer concerning ongoing saving and rewards for the existing customers. Learn more on their official page.

Evrium offers solid photo site management systems with some basic number of functions and options. Its solutions don’t stand out among competitors neither for the service quality nor for the price. However, if your requirements are not that high and you are not limited in budget, flash website photo galleries by Evrium may suit your needs well.

ITDR Review

2010-01-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

Company name: ITDR

Website: http://intothedarkroom.com/

ITDR (intothedarkroom) is an online photography software company offering several web solutions. A product that might be interesting to you in website management perspective is “Dream Package”. It’s a 3 in 1 package providing a consistently designed slideshow, blog and website templates.

There is no anything like template demos or admin panel live preview available on ITDR website. You can only browse the list of sites built with this software and see a sample of the slideshow. We’ve looked at showcase photography websites and frankly speaking, the impression is mixed. First thing that comes to the eye is that all websites look almost the same which is quite strange. ITDR produces website for photographers whose main goal is high recognition of the brand and well-reflected identity. This is certainly hard to achieve via clone-like templates. Next thing we’ve noticed is that all designs have little, centered layout which looks fine only in a full-screen mode. With this, we have to admit that minimalist, light design give websites a contemporary look. Besides, blog designs which also come in the Dream Package look stunning. Much of this is due to the wide content area which is perfect for showcasing photos and a large Flash header against a static design.

Flash websites claimed to be SEO-friendly. We tested a couple of sites (http://www.tracyrasinski.com/, http://www.joshmccullockphotography.com/) and to our opinion this statement is a bit overrated. The images are indexed partially and URLs are not accurate.

The list of features included into Dream Package templates is rather narrow. Among them are flash splash page, large images, virtually unlimited navigation buttons, unlimited content page (it’s left unclear to us if there is only one content page available), unlimited photo album pages, unlimited contact page, customizable colors, mp3/video ready etc. I think that Calendar section and password protected galleries would be great to include. Probably this can be realized in custom website solutions for additional fee of course. If you want to sell your photographs from your site, you’ll have to additionally acquire ITDR’s proofing solution as it’s not included into the Dream template package.

The Dream Package will cost you $750 + $9.90 monthly fee for the CMS usage. This is not a hosted solution, your website can reside on your own server that meets the requirements of Intothedarkroom. As you can see, this product is quite expensive and doesn’t contain any bang that could justify the price.

In general, there is not much info to be found on ITDR’s official website. There is no trial period or live demo available for viewing. The company asks you to contact them if you want to learn more about their products or make a purchase. This is not a user-friendly step, and you interest in the offered products should be really strong to go far and contact provider for the details.

iCreations Review

2010-01-15T00:53:00.000-08:00

Company name: iCreations

Website: http://icreations.com

iCrations provides web solutions for photographers and creatives. The company offers photo website software named iFolioz. Two others products are iProofz, an online proofing solution for photographers, and editable flash slideshows iShowz.

iFolioz includes two flash website template categories: Standard and Premium. Standard templates include 5 themes to choose from, two splash pages, 5-6 content pages, 20 galleries, testimonials section, music upload, integrated WordPress blog, editable colors and contact page with up to 20 fields. As you see, the functionality is limited and designs look plain and a bit outdated. With this being said, I bet you will be shocked to hear the price - $475 setup fee and $12/mo for hosting. This cosmic price is shamelessly plugged on the category’s main page, looks like iCreations managers are very proud of their pricing policy. You can split the set-up fee into two months though (remember you can try to deceive yourself, but not your purse).

Now let’s have a closer look at the Premium iFolioz websites. The feature list expands here a bit, involving one more entry splash page, virtually unlimited content pages, drop down navigation for your pages, unlimited galleries with unlimited images, calendar section and unlimited video ability. This division has 6 templates to choose from. Designers obviously have put more work into these designs, still the chosen typography, navigation bar design and frames prevent themes from looking really cool. Premium template will cost you $750 set-up fee + $18/mo hosting plan.

iCreations is a self-hosted solution, so you can’t install your website on your own server. However, you can use an existing domain name or register it with iCreations. The company states their every single website is built with SEO in mind. They list a few of their clients’ websites and SEO results they achieved with iCreations. Surely, those results are good, but it would be better if they enabled a showcase gallery which would include websites built with iCreations. This way we could randomly choose a couple and test them for SEO-friendliness.

We didn’t examine the other iCreations products, mostly focusing on their flash photo website solutions. From what we’ve saw, iCreations evoked rather mixed feelings in us. From the one hand, iFolioz flash templates have a solid feature set and decent designs. On the other hand, their designs miss some style and visual appeal and prices are very high. If put into a bit lower price section this web solution would be much more attractive.

Photoidentities Review

2010-01-15T00:47:00.000-08:00

Company name: Photoidentities

Website: http://photoidentities.com/

Photoidentities supplies flash websites and web software for visual professionals. There are 2 categories of flash website templates available, Pro Sites and Eco Sites.

The eco-series includes simple photo site templates with a rather limited options and boring designs. There are 7 templates to choose from, you can see a live preview of each. Eco templates come both in stand-alone version and with some additional services included. The template itself costs $100; if you want to host your site with Photoidentities, this will cost you $100 one-time fee + $99/year. Having a blog integrated in your website will cost you $100 more, and if you want to support this package with an advanced SEO, you will have to pay $800 one-time fee + $99 annually. At this point eco templates hardly can be called “affordable”. No doubt, high quality SEO service is worth its price, but would you like to promote a website that is not visually attractive at all? Exactly.

Photoidentities offers some more advanced photography websites grouped into the pro-series. The stand-alone pro site costs $300, while the price for the package consisting of website, blog, basic hosting and advanced SEO is $1,200. The pro website includes such neat features as customizable fonts, backgrounds and landing page, drag-and-drop interface, ability to upload music, video and slideshows, etc. Still, the offered functionality doesn’t correspond to price in full measure. Pro template live demos are not available for viewing, you can browse the gallery of sites built on these templates though.

As usual, we tested a couple of Photoidentities driven websites for SEO-friendliness. http://www.nikowilliamsphotography.com/index2.php and http://jimsandersphoto.com/ shamefully failed the test. Home page data, meta title and keywords are everything that was indexed by Google. Therefore, the built-in SEO feature is implemented on a low level here. Hopefully, guys from Photoidentities do more justice to their “advanced SEO” service which costs from $600 to $1550.

