|
Anyone using Wordpress as their portfolio/photoblog site?
|
I’m thinking of it as an alternative because I really like the content management backend and the plethora of 3rd party support.
Pros/cons?
Post yours if you have one.
W
PS Glad you’re back with us, Teru.
by
Wayne Huang
at
Thu May 28 03:50:38 UTC 2009
Los Angeles,
United States
|
Bookmark
|
|
Report spam→
|
|
Hey Wayne,
I’m a total wordpress evangelist with 2 blogs: http://www.meckels.net and http://www.african-russia.net it’s great soft and totaly worth the time to learn. Really flexible with tons of plugins and now automatically updates itself. Take the plunge I say. LSer Michel de Groot http://www.micheldegroot.com also uses it for his site I know and doubtlessly countless more.
I’m not sure what you mean by 3rd party support though….?
Mike
|
We’re using Wordpress on Gaia Photos, www.gaia-photos.com.
Found ourselves a good template with slide show option. Customized it a bit. With a couple of plugins, it’s great for multi-user management! And for something like our project, I really love the tag system! Click on a tag and see features on that subject from around the world!
—> http://www.gaia-photos.com
|
Hey, i have interest too. How is the procedure to obtein a personal domain, how much do you have to pay? many thanks
|
Wayne,
A good piece of software that was created specifically for photo blogs is Pixel Post http://www.pixelpost.org/ I use it on my photo blog http://www.tryandguess.com/photolog and it’s fast, extremely easy, supports third-party plugins, templates, auto-resizing of photos uploaded, everything you’d want.
-Christopher
|
|
|
I use wordpress- it’s awesome. Start tinkering and you’ll figure it out in no time. I can’t think of any cons- the support of the community is the best pro tho. Any question you have about coding, newbie or no, will be answered in the forums. Plus if you get dreamhost, there is a one click install. www.EmilyAnneEpstein.com
|
i use wordpress and love it. it’s got a ton of space (for free) and is extremely user friendly to people like myself who don’t know jack about making websites. it’s a great place for just throwing on the daily or weekly collection in a clean design space.
http://armyphoto.wordpress.com
|
|
|
Eleanor uses Wordpress…. -M
|
Hey people, how much have to pay for this? i have no idea about all that things, do you have to pay appart for a domain. As you understand $$$ count a lot for me.
|
Hernan, there’s the free Wordpress hosting, which is limited in terms of what you can customize and storage space. You can pay Wordpress to get more flexibility in this regard.
The other way is to pay for hosting elsewhere and get the Wordpress 5-minute install (free) and place it on your own server, which will allow you to customize to your hearts content.
|
Christopher, thanks for the heads up on pixelpost, looks very interesting.
|
Phil, I like that theme a lot! Simple and clean. Might have to bite off you.
|
All yours Wayne, glad you liked it. I’ve also used the Pressbox theme on an older blog, but I think this is the sharpest.
Be sure to throw a link up when you make it live!
|
If you’re looking for a template check out GraphPaperPress.com for photo/video-friendly designs by fellow LSer Thad Allender. After checking the link above I realized that Michel de Groot’s site is built on the GPP theme “modularity”.
Nice stuff.
-r
|
Rodrick, I was initially interested in their F8 theme, but unfortunately it seems to have issues with WP 2.7. I don’t think Thad has updated the theme.
|
|
|
http://www.100eyes.org is a WP site. So is DAH “Burn”. I have a workshop scheduled for July in New Orleans which will be dedicated to creating your own site from WP and completely customizing it. This workshop will include introduction to HTML, CSS, and to simple PHP. Think of PHP as the glue, html as the wood, and CSS as the saw and paint that WP uses, along with the SQL database backend that is the heart of the system. If you look at Emily Ann Epsein’s site I think you will get an idea of how flexile the WP CMS (content management system) can be……using WP you can create your own site and only have to pay $125 per year for your hosting on Dreamhost or Bluehost for example. And WP is great for SEO (search engine optimization) plus there are now html slideshows that allow you to have your images indexed (if you so choose.) Understanding just a few key concepts will allow you to get much more out of WP than the linear blog…..right now I think the workshop is priced at $950, but if I can get 10 students I will drop that down $750. Also the dates are flexible, its possible to do this in the early Fall if there is more convenient. Of course I encourage students to photograph in and around NOLA as we need content for our sites, right?
|
Thanks for the compliment Andy! Regardless of the challenges in designing your own site, learning Wordpress ( CSS, HTML and PHP) gives you a great edge on web based journalism.
|
|
|
Seeing all the creative stuff you’ve all done with WP is quite inspiring.
