Photo Website advice

[Harpo]

Ive been putting off setting up a website to host my photos long enough. I have a few on Flickr, but wanted some thing else. Been looking at PBase, Zenfolio and SmugMug, 500px

What Im basically looking for is (1) a good site (all 4 above meet that) that allows me to post groupings of pictures for anyone to see, (2) the ability for others to purchase prints if they want (we've had several requests so far), (3) have a password protected area for family/friends or pictures that I dont want open for all to see because the quality is not up to my standards or photos Im still working on. (my wife will add her photos too, but she is not as picky about the quality as I am! ha.) lastly, (4) the ability to have a domain name that does not include the host site name in there.

Sometimes looking through some of the sites, you have to try to work thru their marketing hype to figure out if they offer exactly what you are looking for. I dont need one of the pro accounts. Definitely not there yet! I know many of you have your pictures in one of the three (and other) photo hosting sites. Which ones meet the criteria I have?

Thanks in advance!

[FrankMi]

lastly, (4) the ability to have a domain name that does not include the host site name in there.

That would knock out SmugMug. Unless there is an option on Smugmug I'm not aware of, you can see my site in the signature below and the domain name is part of Frostbyte.SmugMug.com.

[Geoff F]

I use P base and find it relatively simple to use; it has to be easy for me.

But like most such sites you do have to include their name as part of the address. For example my galleries are at www.pbase.com/crustacean

However, by using a suitable and rather crafty name you can get yourself quite a bit further up in the 'Googling Race' and achieve better results.

I chose 'Crustacean' as it was my old fishing boat name (I had just taken early retirement from commercial fishing) and anybody who needed to see the photos would be aware of that.

In fact, I have had 66,000 views in under 3 years.

When I set up a similar site for my local regatta photos I wanted an easier name to find so used www.pbase.com/regatta which easily shows up in searches.

But if you don't want a hosting site name I suspect you will have to pay for a personal site to be created by one of the many companies who do this.

There is a small charge for P base but it is only around £15 per year. And there isn't really any small print to worry about.

[Hansm]

One of the packages of Zenfolio gives yuo thr possibility use your domainname without the zenfolio name.

[Viana]

That would knock out SmugMug. Unless there is an option on Smugmug I'm not aware of, you can see my site in the signature below and the domain name is part of Frostbyte.SmugMug.com.

SmugMug has that option under the Professional package.

[epmi314]

500px is my other favorite site. While you can "white label" the 500px name out of your portfolio, I am not certain visitors have the option to purchase. Just a work of caution.

[frigidlight]

500px is my other favorite site. While you can "white label" the 500px name out of your portfolio, I am not certain visitors have the option to purchase. Just a work of caution.

As of right now, until 500p gets a new printing solution to replace fotomoto, there is no option to purchase prints. However, for $50/year and unlimited everything, including a custom domain, this might be your best bet. Another thing I would recommend looking into (and this is much more of a time committment) is a wordpress photo site. It takes more work but you can truly customize it to be EXACTLY the way you want it and there are tons of themes on the web to use as starting points.

[Harpo]

Another thing I would recommend looking into (and this is much more of a time committment) is a wordpress photo site. It takes more work but you can truly customize it to be EXACTLY the way you want it and there are tons of themes on the web to use as starting points.

Thats one thing Id like to avoid… too much time on the computer. I've already resigned to the fact that Im going to have to get a better PP program and learn that, in essence, spend more time on the computer than I originally wanted, so I am not keen on adding to that. I might have to make some compromises in the criteria I want, but want to see what more say before I go there…

[Colin Southern]

I'm a very happy Pbase user, but I don't think they have the option of your own domain name or purchasing.

[frigidlight]

Thats one thing Id like to avoid… too much time on the computer. I've already resigned to the fact that Im going to have to get a better PP program and learn that, in essence, spend more time on the computer than I originally wanted, so I am not keen on adding to that. I might have to make some compromises in the criteria I want, but want to see what more say before I go there…

Gotcha. in that case, I'd say go with 500px if you can handle missing the printing solution for a little while. I'm sure that's a top priority for them right now though, so I doubt it will be long. They make their money from their Awesome accounts so having full function has got to be key.

Check out http://www.interfacingnature.com for an example of a well designed and implemented 500px awesome site.

[Zone XI]

Zenfolio will do all of your requirements, I was with them for a year and during that time configured it with my own domain name, and with the pro package you can remove all their branding if you like.

It's about $50 a year cheaper than Smugmug for the pro version. Zenfolio seems to have a very strong image protection regime, but from what I can gether, they use Flash, and they serve the webbots with a different version of the site than a user. This is a big no-no for Google, it's the reason I left them, I'm trying to get the hit-rate on my site up and the number of images that Google could find was minimal. Other than that, I was extremely pleased with the service and ease of use of Zenfolio.

I looked at Smugmug, and decided to go it alone with a $35 Wordpress template (I decided selling prints automatically is a waste of time, if a customer wants a print, I'll do it myself and give them exactly what they want).