Unfortunately, there is no opportunity to check the content management system within the live preview – no trial period is offered.

Photoidentities doesn’t offer a good price/quality ratio. Pro templates are worth your attention, but they are quite pricy – take it into account when examining this website software solution.

BigFolio Review

2010-01-08T06:44:00.000-08:00

Company name: Big Folio

Website: www.bigfolio.com

Big Folio grabbed a bunch of world renowned photographers as their customers. The company provides a number of services, including website, SEO and logo design, for creative pursuers. Big Folio’s flash websites go with control panel which gives pretty much features, like unlimited galleries for organizing your photos, video support, customizable contact form, free WordPress blog install, unlimited music tracks and others. Unfortunately, there is no live demo of the admin interface available, so you can’t play around and see the functionality in work. You can take a video tour though.

Designs are done to the T here, indeed. Both standard and premium templates have stylish, modern looking themes. There are 14 templates to choose from, only 2 of them belong to the Standard package. These templates have limited storage space, no videos, only 4 gallery pages and 1 music track. With this, standard template costs $250 setup fee + $15 monthly. I think that’s too much for a great design with quite a regular functionality. They should add some more useful features, a built-in shopping cart, for instance to prove the price. Premium templates cost $450 one time setup fee + $20/mo. You get some more options to control, still not enough to justify the fee.

Big Folio is a self hosted solution, you can’t move your photography website to your own server.
All photography websites are claimed to be SEO-friendly. We’ve checked one of Big Folio powered sites http://beaposer.com/ and it was not that bad. Big Folio states all their templates, even standard, are SEO optimized by default, but it doesn’t happen so in full measure. It seems pretty much in Big Folio service is based on a custom basis which means you need to acquire additional features for your site.

If high quality design is you priority, Big Folio is definitely an option to consider as beautiful website design is their strongest point.

Publish Post

See similar products: ReadyPhotoSite

FlashPalette Review

2010-01-08T06:37:00.000-08:00

Company name: FlashPalette

Website: www.flashpalette.com

FlashPalette produces editable flash photography templates which can be controlled via desktop Adobe AIR application. You can both see the live preview of templates and download the admin interface to play with. This is exactly what I’ve done and below is my brief report.

There are 20 templates divided into three categories: Basic, Standard and Premium. Prices vary from $66/$88 for the Basic package, $100/$150 for Standard templates and $250 for Premium sites. Nice thing is that there is no subscription fee required and you can host your website on your own server. FlashPalette doesn’t host websites,although giving a customer possibility to choose where to reside a website would be great.

Basic templates come with weak designs and limited functionality including only 5 text pages, single portfolio with multiple galleries and some limited music options. Templates from the Standard category give a user more features, such as built-in shopping cart, multiple portfolios and custom background. $250 templates are most rich in functions: adjustable images, unlimited images and galleries, different music for galleries and overall site, custom backgrounds and built-in shopping cart. Still, I must say, this is not enough to pay off $250. The overall editing environment within the FlashPalette website management application is not that versatile: you are limited in editing logo, fonts, content pages and website colors. Plus, designs from the Premium category look too similar to those from the Basic one. 3D photo website theme looks cool though.

All templates work both on Mac and PC, although Basic and Standard sites are compatible with 04, 05 PC only and 06 PC only respectively. FlashPalette provides phone and email support and you can also find some user guides on their official website.

FlashPalette is a low-price market segment representative. Hence, it’s a budget-friendly solution. However, you should remember that paying less money you get less functionality and visual attractiveness, so be sure to weigh all the pros and cons before buying this product.

See similar products: ReadyPhotoSite

APhotoFolio Review

2010-01-08T06:30:00.000-08:00

Company name: APhotoFolio

Website: www.aphotofolio.com

Customizable flash photography websites produced by APhotoFolio conceal lots of neat features in the pocket. This product caught our attention and we recommend you to check what APhotoFolio offers for your website management experience.

Currently they have 5 template designs to choose from, you can glance through the screenshots and view live sites built with a particular design. Clean, minimalist design style give the templates a contemporary look. No heavy graphics or fancy animations can be found here, your work is the only thing in the focus.

There is no admin area demo available, but I’ve watched an introductory video and should admit that administration interface of APhotoFolio’s CMS looks great - there are lots of options and everything is well organized and easy-to-handle. Among the features included are: unlimited pages and portfolios, editable logo, colors and fonts, image captions, blog installation, slideshows, password protected galleries, optimization for SEO and more. This is web based software, so you can control your site anytime.

Guys from APhotoFolio did a great job for SEO optimization of their templates. Each site has an HTML mirror and after a quick test we received the evidence that it’s in Google index. There are also iPhone and mobile phone site mirrors available. Besides, they can optionally install a WordPress powered blog for you at no additional charge. Quite praiseworthy!

Ton of tasty stuff here, don’t you think? This product could be excellent if it wasn’t so expensive. Yes, the price is a fat fly in the ointment. You have to shell out $1000 + $17/mo hosting fee to become a client of APhotoFolio. This is a hosted solution, so you can’t switch to a third-party hosting provider. If you want to change the design, you can do that for free, but just once – the following design switches will be $100.

APhotoFolio is an enjoyable service, but quite a pain for your purse. If you have some extra 1K bucks in your pocket, you may consider this company.

LightboxPhoto Review

2010-01-05T04:06:00.000-08:00

Company name: LightboxPhoto

Website: www.lightboxphoto.com

LithboxPhoto delivers desktop based software for photographers and artists to display and sell their works online. You can use it as a stand-alone product to build your stock photo gallery, or integrate it into your existing website. In general, LightboxPhoto provides a solid ecommerce website kit, this is definitely an option if you want to create a stock photo store or personal print selling website.

The company provides static image gallery building software divided into three basic packages: Standard, Professional and Enterprise. You can use each of them under two types of license agreement: the Branded License requires the "Powered by Lightbox Photo™ Gallery Software" text and link to remain visible and active at the bottom of the gallery; the Unbranded License enables you to remove visual references to the LightBox Photo, but you must leave metadata and/or copyright information in the code intact. The ability to reject free advertising for the provider will cost you no less than $100. My compliments, a great link building system, don’t you think?