I’ve begun to take a stab at it myself: http://www.waynehuang.net/ (note—work in progress)
Any feedback is appreciated.
|
Paul and Wayne look at improving your permalinks…….Paul you have WP is a sub-directory, you can clean that up for the search engines by tweaking the PHP and moving a few files— looks like your index page may be non-WP html. Wayne, try using permalinks that represent the content a bit — look at LS for example. http://www.lightstalkers.org/anyone-using-wordpress-as-their-portfoliophotoblog-site is the link for this page.
|
Thanks Andy!
You’re dead right, the index page isn’t WP, just something I knocked up. I didn’t realise that was a problem. The permalinks work for me, for instance this one:
http://www.theconstanteye.com/wordpress/vol-1/christ-on-a-beach/
gets to the right place. I didn’t try to change the sub-directory from /wordpress to /blog, but it looked like more hassle than it was worth. Perhaps I should persevere. What’s the advantage?
Cheers, Paul.
|
On the other hand, if you’re talking about the http://www.paulhardycarter.com site, there’s a lot more on that site besides the WP stuff so I need to keep it separate.
Again though, I made both of these sites myself, and I’m no coder, so if there’s something I can improve I’m very keen to hear about it!
Cheers, Paul.
|
Probably not much Paul, although the simpler and more descriptive the better, as far as the permalinks go. I wouldn’t worry too about it.
|
@ Andy Levin – can you give a little more information concerning the indexed html slideshows? In a previous post you mentioned jQuery slideshows too: I had a look and found some scripts but nothing very conclusive (at least nothing that could be easily implemented). I’ve got a WordPress site in the making here http://www.danslaglace.com but I have doubts about the amount of Flash I’m using… Pity I can’t get to the workshop: it sounds really useful!
|
Andy, I totally overlooked the permalinks…such a small, but important detail.
|
There isn’t anything wrong with Flash. In fact there are alot of things that are good about it. Its cross-browser friendly, the images aren’t easy to steal as they are in html site, etc. Right now Flash is not indexable by the search engines, and thats either good or bad depending on your point of view. Looking at your site, I see no reason you wouldn’t want to use Flash, especially if you can add some jpegs around your site with the requisite tags for the search engines to find, if you think that anyone is going to track you down based on your content.
|
My current hosting platform doesn’t allow SQL databases so have been keeping my wordpress.com blog looking as personal as i can
www.timlloydphoto.wordpress.com
My years hosting is up for renewal in the next month so am looking forward to replacing it with something that allows wordpress.org. can’t wait to get dived in to it.
Shopping for a new host that has great reviews is another thing…..
|
|
|
|
|
i started using wordpress recently too, i really like it.
its nice being able to keep track of how many people are visiting.
you have to spend a lot of time just figuring out how to get started, but once you’ve got down the basics there’s a lot you can do. i use a graph paper press theme too, didn’t realize it was made by a fellow LSer, that’s great to hear!
http://allan.lissner.net/
|
|
|
Does anyone have a tip to incorporating a Lightroom/SlideshowPro slideshow into a Wordpress entry?
When I have tried to “add media” to a WP blog entry, it simply comes up with a link to the slideshow rather than embedding it into the blog. I have also tried uploading the slideshow from Lightroom to a folder on my site and linking it from there but again no luck with embedding the slideshow itself.
|
Kristin this is what you need………… http://slidepress.net/. If you have Director, which you should, all you do is upload images into Director, sequence, and copy the XML path to enter in WP Slidepress. I believe that you must also buy SSP for Flash to utilize this as well, but its much, much better than trying to use the Lightroom plugin for many reasons.
Don’t forget about my web publishing workshops: http://www.100eyes.org/workshops And the workshops in Haiti and Uganda are going to be fabulous as well.
|
Ah, thank you kindly Andy! I will get that installed.
I would love to go back to Nola sometime this year.
