How to build your own PHOTOGRAPHY website
Image from Squarespace.com
As I was building this website I thought,what will my first blog be about?So,I decided it should be about building this website.
Now just to be clear I am not a website designer,I have never worked in the IT industry so anything I know I learned the hard way.(Have a go,make mistakes but learn from them.)
I decided to build this site myself for two reasons;
1. I like to learn how to do new things so I took this on as a new learning experience.
2. I like to have control over the final result and be able to change things when I want to.
Anything I write in this blog is based on my own experience and my own opinion unless I clearly state otherwise.None of us know everything so from time to time I may refer to someone more knowledgeable than myself.
Why do I need a website?
People will say that in the current era of social media there is no need for a website but I felt that I would like to have a presence on the web that is stable and up to date where I could have my details and portfolio available for anyone to browse.Of course I will also use social media and hopefully I can drive some traffic to my website.
HOW TO START DESIGNING YOUR OWN WEBSITE
Well as I said earlier I learned by my mistakes and believe me I made enough of them.Hopefully if you are reading this I may be able to help you avoid some of the mistakes I made and save you some time.
Firstly,if you are committed to designing your own site I would advise you to go through your images and pick maybe fifty of your best.(If you are lucky enough to have more ,great, but I found that I needed at least fifty to get started)Put them in a seperate folder so that you can access them easily when you need them.I didn’t do this so when I was well into my trial period I wasted a lot of time trawling through computers and drives trying to sort images.Then,think about how many different categories or headings you would use for your work, you will probably have a seperate gallery for each.This will be important when you are choosing the basic layout for you design.
Secondly,look at lots and lots of other photographers websites.Make a note of what it is you like about them and what it is that you don’t like.Decide on how you would like the pages to interact with each other and how you would like you images to appear in the gallery.I started putting my site together and after a number of hours work I realised that the template I choose was not suitable for what I wanted but luckily I was able to switch to a different style without losing any work.With some website builders you may have to start from scratch if I you want to change style so I can not stress enough how important it is to look at loads of other sites before you even choose which website builder to go with.
Why Squarespace
I eventually decided to go with Squarespace for my site.That decision was based on a number of factors;
1 Recommendation from people who’s opinion I trust.
2 I was able to browse through lots of other photographer’s sites and choose a template I liked.
3 The annual subscription is reasonable.
4 The help section, which includes videos, is clear and simple.
I am still working on this site so I will continue to update this as I go along.