The number of features included in the LightBox Photo software is quite impressive. It includes advanced price management, built-in shopping cart, license agreement checkboxes, image slideshow feature, auto watermark, tax and shipping controls, send “lightbox” feature, expiring download links, customizable gallery templates, etc. All this sounds like a good base for effective online shop management. However, there are some obvious shortcomings in this solution we just can’t ignore. First, there is a serious gap in the number of features included into the Standard version of the product and the other two, advanced packages. I mean that paying $400 for the Standard package I would expect more features to be implemented there, such as SEO optimization, request quote feature and what’s most important, CMS module to edit static content pages. Within the Standard software version you can customize your photo gallery via HTML and CSS only and this significantly reduces the accessibility of the product.

People leave lots of positive feedback you can find on Testimonials page. We’ve checked a few websites built with the LightBox Photo software. The websites look nice in general, just like a regular stock photo website or simple personal photo store may look. As to “SEO friendly URLs” feature we’ve read about on the provider’s official website, a couple of website we tested (www.lanting.com and http://www.jmg-stock-photo-video.com/) have dynamic URL structure which automatically disclaims the SEO-friendliness.

You won’t find much diversity in photo gallery designs offered by the LightBox Photo. As we already mentioned, you need to have some skills in coding to edit the template. You can enquire further customization though. To get an idea about the changes you can apply to the gallery, browse the live demo and example sites in the Customize section. If you want to preview the admin interface before buying the software, you should contact their sales. By the way, we recommend you to do that because no money back guarantee or refund is provided.
Among the advantages the company delivers are free software installation, free support and free updates for 12 months. No doubt, this is a rich solution for your website management experience, but you have to be a rich person to afford it. Just look at the prices: $400 for Standard package under Branded License and $500 for the one under Unbranded License; Professional package costs $600 and $700 respectively; be so kind to shell out $1000 for the branded Enterprise package and $1100 for the unbranded one.

Recap: LightBox Photo is a great solution if you are going to create an advanced stock photography gallery and are ready to put some budget and effort into it. I would say it’s too sophisticated for some less serious, personal photographer needs.

MorePhotos Review

2009-12-30T06:19:00.000-08:00

Company name: MorePhotos

Website: www.morephotos.com

Recently we’ve stumbled across another photo website oriented software provider, MorePhotos. At first, we were shocked with the amount of info presented at the company’s official website - so many menu sections prevents from getting a quick idea about what MorePhotos is.

Somehow we found the testimonial page and here’s another shock – the designs of websites built with MorePhotos. Interesting, the company offers both photo web templates and custom website solutions, but all the offered designs look terrible and out of date. This is true of both flash and HTML template designs they offer. We even thought they have the same designer with ifp3. If you are about creating an attractive personal identity on the Web, MorePhotos website templates and “custom” designs are a big no-no.

Basically, MorePhotos is an E-Commerce solution providing a web software package for photographers to upload and sell their photos online. Along with the proofing system, they offer some website creation tools enabling to select from several layouts, add your logo, colors, photographs and content to create unlimited number of pages. You can also integrate the system into your existing website and I would say this is the only option for you to make MorePhotos work. I mean this way you can avoid ugly designs they offer but take advantage of the core service. Good point is that you can choose whether to host your site with MorePhotos or with a third-party provider.

MorePhotos is a desktop software package, so you can’t go without downloads, installations and settings. At least, they provide free support service you can apply to via email or phone. 30 days money back guarantee is a nice feature as well, but it’s unclear whether you can claim a refund after 30 days or 60 days.

With all this, MorePhotos is far from being an affordable service. Their pricing model includes $200 set-up fee and monthly plans that depend on the number of image you host. $49/mo is the minimal fee you pay to upload up to 2500 images. Plus, there are some additional fees for extra uploads and customization services.

You can use MorePhotos as a proofing add-on for your existing photography website if the price doesn’t frighten you off. If you don’t have a website, don’t be tempted to follow MorePhotos promises that you will build a unique, elegant website with their site creation tools – your hopes will be disappointed.

Shozam Review

2009-12-30T06:16:00.000-08:00

Company name: Shozam

Website: www.shozam.com

Shozam offers a few website software products geared at photographers of all professional levels. They have solution for home, work and business. I liked the basic idea of dividing their software package in several categories. If you want to create a simple digital photo album, you can do it without paying for the functions you won’t use. If you take your photography hobby more seriously, you can upgrade to more advanced account and add video, music and slideshows to your album. Shozam has a solution for those who want to sell their photos online as well.

While the idea of this project is nice, the implementing is less enthusiastic. Again, design is a very frustrating aspect here. They have small thumbnails of design themes, but you have to download the trial for a thorough check. If you want to get an idea about the design solution Shozam delivers right here and right now, you can browse their testimonials and go through their customer’s website links. You will see the plain layouts, weak typography and awkward flash effects, that the company considers being “cool”.

Among the features of Business and Business+ packages we found “Search Engine Optimization” statement. As always, we conducted a quick test of one of the websites built with Shozam www.photographybymorgan.co.uk. Since the core website of the example website is static, its pages are in index. The flash part of the site, photo galleries for instance, is not indexed. Besides, messy URL is what strikes the eyes immediately. It seems guys from Shozam think HTML structure is everything a website needs for SEO.

Let’s look at the prices. The basic software package called Shozam Lite Edition costs $25. By means of it you can create an elementary online photo album without any additional options. If you want to add some music, videos and captions to your album, you are offered to pay $50 for the Express Edition. Customizable photographer website costs $100 here. Shozam Business Edition which comes with E-commerce feature is available for $250; BusinessPlus Edition, which enables to create unlimited galleries for your customers, costs $500. We’ve browsed a lot of various web photo CMS solutions and this one is far from being good. The functionality is nothing but ordinary here and the designs are terrible. So why should I pay $25 for the template I can download for free somewhere else? And I’m sure there are many providers offering websites with integrated E-commerce system and ability to create unlimited galleries and sub-sites charging less than $500.

Among the advantages we’ve found in this product is that it’s not a hosted solution and no subscription fees are charged, there are only one-time payments.

Shozam is desktop software, so it provides some benefits in the upload speed, but it’s definitely not enough. Be sure to download the trial version of this product before buying it.