And it looks like 100eyes has a lot of really great things going…
|
Kristin, there are other options….someone has created an SWF Object compatible plug-in—until I found slidepress I had that, but I no longer remember the name. With that one you can embed the SWF that Lightroom spits out…..but be careful of those xml paths, they can get tricky!
|
|
|
|
|
DPC, thats one of them…..here is some code that will do the same thing if you don’t want to bother with the plugin, which is a pain to edit, you have to create a new one every time….here is the code, you have to change the album# and the instance of the flash object, and make sure the path is right, according to ypur setup, as well as enter the sizes you want the slideshow to appear at, and add whatever parameters you want. This one allows full screen, background color is black, etc.
<object classid=‘clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000’
codebase=‘http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0’
width=‘300’ height=‘200’ id=‘my_ssp’ align=’top’>
<param name=‘FlashVars’
value=‘xmlfile=http://www.yoursite.com/ssp_director/images.php?album=12’
/>
<param name=‘quality’
value=‘high’ /><embed
FlashVars=‘xmlfile=http://www.yoursite.com/ssp_director/images.php?album=12’
src=‘my_ssp.swf’ quality=‘high’ bgcolor=‘#000000’
width=‘300’ height=‘200’ name=‘my_ssp’ align=‘top’
allowScriptAccess=‘always’ allowFullScreen=‘false’
type=‘application/x-shockwave-flash’
pluginspage=‘http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer’ />
|
Well, I think I am in the right place to shoot my question.
I created a subdomain for my blog and I have been into using WP theme even before this thread kicked off.
I couldn’t figure out whether it is sort of making a WP blog appear on a personal website in the user’s way(which means you log into WP to post something), OR creating an autonomous blog in the website using a WP theme.
How do you post something and have it work properly anyway?
|
Its number two Aytec—“creating an autonomous blog in the website using a WP theme”, so you are doing something incorrrectly. The URL should open up to your WP blog and not require you to log in to Wordpress itself.
Creating a sub-domain for the blog, unless you are creating a separate domain, ie www.yourblog,comt, is probably not something you really want to do, as it just adds another level of complexity that you don’t need starting out.
See this http://wpautoblog.com/blog/320/blogger-wordpress-sub-domain-sub-directory-new-domain-oh-my/
|
Hi Andy, thanks for the link. A subdirectory sounds wiser than a subdomain indeed.
But I still fail to understand how one can manage their posts after creating a blog the 2nd way? There is a secret panel I haven’t seen? Or you create an .html and run the FTP every time you have something to post?
|
You haven’t found the right place….you go to the install.php file, AFTER you have set up the SQL database info in the wp-config.php file using any text editor. This is the password to the database and path usuallly localhost. Go to the WP side for instructions….
|
I have been using wordpress for a while now and weighing the pro/con of this tool i have to say I love it…I changed a few themes before customizing the one I am using now. You can check it at www.antoniodivico.com
|
Andy, regarding the right place, yes I should have been in New Orleans with my sweet harmonica.
I will go through the process tonight and will also see WP site for instructions. Hopefully a pint, one day, in New Orleans or somewhere. Thanks a lot again.
|
I have been using one for a while. It’s very good for beginners like me who don’t have any idea about web page designing and can’t spend much $$$ in making websites, very flexible too, but now I’m realising having basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP would be even more helpful.
http://kishorksharma.wordpress.com/
|
Nothing but a single wordpress installation under the hood of my website: http://www.mscottbrauer.com/ Using a few custom-made scripts to get the thumbnail pages working just right… And then dvafoto is all wordpress, but it looks and acts like a blog…
The trick with designing a portfolio with wordpress is that you need to realize just how little of wordpress’ functionality is needed and how much of it gets in the way. Strip out all the date-sorting, commenting, blog-style organization, etc., and you’ve got a perfectly functional CMS that can do plenty of what most websites need. Then, work in some custom category templates, so some categories look more like blogs when it makes sense, and some look more like other webpages, and you’re good to go.
|
I am in the process of designing my portfolio ( and not a Photoblog) using wordpress…
Could anyone suggest some free themes that can give my site a portfolio like look ?
|
|
|
CHHANDAK if you do a google search for “wordpress theme photo blog” you will find some top XX lists of free themes for photographers. Often times the ‘portfolio-like’ themes are the most stripped down where as most theme creators assume you want a photoblog. This means whatever theme you find, you’ll likely have to get your hands dirty customizing the CSS/ PHP code.
|
Aytac, re: e-mail notification plugin
Assuming you’ve implemented it correctly, you may want to check with your host server. Many block the PHP mail() function, I believe for security/anti-spam reasons.
|
I’m a fan of WP.
