Portfolio Websites

[davidI]

Any of you photographers have sites promoting your work?

I've had a lot of people asking me for prints lately and figured it was time to set up a site. I'm looking for some inspiration as I work on my own site design.

This link has shown me some great sites, but I'd like to peruse others.

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/best-photographer-websites/

I haven't been into web design for ages. I don't really want to use Flash so it looks like I'll have to learn some JS and CSS etc. Anyone have good links to templates or tutorials for interactive albums? I've been thinking about just buying this Gallery template and designing my site around it:
http://www.e2interactive.com/e2-gallery-pro/documentation/

[89coupe]

Try this site.
http://www.templatemonster.com/category/art-photography/

For myself I use

http://jalbum.net/ (great photo software for building websites) its FREE!

with http://www.fotoplayer.com/ (skin) its FREE!

For a small fee of like $40 you can purchase the license and make it your own.

[Mar]

Dude, no. I can get you set up with everything for free if you know how to design it yourself. If not then I can do it for a price. I'll message you information later.

[Mitsu3000gt]

Smugmug pro accounts give you a lot of templates, customization options, and operate the printing/accounting side of things for you. I'd recommend that unless you really want to do something by yourself.

[Mar]

Okay, I'm going to give you some free advice because I'm a web designer and I hate to see someone pay for something they don't need to. Even if it puts me out of business.

If you want a professional looking site and don't need too much customization, go for something like Wordpress. The software is free, it's easy to install and some web hosts actually have an interface where they'll install it for you in a single click. If you want something a bit more complicated, install Joomla, both of these pieces of software can act as a content management system and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of free photography templates out there.

If you want something where people can go onto your site and actually buy things with online transactions, you could look into setting up OSCommerce and throw on some plugin for Quikbooks or whichever finance software you're using.

It's as easy as that. Or if you're looking into having someone design something custom for you, check out the official Beyond web design sponsor (simply because I don't want to take business from a paying advertiser), or if you're not happy with that I can do it for you.

[89coupe]

Jalbum software is free and so are all the skins you can use with it.

Its so easy a monkey can use it.

Simply drag and drop your photos and it does all the rest.

How much easier can you get?

[davidI]

Thanks everyone. I'll do some further research.

My cousin is a web designer for EA Sports so he'd probably help me out too, but I wouldn't mind catching up with all of the changes in web design and having my own creative input when the site is built.

I'll check out all those links and templates people have suggested.

Thanks again!