Ktools Review

2009-12-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

Company name: Ktools

Website: www.ktools.net

Ktools.net is a Michigan, USA based web software provider specializing in professional software for selling and hosting photos online. They have three packages to choose from: PhotoStore ($295 per package), PhotoHost ($195 per package) and PhotoSuit ($396 per package).

There is both public view and admin interface of all software packages available for the preview. We took a look at the management area demo and must admit, Ktools.net done justice to them developing these products. PhotoStore includes all tools and options necessary for managing a professional, advanced photo selling website. By means of this package you can create a full-fledged stock photo website and also sell both your personal photography and prints. Among other great features are: ability to sell video files, lightbox plugin, changeable watermark, built in statistics, multi-language and multi-currency support. In case you want to create a pro photo hosting website, PhotoHost solution might be what you are looking for. You can integrate both website schemes by choosing the PhotoSuit package.

Still and though we like the features offered, I have to admit that designs they offer with the software are outated and boring. The other thing I didn’t like about the Ktools.net services is that they are not accessible for non-professional users. The designs of all three kits are customizable, but you need to know HTML to do that. The website management environment is rich, but don’t look intuitive and user-friendly. They claim to offer an expert Support, but it’s free only first 60 days, than you will have to pay for the service. Besides, they don’t offer any help on customizing your website, such requests will be simply ignored.

Ktools.net is undoubtedly a nice service, but if you have no idea of how to manage or customize a website, it will be either a pain for you to deal with these products yourself or a pain for your purse to pay for the support.. Still, Ktools.net software may be worth a try, since it can be a good base for a powerful commercial photo website.

Jalbum Review

2009-12-28T07:10:00.000-08:00

Company name: Jalbum

Website: jalbum.net

Jalbum provides photo album websites that you can customize by means of skins and widgets. You can publish your album to yourname.jalbum.net or your own website. Content management system is out of the question here, Jalbum is a nice service for beginner and amateur photographers who want to combine some personal space with the ability to share their works with the big community.

Jalbum provides three types of accounts: Free, Premium and Power. 30MB storage, ads appearing on your page and number of home page themes limited to 4 is what you can get for free. If you are about to customize your page design you can switch to the Premium account which regularly costs $23 per year. All the same options supported with 10Gb storage are available in Power account ($116/year regular price).

In order to create a site with Jalbum you need to download the Jalbum application to your computer. Skins can be applied to your website after you download them too. You can also add functionality to your Jalbum by integrating some widgets.

Basically, Jalbum is a photography social network with customizable personal space. Quite a nice service as long as it suits your requirements. Best of all about it that it’s free.

Ifp3 Review

2009-12-28T04:59:00.000-08:00

Company name: ifp3

Website: www.ifp3.com

ifp3 provides a flash content management application that enables to “create an elegant, interactive flash website in minutes”. After a more thorough examination we would exclude the words “elegant ” and “interactive” from the above statement. There are 5 awful template designs each coming with 6 color themes to choose from and none of them can boast of being elegant or at least beautiful. We issue an appeal to ipf3: “Guys do fire your designer! This your only chance, seriously.”

Speaking about the functionality offered by ifp3, it’s not bad at all. All the core options a photographer’s or artist’s website should have are included: unlimited images, pages and galleries, shopping cart, appearance editor, color picker, search function, etc. Mobile phone optimization and integrated Lightbox are cool features as well. You can see a live preview of how your website will look on iPhone and BlackBerry. They offer 10 day free trial so you could check all the system and make a decision whether it fits your needs.

Testing one of the ifp3’s example websites www.jkennedyphotography.com for SEO-friendliness, we couldn’t say the result was bad. All text pages and image titles are indexed. Although URL structure is ugly and no hint at image keywords was observed. Our recap of the ifp3 SEO optimization is: fair, but still far from SEO-friendliness.

ifp3 is a hosted solution, this mean hosting is included in your plan and you have no option to host your site on a third-party server. They also charge additional $45 setup fee if you use your own domain name instead of ifp3 sub-domain. Another sad moment is that ifp3 doesn’t host email accounts. Their pricing policy is based on long-term subscription loyalty. Hence, if you choose to pay for the service on a monthly basis, it will cost you $30/mo. You can save $10 if choose an annual plan, but in this case you have to pay $240 in advance. $540 prepay for the 3 years subscription equals $15 per month.

In general, ifp3 offers a nice set of functions and that would count if it were not the very low quality designs that remind me of early 90’s. Double check everything before subscribing for this service and don't forget to check solutions by other companies ( you will find links to reviews on the right).

PortfolioSitez Review

2009-12-25T08:13:00.001-08:00

Company name: PortfolioSitez

Website: www.portfoliositez.com

PortfolioSitez is a small company founded by two charming ladies Jamie and Jen. If you are about to create an online photography portfolio, take a look at what they offer. There are 5 templates available at PortfolioSitez gallery. The designs are done in a classical style. I think the opportunities the Flash gives to the designers are not used here in full measure. You won’t see any fancy effects , but if you search for a simple, yet nice looking website design, you can find one at PortfolioSitez.

You can choose both stand-alone version of the template (which can reside on your own Linux server) and the one supported with a content management suit and hosting on PortfolioSitez servers. All templates are available for the preview, there are even a few modified versions showcased, so you could see what you can do with the site. There is no public admin interface preview or trial period, but you can request the sample preview, which is not bad either.

3 templates of 5 have HMTL mirror site option. This enable quick site loading, but unfortunately, doesn’t live up our expectations concerning SEO-friendliness. We tested one of the Portfolio Sitez’ customer website www.mortierphotographie.com. The Flash version of website is disappointingly un-SEO-friendly, and when we click on HTML version of the website, Flash is loading again! Well, bugs happen :) At least we are glad to see that PortfolioSitez don’t lie about super SEO friendly websites they offer.

There are three basic plans for those who decided to go with PortoflioSitez: Entry Plan is the most elementary one, it goes without some useful feature like integrated shopping cart and password protected galleries, as well as html mirror site, but you’ll have to pay $20 setup fee and $5 re-occurring fee monthly. Next step in their price plan is Standard, it includes html mirror option for some templates and calendar section. If you like this, kindly add $6 to the monthly fee, the setup fee is the same. Premium templates include the complete set of features and cost $16/mo + $20 set up fee. If you want to order a single template and host it on your own server, you can buy it for $200, but notice they have some specific requirements to the third-party severs.