It works very well and has many good add ons.
This is my third WP based site: gmmorris.com
|
Gidi, I could not, for the life of me, get F8 to work for me on WP 2.7. No image would show up on the home page. Which version are you running?
|
Thanks for your answer, Wayne. I checked everything and there seems to be no working widget for e-mail notification. WordPress forums are full of pissed-off users seeking an answer for weeks.
I will do it the Andy’s way. http://www.100eyes.org Assigning another service to do the job.
|
Gidi, thats a really nice job, is that from a theme?
|
|
|
What sort of email notification do you want? I use Wordpress Thread Comment for comment threading and email notifications of comment replies on wordpress 2.7.1, and I use Feed My Inbox to provide a “subscribe by email” box on my blog; it’s just an rss-to-email service. APhotoEditor.com also recently mentioned a post notification wordpress plugin I’ve got no experience with it, but it might do what you want.
|
|
|
Thanks Wayne, let me look at that…….its very nice though, have you tried it with 2.8?
|
Yeah, Andy, as Wayne said its the F8 theme, but I modified it quite a bit to suit my needs…
|
Andy, I haven’t gone to 2.8 yet so I can’t speak to that. My guess is that it won’t work with it.
|
FWIW- http://timfreccia.com
Totally WP; PHPthumb, and galleria.js
A cool guy in the Maldives made the theme and I tweaked it.
|
hi Wayne,
i am also using wordpress for one of my blog to show my
journalistic photos…please come and see my blog at samiajirinjani.wordpress.com…
waiting for your comment also..
ciaooo…
|
|
|
Blue, that new GPP theme looks great. If you need any suggestions/feedback for your upcoming templates, let me know.
|
Great, I’ll be in touch as soon as we run the alpha testing Wayne, meanwhile, any suggestions, requests or recommendations on features, layouts, colour schemes and styles from you, or any other Lightstalker would be most welcome. Email to us: studio[at]createfolios.com
|
wordpress is a fine platform… but I just don’t think it’s well suited to photography.
http://www.indexhibit.org/ is nice… really simple and you can get some great results from it.
but saying that, I actually used wordpress for: http://statementimages.co.uk/
but I moved away from the standard arrangements and presentation by date etc.
|
|
|
Very interesting page, I just discovered that Gallery2 allowed the ‘lightbox’ feature offered by photoshelter for which I’d have to pay, but I can now set it up myself and sell my pics online! (as seen on http://www.paulhardycarter.com/gallery2) Wonderful!
Concerning the wordpress option, it is the best to me! I use a theme (viewport) which presents a gallery of my last posts and allows to give all the space needed to my shots and integrate that blog within my homepage. I also use slideshows in order to present series which are accessible from the blog (and soon from the new homepage)
Check it out:
http://blog.pongo.eu.org (homepage at http://pongo.eu.org)
Concerning the address, for Europeans, any of us (and maye non Europeans too) can get a free .eu.org web address (hear dns) on request!
|
Gallery 3.0 beta is out now too. Would this be useful to incorporate into a WP site?
|
As I just mentioned, the “lightbox” option, allowing to sell prints via paypal/visa seems very appealing to me. However, I’d wait for the 3.0 version to be final before incorporation it to my blog&website (but that’s a personal choice) :)
And I have now idea how to actually do it, but it shouldn’t be to complicated.
|
I found Gallery2 easy to set-up, but there are parts of it that are pretty geeky. If you’re happy hacking into Wordpress themes, then there’s nothing in Gallery set-up to worry you. There’s a good forum based support system too, and loads of plugins.
Cheers, Paul.
|
|
|
|
|
David, that’s a great link to Smashing Magazine. Working on a similar piece for our blog. Have Tweeted it too.
|
David, I’m glad to see a nice use of viewport again, I use it too as I found it on smashingmagazine.
