Suggestions for photography website builder?

[Lydia L]

I'm making a professional photography website with my own domain name. I need a (preferably free) website builder to either host through or just design the page.

Things I'm looking for:
-unlimited or large photo storage
-easily organizable
-sleek/ no large or unsightly logos

Thanks!
Okay cool guys; I get that I'm going to have to spend money on hosting or whatnot. I can go without the condescending comments on what you consider to be professional- I'm a full-time student on a tight budget. I was referring to just a website builder.

[Peter]

Well for photography site I would recommend that you build a BLOG that is much easier than a website, for the easiest option try Blogger.com I use it for my blog and it works great! When selecting a template just say that you want a photography blog.

[B K]

Use a CMS system to build your site. Like wordpress, drupal, joomla, blogger, . . . <--- These systems are all free, but hosting them is not. Most CMS systems have require a database such as MySQL, and you'll have to pay for that on top of your hosting.

There is no way you will get someone to host one of these systems for you without it costing some money, and you won't get database hosting without paying either. Some paid for hosts even specialise in setting up content management systems such as wordpress etc, for you.

It's not a good idea to use your photography site to store large photos - the amount of web storage you have will depend on how much space your web host gives you. Very few give unlimited space. Websites don't need large images.

[Eric Lefebvre]

So you want a Mercedes at the cost of a Kia.

If you are "making a professional photography website" you'll need to invest in your business and that means not using a free service. To start, no free web host will fit your requirements heck ... even PAID hosts won't fit your requirements as very few offer unlimited storage.

Another reason you don't want to use a free host is that your business is going to be reliant on their service ... if they go down ... you go down!

The other reason would be that most free hosts put adverts on your page to pay for your service ... these adverts will be targeted to your viewer base based on the content of your page ... so you run the very real risk of having advertising on your websites FOR OTHER PHOTOGRAPHERS IN YOUR REGION! And even if that doesn't happen, you have no control over what advertising your host will put up ... that's a bit of a risk to take with your reputation.

I pay about 8$ a month for a decent hosting package with a service that is up 99.9% of the time and I built my site from the ground up (I'm a web developer a my 9-5 job) but I still haven;t designed myself a print order system and can't currently accept online payments.

If you are looking for a "turn key" solution you'll want to look at sites like:
SmugMug: 20$-30$ a month.
PhotoShelter: 10$-50$ a month.

The advantage with these turn key system is that they also fullfillment for you. they deal with print orders!

Something that is important to remember is that your website is a BUSINESS COST and as such is TAX DEDUCTABLE for your business.

[Steve P]

I'm going to keep it quick and simple. You are NEVER going to be taken seriously as a "professional photographer" if you are using some goofy, free site with ads and pop ups all over the place. Practically no different that throwing photos on Facebook and calling yourself a "photography business" along with all the other wannabes.

A business requires investment, and that means spending money with a proper online presence. Nothing free is going to give you that.

steve

[Luke De Paverd]

Your best bet is a solution dedicated to photographers like Photography Orders or Photo Cart. Both allow you to upload photos, organise them into galleries, customise the look and feel, etc.

[Byen]

Checkout Photoshelter as they target photographers. Here is a review on them if that helps - http://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/phot...er-review/

A couple of other website builders that might work for photographers include Squarespace and Weebly. I think this site has a lot more discussion on them - http://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/cate...otography/

Good luck!

[Johnny]

A great website builder for photographers is ultimatewb - it has an awesome photos app. You can create photo galleries and slideshows and customize the animation/display. Plus it will work on smartphones and tablets too. It has click-photo enlarge, watermarking if you want, and you can also create customer sections to review their photos. You can use the web hosting there if you want, or choose another web hosting to use the software with.

[Philip]

Well, a great website builder would be ImCreator.com. I have personally created several photo blogging websites with it and all of them turned out great. It's really easy to use because it's a drag-and-drop website and plus, it has a ton of powerful features...

[Joan]

For under $5/mo, you can get a professional website builder for a photography website. One of the samples at http://www.topwebsitebuilder.com shows a photographer website that looks very impressive, in my opinion. Do check it out and let me know what you think?