To conclude the above said, PortfolioSitez is a pretty nice and affordable service. You can find customers’ positive feedback on their Testimonials page. What I like about this company, is that it doesn’t charge more than it offers. If you want to have a simple, nice looking photography websites with some basic yet useful functionality, if unique design and extraordinary online identity are not among you current business goals, PortfolioSitez is a good solution for you.

There are also lots of other photography website software reviews available on our blog, use the links on the right to browse. Good luck with your new photography website!

Clickbooq Review

2009-12-25T06:47:00.000-08:00

Company name: Clickbooq

Website: www.clickbooq.com

Clickbooq offers a web-based site management and design application for flash photography websites. In general, the functionality of the Clickbooq CMS is rich, but we’ve got impression that it’s somewhat too rich and may look confusing for a non-professional user.

Clickbooq website editing solution doesn’t include design templates. You can create a website from scratch, using a content management system called Toolbox. The backbone of the website here is a number of pre-built layouts and some extra design services, such as custom BackDrop backgrounds. The company provides users with drag-and-drop editing environment, numerous tools for design and content management. The administration interface looks pretty intuitive and user-friendly, however and let me repeat myself, it makes me think the user can get lost in this variety of options.

There is a small drawback in Clickbooq photo website package, there is limitation in the number of content pages one can have as well as the number of portfolios. Thus, all Clickbooq plans (not really affordable, by the way) come with only 5 portfolios and 5 content pages. You can have bonus 5 portfolios choosing a one-time plan which is $1699 (!!!!!!!!!!) setup fee and $99/year for the hosting. This bonus pales before the price, don’t you think? Each portfolio can hold up to 36 full-size images and if you need some more galleries to store you photos, be so kind to pay extra money - $50 for the each additional portfolio.

We should admit that Clickbooq brings pretty cool opportunities to their customers in terms of website visual appearance. We had a look at the gallery of websites built with Clickbooq and most of them are attractive and stylish. Lightbox is another neat feature included, it allows the visitors of your site to fave your photographs and send them to other prospects. This can come in handy for the website promotion.

Clickbooq is another flash photo CMS provider failed the SEO-friendliness test. They claim clickbooq websites are based on deep linking and have HTML mirror sites to make all the content indexable. Well, a simple site: command in Google search applied to the sites http://www.simonandrewscooks.com and http://www.blakemarvin.com/ showed us ugly URLs and one indexed page that is duplicated multiple times. The snippet shown on the results page was nice, though. Conclusion: clickbooq websites are not completely SEO-friendly, but have good preconditions to be so.

Clickbooq delivers a fine service, but the price they want for it is totally unjustified. Another hosted solution and another astronomic price:
$99 setup fee + $79/mo
Or $499/yr + $99/yr hosting
Or $1699 one time fee + $99 hosting one time fee.

If your website design matters to you a great deal and you want to control the whole process, Clickbooq can be a reasonable solution for you, but I would order a fully custom unique website at this price. Be sure to take advantage of free 5 days trial to check the system. Although, some limits in functionality and features and of course, the price, seriously decrease the attractiveness of this software.

There are also lots of other photography website software reviews available on our blog, use the links on the right to browse. Good luck with your new photography website!

25 Spectacular Flash Photography Websites

2009-12-25T01:03:00.000-08:00

Not only does successful photography website require a good bunch of creativity, it also needs pretty much time and effort to be put in its development. There are thousands of website building solutions floating the Web today and sometimes you may have hard times finding the right one. Flash is probably the most powerful platform for creating a site, especially when it comes to photography portfolio. Besides reviewing web photo CMS products, we would like to provide you with some inspiration too. Here is a collection of topnotch flash photography websites to give you the idea about current design trends and best practices. All designs presented below are exclusive and developed by professional design studios. If you have any suggestions on photo sites built with some CMS’, share them in comments!

Anders Bergh

Emmanuel Rouzic

Dattuphoto

Edlo Kawa

Fredrik Clement

Georgiew

Joel Grimes

Lyndon Wade

John Wrigh

Lee Towndrow

Jeremy Cowart

Werkstette

Matthew Mahon

Working Element

Joby Sessions

Joshua Stearns

Ciril Jazbec

David Vasiljevic

Brook Pifer

SasoKos

EgoFoto

rw2 Studios

Andreas Smetana

MPO Photography Webmasters Review

2009-12-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

Company name: MPO Photography Webmasters

Website: www.photographywebmasters.com

Examination of the MPO Photography Webmasters’ product brought a doubtful feel to me. It is unclear whether this is a photography CMS-based website provider with extremely expensive hosting plans, or a hosting provider delivering editable photo websites as an extra offer. Let me explain what I mean.

MPO Photography Webmasters offers free photography website templates. Their websites are not completely Flash based, each template contains Flash home page, the rest of the pages are static. Well, frankly speaking, their websites are not completely free. Yes, you don’t have to pay for the template if you choose an “as is” design option. This means, you can manage the content, but not the design elements. You can customize the navigation buttons at no charge though. If you want to apply some deeper changes to your website, you can order this option for $99. To switch among the templates you should pay the “redesign fee” which is $99 as well. Not very user-friendly, right?

Free set-up, along with free design, can work for you in case you don’t have high requirements to your website. Fortunately, the variety of design themes created by the MPO is big enough – there are 12 design categories available. All designs seem outdated and cluttered to us, still tastes differ (let’s not forget about the customization option) and maybe you might find the design that would appeal to you a great deal here.

If you are encouraged with opportunity to get a simple yet nice photo website with flash home page for free, we’re afraid there is something in this offer that will disappoint you, that’s hosting fee. It’s not enough that there is no option to host your website on your own server, available plans are also priced into the stratosphere. Just imagine, the Standard hosting plan (with a disk space for up to 2000 images) costs $29.95 per month. This is the minimal plan, they also have a Colossus Plan which presupposes up to 20K images disk space and costs $99.95/Mo. Maybe this would sound reasonable for stock photo website owners, but we are not sure whether this can work for an individual portfolio.

MPO Photography Webmasters is another photo website software provider that claims their sites are user friendly and will be indexed by all search engines in 3 weeks. Once again, the results of our brief SEO-friendliness test are frustrating. Wrong URL structure, important info embedded in Flash instead of HTML code, incorrect website structures – all this is too far away from being SEO-friendly.