I'm still tweeking my new site slightly, but I'm very pleased with the results so far, please take a look, tell me what you think !
www.zone-xi.com

Good luck,
Les

[ktuli]

Mike,

I'm also a vote for doing your own site. I use Drupal for the front end, and Gallery to store the photos. Once both are setup, the maintenance is pretty light.

I use mine just as a blog (not really looking to sell prints) but here's the link for an example: http://www.ktuli.com/photography/

Good luck.

- Bill

[Crovean]

I am a smugmug user and all of the above can be done with smugmug. Before I purchase smugmug, I was comparing it with Zenfolio. What made me decide was that I can fully customize the site using CSS, which I haven't done >.< I have some purchases from my smugmug site and did also the printing for me personally and loved the results, so does my customers which they commented that it was easy.

Since, you are in the US, there shouldn't be any problem with timely shipping.

I haven't done any customization to my smugmug site yet but feel free to ask questions about it.

here's my site. http://photos.crovean.com

I'm redesigning also my main website and that is whats holding me

I am paying $150 / year for my Smugmug account.

[Crovean]

That would knock out SmugMug. Unless there is an option on Smugmug I'm not aware of, you can see my site in the signature below and the domain name is part of Frostbyte.SmugMug.com.

Frank,

I was just at your website and looking at your photos. I am not sure if you are aware that you have your image displaying at original size and I am able to download the original image from your Smugmug. You might want to check on your settings if you didn't mean to set it this way.

I had mine set to display only "Large" and disabled the download option.

[FrankMi]

Frank,

I was just at your website and looking at your photos. I am not sure if you are aware that you have your image displaying at original size and I am able to download the original image from your Smugmug. You might want to check on your settings if you didn't mean to set it this way.

I had mine set to display only "Large" and disabled the download option.

Hi Chriss, yes I set it that way purposly so that folks like you could download any of the the images you would like at original resolution. Thank you for looking!

If you are interested in high end professional photographers that also do this, take a look at some of Trey Ratcliff's best images, posted in original size, free to download, with no watermarks. http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Po...our-favorites/

[Crovean]

Hi Chriss, yes I set it that way purposly so that folks like you could download any of the the images you would like at original resolution. Thank you for looking!

If you are interested in high end professional photographers that also do this, take a look at some of Trey Ratcliff's best images, posted in original size, free to download, with no watermarks. http://stuckincustoms.smugmug.com/Po...our-favorites/

Cool. I know some people are so meticulous with their images and was making sure.... I know smugmug's controls is sometimes over whelming.

Also i'm on the "no watermark" band wagon too :P but just can't download my images for free but i'm lax on sharing part that's why i got it setup to display only the large version of my images.

[Donald]

SmugMug has that option under the Professional package.

You get it in both the Power and Pro version of SmugMug

[Loose Canon]

I am a smugmug user and all of the above can be done with smugmug. Before I purchase smugmug, I was comparing it with Zenfolio. What made me decide was that I can fully customize the site using CSS, which I haven't done >.< I have some purchases from my smugmug site and did also the printing for me personally and loved the results, so does my customers which they commented that it was easy.

Since, you are in the US, there shouldn't be any problem with timely shipping.

I haven't done any customization to my smugmug site yet but feel free to ask questions about it.

here's my site. http://photos.crovean.com

I'm redesigning also my main website and that is whats holding me

I am paying $150 / year for my Smugmug account.

Hi Chriss,

Who does the printing for Smugmug?

Does the printer offer a printer/paper profile(s) for download for soft-proofing, or have you found that even necessary?

I have tried a few prints ordered from MPIX, who prints for Zenfolio. I downloaded their profiles and found I obtained much better results.

I would like to try the same with Smugmug's print lab, but that may not be possible unless I actually purchase a site with them. I'll definitely have to do some more research, but was just wondering about your experience.

By the way? I liked your Smugmug site. Great stuff there.

[Crovean]

Hi Chriss,

Who does the printing for Smugmug?

Does the printer offer a printer/paper profile(s) for download for soft-proofing, or have you found that even necessary?

I have tried a few prints ordered from MPIX, who prints for Zenfolio. I downloaded their profiles and found I obtained much better results.

I would like to try the same with Smugmug's print lab, but that may not be possible unless I actually purchase a site with them. I'll definitely have to do some more research, but was just wondering about your experience.

By the way? I liked your Smugmug site. Great stuff there.

Terry,

Smugmug uses Bayphoto and EZprints.
I believe you can try it by just going to there website and get some 4x6's printed.

For soft proofing (here's a link about soft proofing) but I actually haven't soft proof my images and they turn out pretty.

here's some photo examples they have on their website.

[Loose Canon]

Thank you Chriss.

I think I’ll get some samples done. Probably pick up a couple of their calibration prints, load the profiles and see what I come up with by way of comparison.

Appreciate the links. That was one of the pages I had hoped to find while I’m looking at Smugmug.

I guess since you haven’t soft-proofed, then do you allow the print labs to do any corrections they deem necessary, or do you disallow that for your prints and have them printed precisely as you submit them?

Do you have a preference of Bay or EZ?

As a comparison, I think I might consider sending them a soft-proofed (with corrections disallowed), and the same shot straight out of Photoshop with corrections allowed by the lab.