Web hosting sites

mikeanywhere

I am interested in sticking some pics up online and wandered what people have used or are about to use?

I am also interested in the ability to sell some pics online as I have sold a few already but it would make it easier if it was all automated.

Looking forward to hearing your recommendations

Fenster

Gallery 2 is probably your best bet, it's an aweomse piece of open source software.

rymus

I setup a cart with gallery 2 and a paypal plugin. Bit of fiddling to get it right but it works quite well.

Was considering getting a pro smugmug account not so long ago... Integrated ordering & printing and all that malarky. Beats doing it all yourself I suppose.

johnnyrotten

Link?

rymus

www.smugmug.com

mikeanywhere

rymus wrote:

www.smugmug.com

This is no different to Flickr isnt it??

EDIT - just seen the Pro Zone where it enables you to have various extras that Flickr doesnt provide!!

mikeanywhere

rymus wrote:

I setup a cart with gallery 2 and a paypal plugin. Bit of fiddling to get it right but it works quite well.

Was considering getting a pro smugmug account not so long ago... Integrated ordering & printing and all that malarky. Beats doing it all yourself I suppose.

For those of us who are technically challenged, a smugmug account is the easier option isnt it. Still cheaper than going to a web developer to sort even though the site isnt truly yours as you are using their templates etc??

Do you need a domain name??

rymus

afaik smugmug will give you a hostname, i.e. rymus.smugmug.com.

To personalise that further you could get a domain name and point it towards your smugmug hostname. Yes, for the technically challenged amongst us, smugmug seems to be the far easier option. It is probably a good 10-20 times cheaper than going to a good web developer, but yes, your site is going to look like countless others no matter what template you use. The only way to make it completely unique is if they let you skin your site yourself, but I don't think they currently do this.. Too problematic as far as they're concerned.

Calina

Photobox.co.uk offer some options for printing too although they credit your print account rather than you). I'm considering going with that at the moment because I really don't have the time to sort out the printing and despatch myself. But I'm going to set up a Gallery 2 site as well (it's in the words). On the other hand, if it looks like I'm selling a lot of prints I may have to reappraise that.

I see from the SmugMug set up that you can use your own domain alright which is nice. I've been looking at other printing options to see if I can sort out a pro account and it would appear some of the German printers might be an option. My main issue with photobox is that if I want them to transfer actual money to me I need a UK bank account, otherwise it still seems to be print credits all the way.

I have a domain name for the Gallery 2 site (it's in serious alpha mode at the moment though) - I have a lot more fiddling to go. Rymus' site was really nice from what I remember though.

mike PM if you want to have a look at it.

rymus

when I was checking it out a few months back, I think photobox would only deal with pro photographers, based in the UK that would be putting a significant amount of business their way. Could be wrong though..

Id be inclined to go with smugmug (and may well in the coming year). Just a matter of getting calibrated to their printers.

sineadw

Have you considered building a site yourself? The hosting company I recommend to clients offers software like Gallery2, shopping cart software, auction software and tons of other stuff pre-installed and configured for free, as part of your hosting package. Most do these days. And there are quite a few decent freeware WYSIWYG editors out there that will have a unique site up and running in next to no time. Always better than a templated site. And you have total control.

Fenster

My own hosting is through 1 and 1 in the US, with the domain registered by my fiance (bhalash.com).

Of all things, I'm suprised that balash.com haven't sued me for infringement

rymus

there's always time... expect a cease & desist letter once they get their website up and running