Another depressing moment is the absence of trial period. What you can do is to browse designs, choose the one you like and order the service. This is a strange situation today as the “try before buy” principle is essential in terms of modern tough competition.

Maybe “unmatched support” so much highlighted on the MPO Photography Webmasters official website will shed light on all these unclear and unjustified questions. We didn’t find any testimonials or discussions related to the quality of the customer support, and that would be much to the point.

Except the diverse templates gallery and a number of neat features (if it counts at all – there is no preview of the admin interface) we don’t see any benefits the MPO Photography Webmasters photo site solution can bring to the average users. You can see the big words and descriptions, but we can’t really feel the product before ordering it. In conclusion, we would like to admit that if you want to avoid risks and everlasting conversations with tech support, you’d better look for some more reliable photo website software provider.

You will find links to reviews of other photography websites available on the market on the right. Good luck with your new website!

PhotoBiz Review

2009-12-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

Company name: PhotoBiz

Website: www.photobiz.com

PhotoBiz provides the whole range of web services for photographers, including online proofing, flash websites, slideshow galleries and “mini sites”. They have five flash website design collections containing over 70 templates. The company’s pricing model consists of two parts: one time set-up fee which is $125 (regular $250) and 6 basic monthly plans, starting from $15/mo.

The template design gallery by PhotoBiz leaves a positive impression – there are lots of various themes available and many of them are stylish and original. You can preview each template, however there is no trial period available, so you can’t test the administration system. You can switch designs both within separate collection and between different collections. No additional costs required to do this, and the system will automatically update everything you’ve already done to the website - definitely a plus. $125 one time set-up fee gives users a complete access to all five design collections. But we find it strange that it’s positioned like an advantage. Every of the PhotoBiz’ template design categories has a particular number of features, some collections are simple while others provide an advanced website functionality. On the one hand, this is good as you can choose the package right for your needs, but in fact you pay the same money both for simple and extended functionality. So what’s the point? I think it would be more reasonable to keep the price stuck to the set of the features the photo website software provides.

As other companies we have already reviewed, PhotoBiz say they do care about SEO. The system creates the mirror html sites of the flash website and thus your website should get to the index of search engines. Let’s make a test, here’s one of the websites http://kylehitchcock.com/ that left a positive feedback towards PhotoBiz software on the Testimonials page (unfortunately, no links to the testimonial submitters’ websites are given). We can see the title, meta description and keywords in the index page of the website and you will see this info in Google as well (I’d suggest PhotoBiz to make some small manual on writing friendly and useful meta data though). Now let’s find what pages from the website have been indexed by google using the “site” command. Great news- there are 25 pages found! Hooray PhotoBiz! The only thing you guys should look at is the structure of the URLs, links like http://kylehitchcock.com/?pageID=21141 are friendly neither for users nor for search engines.

Our testing proved that PhotoBiz doesn’t lie telling customers sophisticated XML site mapping and deep linking are implemented in their flash websites. The tested website is still far from being SEO-friendly in full measure, but the overall situation with search engine optimization of PhotoBiz flash websites is on a decent level. Besides, the company offers SEO expert consulting to their customers which is a benefit as well. By the way, we noticed that many testimonials are dedicated to the PhotoBiz Support team. It seems, the company pays much attention to helping their customers.

PhotoBiz would be even closer to being an excellent photo website management service if it wasn’t a hosted solution. Yes, again users have no choice when it comes to site residing. Well, at least their monthly plan system supports a reasonable disk space split, so that it’s easier for a user to find the one according to the amount of imagery they are going to host.

In general, PhotoBiz offers a high quality web photo CMS solution with many nifty features included. However, the system of set-up fee + monthly fee makes it rather expensive but I think it’s worth it (if you can afford it). Still, the ability to host website on user’s own server would definitely lower costs and this is something you should take into consideration.

You will find links to reviews of other photography websites available on the market on the right. Good luck with your new website!

Picaholic Review

2009-12-23T07:03:00.000-08:00

Company name: Picaholic

Website: www.picaholic.com

Picaholic offers flash website software for creative professionals. The guys at Picaholic claim they had “removed the time, complexity and time-to-market normally associated with building high-end flash site”. Let’s look closer at what you can get choosing this service.

The Picaholic website management package comes with pre-built flash templates. Currently there are 4 templates available at the company’s display gallery. By the way, it’s rather weird that a user needs to hunt around the Picaholic website in order to find the list of available templates. I found it in the FAQ section, for instance. The templates look nice, each of them has its own menu system, image gallery and page layouts. Video background is a cool feature, such gurus of flash web design as HelloMonday often use this hook in their practice. The ability to switch between templates in one click is a nice touch. However, the lack of diversity and originality in Picaholic template designs can be felt immediately. The company promised new templates to be deployed on a monthly basis in 2009, it’s December and still there are just four themes offered. Instead, the company highlights the ability to order an advanced website customization and a team of professionals can design the website for you for some extra fee.

Picaholic delivers a few decent opportunities worth your attention. These are unlimited pages, zip image upload, high impact images and videos, password protected galleries, free 7 day trial, and what’s more pleasant, 30 money back guarantee. The fact you can’t reside your site on your own servers darkens the aforesaid advantages a bit.

Among the great features provided by Picaholic are mobile compatibility and cross-browser support. At present visitors can view images and text on their mobile devices, including iPhone and Blackberry. Video streams are promised to be released soon.

One of the main highlights you can see in the feature list of Picaholic is SEO-friendly site structure. Let’s make an experiment and test one of the websites created with Picaholic for SEO-friendliness. We’ve searched for the pages indexed on this website www.lisazimmitti.com. We have found that there are links to the website pages in index but they all have the same meta description which is not SEO friendly. Plus, no text content was indexed on those pages except that the page has a flash file on it. This means the pages, even though they are in Google index, are useless. Another step is to type “lisa zimmitti contact” in Google to see if the contact page would show up. What we got was the same index page with "design by picaholic" as a snippet. Thus, the website failed the test – this is definitely not as SEO friendly as Picaholic states.

