Websites

[EOBeav]

This question is a bit OT, so apologies if it doesn't belong. I need to create a small, 2-3 page website for a small photography business. I have my own domain/webhosting. I'm familiar with Wordpress inside and out (I've been using it for 8 years now), but it just seems a bit overkill to use for a project like this. Even Drupal/Joomla installations seem to be too much software for what I'm trying to do. 

For those of you with your own websites, what backend software are you using? I'd like to avoid the 3rd party services like Zenfolio. I'd like to be able to modify my own installations.  I'm just curious as to what options out there would be recommended. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[florianbieler.de]

I set up my website www.florianbieler.de with WordPress as it is absolutely easy to use and I can post content wherever I want without the need to access ftp or something else. You can customize it to a very minimal level which only makes it work as a kinda gallery.

[sanj]

Will face book not be enough?

[awinphoto]

Will face book not be enough?

If you are professional or trying to break into the professional world, NO facebook is not even close, it's not even safe and secure... ANYONE can right click and download your images, and people have been known to steal images and post them as their own on facebook, Sue Bryce had a handful of them recently, of course her work is very known and was found out... Childrens Photographer Sandy Puc had a facebook page and one day, like magic, facebook took her page down... all her contacts, all her followers, everything... gone.  After that she redid a new page, but does not rely on that being her marketing and all to be all, she uses it to drive people to her website. 

Anyways, I was fortunate to be forced to learn HTML many moons ago and like babysteps learned CSS and html5 and such and have built my website from scratch...  It's still not perfect but at least if anything needs changed, i can do it myself quickly and upgrade as I go along.

[bseitz234]

Anyways, I was fortunate to be forced to learn HTML many moons ago and like babysteps learned CSS and html5 and such and have built my website from scratch...  It's still not perfect but at least if anything needs changed, i can do it myself quickly and upgrade as I go along.

Yeah, I have made a hobby of learning PHP, HTML, CSS, and a little bit of javascript... enables me to piece together a small page pretty quickly. Right now my coding is much prettier than my styling, though, so if you know CSS I'd be happy to throw together some backend scripts to do what you want to do.

[sanj]

Will face book not be enough?

If you are professional or trying to break into the professional world, NO facebook is not even close, it's not even safe and secure... ANYONE can right click and download your images, and people have been known to steal images and post them as their own on facebook, Sue Bryce had a handful of them recently, of course her work is very known and was found out... Childrens Photographer Sandy Puc had a facebook page and one day, like magic, facebook took her page down... all her contacts, all her followers, everything... gone.  After that she redid a new page, but does not rely on that being her marketing and all to be all, she uses it to drive people to her website. 

Anyways, I was fortunate to be forced to learn HTML many moons ago and like babysteps learned CSS and html5 and such and have built my website from scratch...  It's still not perfect but at least if anything needs changed, i can do it myself quickly and upgrade as I go along.

Thank you. I now know better...

[hgraf]

If you are professional or trying to break into the professional world, NO facebook is not even close, it's not even safe and secure... ANYONE can right click and download your images, and people have been known to steal images and post them as their own on facebook

While I agree with you on the facebook angle, the "safe and secure" part is false.

You say "anyone can right click and download your images" on Facebook. This is NOT specific to facebook. There is NO WAY to prevent a user from copying an image displayed in a browser. There are MANY techniques out there to try and prevent it, and NONE work.

I've seen many sites waste a ton of time trying to prevent "right-click and save", and as a curiosity (I was researching this for myself a while ago) bypassing these schemes is often trivial. Something as simple as a screen capture will defeat EVERY SINGLE METHOD I've seen.

As a result, I came to the conclusion that trying to prevent right-click and save is a complete and utter waste of time, and most of the biggest sites on the net seem to agree with me.

TTYL

[awinphoto]

If you are professional or trying to break into the professional world, NO facebook is not even close, it's not even safe and secure... ANYONE can right click and download your images, and people have been known to steal images and post them as their own on facebook

While I agree with you on the facebook angle, the "safe and secure" part is false.

You say "anyone can right click and download your images" on Facebook. This is NOT specific to facebook. There is NO WAY to prevent a user from copying an image displayed in a browser. There are MANY techniques out there to try and prevent it, and NONE work.

I've seen many sites waste a ton of time trying to prevent "right-click and save", and as a curiosity (I was researching this for myself a while ago) bypassing these schemes is often trivial. Something as simple as a screen capture will defeat EVERY SINGLE METHOD I've seen.

As a result, I came to the conclusion that trying to prevent right-click and save is a complete and utter waste of time, and most of the biggest sites on the net seem to agree with me.

