website advice

[Matthew Forrest]

Ive came across a web host service called websites-for-photographers.co.uk,They seem quite reasonable,Is anyone using them,If so would you recommend??

[AndyStevens]

Not seen these before - they seem to be offering a nice package there. Certainly worth signing up for the trial.

[OliverJohnson]

I'd be cautious and shop around.

£50 is not much money to outlay for a website but looking at their templates and the existing customer sites they show, in all honesty I think they look pretty awful. They are very basic (which is not a necessarily a bad thing) but it's nothing that you couldn't knock up yourself very quickly for free. Even if you don't know HTML you can knock something that looks 'as good' or better by using various free or inexpensive web design programs. A hosting package suitable for such a site would cost you around £15 per year. The main advantage that this company has over building a site yourself is the ability to sell prints online. BUT and this is a big BUT, all they are doing is utilizing the PayPal shopping cart and you can do that for free yourself! Admittedly setting up a PayPal shopping cart can be a bit fiddly particularly if you want to sell the same print at different sizes and prices but it can be done.

In fact years ago I created a template for Jalbum that not only generated a gallery but added a PayPal shopping cart (with unique identifiers for each photo/size/price) that did this at the touch of a button. I'm not saying it is easy to do but I did it and at the time I knew very little about HTML or Jalbum. If you spend a bit of time learning now you could easily build a site for free and host it for £15 a year and it would look 'as good' and probably better than what this company is asking £50 for!

[KeithT]

I agree with Oliver. I would personally put my money with SmugMug or Photium.

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/best-photo-sharing/
http://www.photium.com/

[GeoffWessex]

Clikpic? Lots of styles, lots of examples to see.

[KCTS]

I have my own site already so I just need somewhere to be able to host my photos that I can link to and allow password protected access to events so that people can order their own prints and have then sent directly to them. Colour world imaging just looks too complicated - and just how much is costs is not clear
photoium looks Ok until you realise that for £44 you only get 150 photos - not even one wedding !
Smugmug seems good - but its US and i need a UK based printer

Any more suggestions?

[GeoffWessex]

I understand SmugMug does have a UK printer - the only other one it has a deal with apart from the one in California.
I think SmugMug is brilliant in what it does.... I just wish a few people with money in Canada could come up with something similar in the Ontario area to allow Canadian photographers (and their customers) to keep their money this side of the border. And surely a company in the UK could also do it.

[OliverJohnson]

Originally Posted by KCTS

I have my own site already so I just need somewhere to be able to host my photos that I can link to and allow password protected access to events so that people can order their own prints and have then sent directly to them. Colour world imaging just looks too complicated - and just how much is costs is not clear
photoium looks Ok until you realise that for £44 you only get 150 photos - not even one wedding !
Smugmug seems good - but its US and i need a UK based printer

Any more suggestions?

There is a way of doing this again for free (you can tell I'm a big believer in doing things for free can't you ). However it might not be suitable for a wedding photographer or a pro who's main income comes from photography. For everyone else though it could well be a viable solution.

The problem you've identified is that of all the companies that offer affordable hosting of galleries and do all the printing for you are either based in the US, provide prints by an unknown company, allow only limited uploads, are expensive or a combination of some or all of them.

The solution I use I fully admit isn't ideal but it does work. I use Photobox Pro Gallery which is completely free to use, you can set your own prices, select what sizes and products you wish to sell and you can password protect some or all of your galleries. The quality of Photobox prints is excellent as is their service and turn around times and because the client pays Photobox direct you don't need to worry about have a merchant bank account in order to process credit cards or the expense of doing so either. Basically the client views your photos, adds them to the shopping cart in the sizes you offer, they then make their payment, Photobox print and dispatch the photos and take their costs for printing and dispatch (which are very cheap anyway) and then you can request the money from Photobox. Job done.

The catch is that Photobox Pro Galleries are only viewable via the Photobox website i.e. you can't host it yourself. But there is a solution and this is where it might not be ideal for some. If you already have your own website than you can display any webpage on pretty much any server in the world by using what's called an iFrame. Effectively this is an empty page on your website that simply calls the webpage from another website and displays it in place, giving the impression that the 'remote' page is actually part of your site.
There are various ways this can be implemented and some ways are better than others. For example if you use a CMS (Content Management System) such as Wordpress of Joomla or if you have written your site in PHP you can usually use a bit of code that some CMS's call a wrapper. A wrapper is basically the same thing as coding it in HTML but it gives you a bit more flexibility.

What's the down side? The downside is getting the 'remote' page (i.e. your Photobox Pro Gallery) to look the same as your own website. Unfortunately Photobox give you some control over how your Pro Gallery looks but you can't control things like the font or colours which means that unless you use the same colour scheme and design on your main site it won't match.

If you want to see an example of what a Photobox Pro Gallery looks like inside a wrapper then take a look at my site http://www.peakoverload.com/store/buy-prints.html

Like I say, this isn't going to suitable for everyone but if you just want to be able to offer prints for sale without the expense of additional hosting which largely makes it uneconomical then it is an option.

HTH

[Matthew Forrest]

The photobox gallery looks ok for selling prints..Im already registered to photobox.have you sold many prints...

[OliverJohnson]

I wouldnt say I've sold lots but I've made sales yes. Essentially my website, through selling prints and other stuff, pays for itself and gives me some beer money which is pretty much all I was aiming for especially as I do very little if anything to promote the site.