Now let’s see what all this enjoyable flash websites management claimed by Picaholic team will cost you. There are 3 payment options presupposing the long-term subscription loyalty: from $25 per month; from $60 per quarter; from $200 annually. Not too expensive, but my opinion is that the current functionality of Picaholic websites is a bit overpriced. For justice’ sake, we should admit that the company is developing and many new options are announced to be implemented in the flash websites in future. So let’s wait until the number of advantages will correspond to the price.

On Picaholic.com home page you can see a showcase of websites built using this software. Judging by this gallery and a number of positive testimonials available on the main page as well, lots of people are happy with the Picaholic product. All presented designs are beautiful and original. The only drawback we’ve noticed is that a bunch of websites loads rather slowly.

In general, solutions offered by Picaholic are satisfying and you can build a nice looking portfolio website using this software. However, we recommend you to take advantage of the trial period and check all the functionality and options carefully in order to make sure the product will return the expenses.

Hope this post was useful. You will find links to other systems reviews on the right.

FolioLink Review

2009-12-22T03:42:00.000-08:00

Company name: FolioLink

Website: www.foliolink.com

FolioLink offers portfolio websites created both in flash and HTML. They have 3 account types (turnkey, premium and pro) that differ in features available and pricing, which starts from $239.00/yr plus $149.00 one time set up payment. The system is template-based (like say the WordPress for example), so you can update and switch between 20 website layouts at any time. Gallery designs are nice and simple but look a bit outdated and in general have a similar layout.

What I don’t like about FolioLink website is that there is no a well-defined list of functionality on the website so it’s hard to guess what list of features to expect. It would be also great to have some kind of demo one can view without signing up for a free trial (yes, they have a free 7 day trial available). What you can definitely do within functionality offered is upload unlimited number of images and sell them online(without commission to FolioLink and with lots of great selling features available), create unlimited number of text pages, change the default logo on design to your one, track website stats using Google Analytics.

As stated on FolioLink website, both portfolio and image archive sites are optimized for search engine visibility and flash websites include large shadow HTML websites which is definitely great. But if you pay more attention to the websites themselves you will definitely notice that a link to the home page like this one http://website.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=24376&Akey=V9LPVA4M doesn’t look SEO friendly at all not speaking about user-friendliness. Let’s make another test. Here’s one of the websites they list as sample on design page: http://thompsonweddings.com Let’s go to google and type in “thompson weddings” and see what shows up ( if the website is indexable we should see some nice snippet, or meta description):

"Peter Wynn Thompson Portfolio - BOOK I, BOOK II, BOOK III ...
FolioLink Websites for artists and photographers (c) 2003-2008 ISProductions.
thompsonweddings.com"

As we can see, all that got indexed on the index page is the copyright by foliolink and no nice info about photographer or photo services. Strange, right?

The other thing that I don’t like about FolioLink and other similar solutions is that you have to host with them. Usually you could pay $7 for a cool hosting and be quite happy about it as well as feel safer having 100% control over your websites files. As for the domain name, you can register it with FolioLink or elsewhere.

The photography solutions offered by FolioLink would work for you quite perfectly if you have a bunch of photos to sell online (like some stock photo website) but is too much if you’d like to create a nice online portfolio and are not ready to spend around $400 on the features that you don’t actually need. I haven’t found any reviews of FolioLink at websites like www.talkreviews.com but there were lots of discussions on photography forums. Some of the their clients are happy with the service, some are not, so I guess you should sign up for FolioLink trial to get your own opinion. There are also lots of other photography website software reviews available on our blog, use the links on the right to browse.

PhotoShelter Review

2009-12-21T05:52:00.000-08:00

Company name: PhotoShelter

Website: www.photoshelter.com

PhotoShelter is a nice photography website software allowing you to build a website in about 5 mins. They have 9 basic designs/layouts to choose from, also there are options to order a fully custom website design or integrate the galleries with your existing website. All PhotoShelter websites are fully e-commerce enabled (lots of pricing profiles, product types etc) and SEO friendly. They can also offer you a choice of three print labs that can automatically fulfill any print and product orders - you set the prices, they print and ship.

There's no limit to the number of galleries you can display on a website - and you control layout style, image size, navigation items, on-page text, watermarks, and more. PhotoShelter has a nice "post to facebook" tool lets you easily export a gallery to Facebook, or post a link on Facebook walls and fan pages. You can also add a "share this" tool to your website, enabling visitors to post links to your images across their favorite social networks.

PhotoShelter websites are not built with Flash which is perfect for a corporate website but seems to be a bit boring for a website of an artist. At some point PhotoShelter websites are more of a solid selling tool for photographer (to sell the artwork online) rather than a place introducing their work to public.

PhotoShelter offers 4 plans to choose from that differ in functionality and features included. Starter plan set-up is free and the pro plan (most advanced one) is $549/year. You host and register the domain name with PhotoShelter by default.

I think that PhotoShelter is a great website tool with great customer support but the designs are a bit standard. With PhotoShelter websites you will have great photo galleries functionality but you won’t stand out from the crowd. The ecommerce features are really cool but if you are not planning to sell your works online yet (and of you don’t have thousands of photos to sell) you can search for a cheaper solution. You can consider flash photography websites by other companies, order an XML based template or a nicely designed flash website with the admin area like ReadyPhotoSite or Bludomain.

SiteWelder Review

2009-12-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

Company name: SiteWelder

Website: http://www.sitewelder.com/

SiteWelder is a photo website software allowing you to create photo websites and online portfolios on SiteWelder servers. The process is pretty simple, once you register in a system just login to your interface to upload your images and move them into the galleries. You can also create text pages in the WYSIWYG editor (but only up to 10 pages) and add pdf files and video to your website. The system is template based and as they say one can easily change the look-and-feel of the website to one of their 500+ layout/theme combinations. It’s also possible to integrate your existing website design into SiteWelder for additional fee and order custom modifications to the standard themes.

A standard SiteWelder account has unlimited galleries with up 750 images on the server, if you need more you have to pay $5 a month for an additional 250 images. There’s also a shopping cart linked to Paypal so you can sell your photos online.

Among the list of features provided they also list “easy search engine indexing and optimization” but it doesn’t seem to make sense as most of the static (html, php, asp whatever) pages are indexeable by default if only the content is not inside some kind of a script. There’s also site statistics available as the part of the service but you can usually get all possible data from google analytics. Also, speaking about SEO optimization, the structure of the URLs is important as well but I can’t say that a link like /gallery.html?gallery=still life %2f food is friendly.