TTYL

Safe and secure meaning A) you dont control the page, B) they can take down ANY page ANY time for ANY reason, just like they did with Sandy's page...  I'm aware if there's a will, there will be a way to steal an image... but right click i would say would have to be 90% of all images stolen.. it's simple, its easy, works on every computer... it's just a no brainer...  The average person isn't going to have the time or know-how to take screen shots, crop the screen shot in photoshop or the like, it's just too much work for most bonehead people who would otherwise want to steal images... Flash used to be the biggest fail/safe because it eliminated the right click option, but now flash is going by the way of the dinosaurs and the floppy disk... Now javascript and jquery is the new standard... At least on my jquerys, the simple right click, on most devices are safe, BUT, i know on certain devices it's possible and if someone screen shots my work, there's always a way... BUT... that's where digimark and google image search comes in to protect me, at least a little.  Long story short, yes, there will always be snot nosed little pissants who will know how to steal images and do whatever, but if we at least protect ourselfs a little and not make it so freaking easy to get away with it, we can all sleep a little bit better.   

[pardus]

if you know wordpress "inside and out", just use that. get a free or inexpensive theme and your site can be done in a few hours. It gives you a ton of flexibility to enhance later, adding galleries or other features, even ecommerce support for selling your pics. It seems like a no brainer. check out themeforest.net for a ton of pro themes.

[rsk7]

From my understanding, any image displayed in the browser is stored in the browser cache. You can copy the image from there without any hassle at all so there is no need to get a screen shot or right click and copy or anything.

Just assume like everything else on the web, if you put it there, it can and will be taken. Then decide what you want to put on the web.

If you want to limit access to images put them in a secured directory and password protect the directory giving out access to only those you want to have access. But assume they will copy the image if they want to.

[awinphoto]

From my understanding, any image displayed in the browser is stored in the browser cache. You can copy the image from there without any hassle at all so there is no need to get a screen shot or right click and copy or anything.

Just assume like everything else on the web, if you put it there, it can and will be taken. Then decide what you want to put on the web.

If you want to limit access to images put them in a secured directory and password protect the directory giving out access to only those you want to have access. But assume they will copy the image if they want to.

Fair enough argument, and for what it's worth, it copies the directory of the file, which is hosted on your website, and the same can be argued if you know the exact source of the file, it could be easily downloaded as well.  Then again, most casual people who aren't website nerds who know all this coding and back end stuff would be stopped when they realize they cant right click...  There are the few, the brave, the nerds who have nothing but time on their hands to comb through the cache and stuff... thankfully if they repost the image, even with minor tweaks, google image can find them and tell me exactly where they are...  digimark makes that even easier and seamless...  I've even known photographers who dont watermark and makes it super easy to steal... almost like putting a plate and a cupcake in the middle of broadway street for anyone to enjoy... but since he can track where every image goes, he hopes someone like IBM, Apple, Honda, Samsung etc takes the image so he can sue their pants off... =)  There's always a risk, but knowing the risk, planning for the risk, and having systems in place makes things easier. 

[unfocused]

I used Dreamweaver to build my website because I didn't need a content management system. However, if you are that familiar with Wordpress, I agree that you might be best off just using a Wordpress template.

Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke...they are all about the same and all are content management systems designed mainly for text, but their are lots of third-party templates that are specifically designed for photographers.

For my image shows I use Galleria. http://galleria.io/. About a year ago, I dropped flash because I could see the writing on the wall and switched to HTML. Galleria is javascript-based and relatively easy to figure out (although their technical support really sucks). There are many similar programs out there.

My website is a constant work in progress and I use it as a learning tool. I'm not entirely happy with the design, but I keep experimenting and learning.

[dirtcastle]

For your needs, Wordpress probably has everything you need.

When it comes to CMS systems... themes and plugins are where the action is. You should be able to find Wordpress themes that suit your needs. Among the CMS systems, Wordpress has, by far the largest number (and highest quality) of themes. Themeforest is a good place to start. If you don't find a WP theme that works "out of the box", you'll need to look at plugins and/or theme customization.

[EOBeav]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody. Wordpress is great, but their gallery displays leave a lot to be desired. And there really aren't any plugins that address that issue. I was hoping that Drupal/Joomla might be an option, but those apps have their own shortcomings. So, back to WP it is, mainly because I'm too lazy at this point to learn anything else.

[dirtcastle]

Thanks for the feedback, everybody. Wordpress is great, but their gallery displays leave a lot to be desired. And there really aren't any plugins that address that issue. I was hoping that Drupal/Joomla might be an option, but those apps have their own shortcomings. So, back to WP it is, mainly because I'm too lazy at this point to learn anything else.

Do you have any example sites that show what you want to do?