Making a website

[smiling gecko]

Hello,

I've been looking at the jumble of "free website"  do-it-yourself sites...and...aarrrrgghhhh!!!

I'm trying to go back into portrait photography and want to have a website for visibility and marketing.

I'm a techno-klutz and don't have as much patience as I probably should have to tackle this...and like most everyone else, not enough (up-front) money to put towards paying a professional web developer.  

I'm not averse to paying for a professional website, I just can't stretch the family budget for the typical "half-down"  deposit and the balance before the site is launched.

Sooooo, I would appreciate some insight from other folks who have been down this road  already.

Take care,

Kenneth

[Dean Williams]

I'm still using Netscape Composer, and am not very advanced as far as fancy design goes, but it is easy to use.  It's an old wysiwyg program.  My webpages are here:  http://www.deansphotographica.com/
(Like I said, not fancy)

There are a number of free web page template suppliers.  One is Steve's Free Website Templates .  He probably has fifty different variations at no charge.
There are many others.  Search "website templates" on google.

[dean]

I did all this about 10 yrs. ago and have forgotten everything I learned. Like you I am starting again.

The web has a ton of free resources which I am sure you will find. Dean's link is a good start and I have been following a few links.

http://www.tips-tricks.com/

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/lessons.html

From past frustrating experiences I recommend picking one html editor and stick with it. I've decided on this one:

http://www.webwriter.dk/english/

If you see a site or page you like view the source code with your browser. This will help a lot in solving the "how'd they do that" questions.

Good Luck (for both of us)

The Other Dean

[dean]

Forgot this one:

http://jalbum.net/

It's a free your site or their site service


The other Dean

[P C Headland]

You might like to consider a specialist provider like Clikpic, especially if you are a "techno-klutz".  I suppose the hosted Jalbum would fall into a similar category.

You do have to pay, but its quite reasonably priced, considering you only really have to enter the content - the design, by way of templates, is already done for you.  You can have them host your own domain name as well.  There's a free trial so you can see if it would meet requirements.

I think Clikpic or Jalbum would get you up and going quicker, and with a lot less aggro than trying to craft something yourself.

[Dean Williams]

Maybe should mention hosting here.  I use Godaddy, and they have some hosting packages with a great deal of storage and bandwidth for little money.  I pay about $40 a year.  I have called them a couple of times with questions and a real person with a west coast voice answered.  They also call me any time something like a domain name is about to expire, as a reminder.  

Avoid Registerfly like the plague.

[smiling gecko]

Thank you dean, dean w, pc headland for all your nifty suggestions and pointers!!

I'm hoping to have some time this week to look into the sites you all provided.

Keep you posted...

take care,

kenneth

[melek]

Just a couple of comments. If you're a portrait photographer, you'll want to have a professional site, including your own URL: http://yoursite.com, rather than a very lengthy URL. If you put it on a business card, for example, you'll want your clients to have to type (or mistype) as little as possible.

However, site designers do charge an arm and a leg.

I'm not sure of the software packages that are available, but Microsoft Expression Web for the PC (formerly FrontPage) has a decent amount of templates that can help the beginner. If your virulently anti-Microsoft, you'll probably want to consider a different product.

My main comment is that you'll want it to be as professional as possible. The image that you project through your Web site means everything to your client and those who plan to do business with you.

As always, the more you know about HTML, the better. But I know that's not everyone's strength nor their desire to learn it.

[Dean Williams]

Mike makes a good point.  Get your own domain name and point it to your hosting account.  Unique domain names are only about $10 a year, and that will keep you from having odd things in your web address, (like having MSN or yahoo right in the middle of the address).
Avoid hyphens and underscores in the name, which are hard to remember.  As an example, Smiling-Gecko.com.  Not so good.  People will forget the - in the middle.  SmilingGecko.com would probably be better.  (I don't mean to say you should use Smiling Gecko as your domain name.)

[smiling gecko]

Hi everyone,

I put a posting up on my local Craigs's list and found a web person that will work with me...more later.  Thanks dean, dean w, pc, melek & dean w  for your suggestions and help...more later.

kenneth

[Don Day]

For completeness sake, I just wanted to point out that blogs and wikis also serve many folks well, depending on expectations. The benefit is like living in a condo--someone else takes care of all the work of keeping the site running as long as you can live with the floorplans and choice of paints. These hosted sites are usually under Creative Commons or GPL terms, which you should be certain fit your model of expression vs protection.

In the blog category are hosts like Blogger and Wordpress (Jotspot got absorbed by Google, not sure this is a Good Thing). Andrea, Alan, and Mike Conneally are local members whose blog-based sites are quite worth exploring.

In the wiki category are hosts like Wetpaint (see my sig) and Deki Wiki. These allow you to build navigation to specific pages, and offer quite a bit of organizational and stylistic freedom, and ease of tending from anywhere.

Hosted web sites, as others have suggested, offer the greatest flexibility as well as greatest artistic protection (ie, set your own copyright and licensing terms). The way I look at it, the expense you might need to put into one of these sites makes you independent of the hosted advertising you might have to put up with at the free sites. (of course, you can pay to opt out of the advertising there as well.)

[melek]

The one downside of a free hosting service is that there's little that you can do if they decide to shut down the service, such as what happened with AOL's Hometown.

Wordpress and some of the other blogging tools are very flexible and reasonably simple to install on your own site, if you go that route.