Nice addition to your photo website is a random home page gallery option that displays a different image on every new visit to the home page. Well, it could be even more interesting to have a slideshow option on the home page, right?

Though the SiteWelder software has lots of nice features, there are other factors we should take a look at.

The price. There is a one time $250 start up fee and $450 yearly hosting. That’s a bunch of money to spend while the functionality is nice but not exclusive.

Hosting. You can’t choose your hosting company and have full control over all the settings. While the advanced hosting package costs $10 on average a month (150 GBSpace), $450 a year is a way too much.

You have a website but at the same time it feels like it’s not fully yours. You depend on the system.

Designs. SiteWelder is offering lots of designs but they are not attractive. I agree that it’s complicated to integrate a complex detailed design into the system but at least the style should be up-do-date. If I were to create my own static portfolio I would choose Wordpress (Creating A WordPress Photography Portfolio: Plugins, Themes, Tutorials). There are lots of free designs available, tens of plugins and you can built in Google analytics.

Good thing is that we haven’t seen bad customer reviews, so if you can spend $800 a year and don’t need something special you can rely on SiteWelder. Still why don’t you check all the solutions available on the market?

Bludomain vs...?

Bludomain Review

2009-12-08T05:14:00.001-08:00

Company name: Bludomain

Website: www.bludomain.com

Bluedomain is the company selling ready-made websites for photographers, their prices for website vary from $50 to $400 depending on website look and feel and functionality. Basic websites include features like adding your logo and background, but have a set number of pages and photo galleries. $100 websites have more advanced functionality, which includes shopping cart, photo, video and music uploaders and watermark. $400 websites are most advanced and include features like unlimited galleries, calendar, proofing section, shopping cart, optional video feature, songs per gallery but still a limited number of pages. Colors on site can’t be changed and there’s not much design freedom.

You can host your website on your own (with any hosting company) or host with Bludomain and the hosting fee depends on the package that you choose. Website designs are pretty nice but there is one big problem about this company, the lack of customer support. If you search online for the Bludomain reviews you’ll be surprised by the number of people dissatisfied with product delivery time and support. Still and what makes us wonder, tens of people order from Bludomain.com every month (based on customer list they publish on their website).

Bludomain is not showing up in the search engines on the first 3 pages for any query related to photography website creation and design, as well as photography website software that makes us think that they rely mostly on offline advertizing campaigns and maybe that’s the reason of the poor online support.

The other thing that I personally don’t like about Bludomain is being added to the list of customers on their website. I mean that all the websites look more or less similar and seeing another 10 people ordering that same template that same month would definitely be a red stop sign for me. I don’t want my clients to know that I’m using a template for my website and I don’t want them to find other 10 similar websites from that list.

I have reviewed over 100 websites based on Bludomain designs. Some of them say Bad Gateway, some still have the default Bludomain in website title, some designs look beautiful, some look ugly.
Overall Bludomain is not a bad system to have your photography website built, but according to google more and more people are looking for “bludomain vs”, ” bludomain alternatives”, “bludomain review”, “alternative to bludomain”, “ bludomain competitors”. It’s up to you only, whether to order from Bluedomain or look for alternatives (check the list of the reviews available on the right).

Hope this small review was helpful. Good luck!

Creating A WordPress Photography Portfolio: Plugins, Themes, Tutorials

2009-12-08T02:47:00.000-08:00

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

PhotographerDream WordPress Theme | Demo | Download

Watercolor | Demo | Download

Hair Tyson | Demo | Download

Page-photo | Demo | Download

AutoFocus | Demo | Download

The Unstandard WordPress Theme | Demo | Download

Fotolog theme | Demo | Download

Reflection | Demo | Download

Viewport | Demo | Download

Grace | Demo | Download

Fotofolio | Demo | Download

Grain | Demo | Download

WP Pix | Demo | Download

Linguist | Demo | Download

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

Charlie Stout

Enrapture

Justine Ungaro

Ryerson Photography

Stennie Photography

Portfolio/Photography

Utzel-Butzel Photoblog

Jorg Jackel

Ericksmithrocks

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.

Photo Website CMS: Your Way To Success

2009-08-10T05:59:00.000-07:00

Easy website management is probably one of the sacred dreams of any person having a website (of course if you are not a developer enjoying changing your website code every other day). If your main business is offline you just can't afford spending much time of the website maintenance but same time you can't have a website with the outdated info.

In the world of photographers, designers, painters, sculptors this problem is even more pressing. You not only have to make sure that the contact info you have on the website is correct, but you have to upload your new works online, post information about exhibitions and let website visitors know what's your schedule, when you are busy and when you can shoot their wedding. Website management becomes a nightmare. Any time you need a new photo uploaded to the photo gallery or the line of text changes, you have t contact your web developer. And it’s not only about time and money the main problem is that you have no control of your own website.

Imagine that your developer can no longer help you with your website. What to do now? Look for someone else and explain the website technical details you have no idea about or just forget about the website? Start a new website with the new developer and got into the same problem?

Of course, there are several solutions on the market that can help you manage your website, but none of them gives you full control over your website. Some dynamic flash photo galleries let you edit the content on the pages via .txt files and upload your photos to a set number of galleries, others have nice admin areas but they are just the photo galleries that should be integrated with your website in some way. But can this be considered an easy website editing or can this features be enough for a photo website?

The answer is definitely no. And that is why a CMS for photography website is so necessary. CMS stands for Content Management System, that is the system meant for easy and convenient website information management. There can’t be a single definition what should be included into content management system, but the basics are the same. Projecting this to photography website, these are the key features that should be included into photo website cms.

1. Basic management tools for: logo, photo website name, menu names, background.

2. Page builder: add/edit/delete website textual pages.

3. News editor and events manager.

4. Advanced photo galleries

5. Password protected photo galleries.

6. Advanced video galleries.

7. Slideshow creator

8. Ecommerce compatibility.

All these features are twice as necessary if you have a flash photo website. Flash effects make the presentation of your portfolio more unique and interesting but at the same time they make website editing impossible if you are not a flash guru. So what photographers really need is a Flash Photo Website CMS.

In our next posts we'll discuss flash photo gallery solutions and flash content management system available on the market.