A little extra for anyone who would like to easily integrate galleries into their wordpress is:
Simple/Auto-viewer, two flash galleries which are very easy to set up (there’s even a lightroom plugin I think) available there => http://www.airtightinteractive.com/viewers/
An example of that integration can be seen on my website there => http://blog.pongo.eu.org/page/2/#6 (click on the title and then on the image)
And there’s a nifty Windows application that automatically generates simpleviewer galleries there => http://stegmann.dk/mikkel/porta/ (and for mac users, it works in Crossover ;).
|
|
|
Hi Wayne,
I just remembered Donald Weber’s website which certainly has a blog format, and to me appears to be build on wordpress – in any case it might as well be (with a customized theme). http://donaldweber.com/
It is his portfolio site, and does not leave the impression of a blog, except for the top-to-bottom format. I really like its simplicity.
If you have your own domain you can download wordpress from wordpress.org (not .com), download and install a theme you like, and then go crazy with customizing it in the css file (which you edit through your wordpress dashboard editor). For instance, I have a wordpress blog that I’ve customized from a ‘barecity’ wordpress theme to the current timbuktu.dk.
If you don’t want to customize it, there are good free themes out there made by photographer-alike people. Try searching for ‘depo-clean’, ‘depo-skinny’, ‘plainscape’ themes for simplicity. The two depo ones were made specifically for photo blogging but would work just fine for a portfolio.
Then there’s the graphpaperpress themes other people mentioned, much more fancy and specifically portfolio themes, but those you have to pay for, and I think for portfolios you often don’t need more than the simple free themes can give you. (I much prefer simple and usable over cool design).
Thomas
|
Hi Wayne,
I just remembered Donald Weber’s website which certainly has a blog format, and to me appears to be build on wordpress – in any case it might as well be (with a customized theme). http://donaldweber.com/
It is his portfolio site, and does not leave the impression of a blog, except for the top-to-bottom format. I really like its simplicity.
If you have your own domain you can download wordpress from wordpress.org (not .com), download and install a theme you like, and then go crazy with customizing it in the css file (which you edit through your wordpress dashboard editor). For instance, I have a wordpress blog that I’ve customized from a ‘barecity’ wordpress theme to the current timbuktu.dk.
If you don’t want to customize it, there are good free themes out there made by photographer-alike people. Try searching for ‘depo-clean’, ‘depo-skinny’, ‘plainscape’ themes for simplicity. The two depo ones were made specifically for photo blogging but would work just fine for a portfolio.
Then there’s the graphpaperpress themes other people mentioned, much more fancy and specifically portfolio themes, but those you have to pay for, and I think for portfolios you often don’t need more than the simple free themes can give you. (I much prefer simple and usable over cool design).
Thomas
|
This is a pretty long thread but I just found this that y’all might find interesting: http://www.blogperfume.com/best-free-weblog-software-other-than-wordpress/
This goes over 10 popular and not-so-popular content management systems if, perhaps, Wordpress is too complicated/not quite up your alley.
I’d suggest taking a week or two, installing a couple of these and trying them out under some real world conditions (do a few posts, toss up a few photos, have a few people comment) and make sure you’re not locking yourself into a system you just settled on.
-Christopher
|
|
|
I’m using Wordpress for my portfolio and blog have been pleased with it so far. I have found that the more time you can commit to it and the more you amend the code the more professional looking your website will become. I think a Wordpress is great and would recommend it to others.
www.greensnapperphotography.com
|
Since renewing my website hosting i’ve now redesigned both my blog and website with Wordpress. I’ve yet to piece together an updated portfolio on my site but once the images are together i think i’ll be happy with the ease of altering it as its just a blog behind the scenes.
www.timlloydphoto.com
www.timlloydphoto.com/blog
|
Jane, I took a look at your site. There appears to be some problems with the menu tabs floating on top of the title.
|
@ Tim Lloyd: looks like your slideshow is being stretched horizontally on the front page. Those racehorses look fat to me…
|
I cropped all of the images from the originals to fit the largest screen resolution so none of the images should be stretched. Fat they must be…
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
We are using Wordpress as a backend for our magazine: theblacksnapper.com and use Soundslides for the images.
(Note that this is a preview, we are going live on August 1)
|
Yep. We (a group of photographer-friends & I) formed an online collective, ZuperQuirk: http://www.zuperquirk.org over a year ago.
Originally, we were 6 — with the guy who recently left us (our seeming webmaster who kinda left the posting up to me 99% of the time — thanks) having his say that the whole thing be run from WP shell, but we share a hosted domain as well.
I was really adamant about wanting a minimum of copy (no comments or blog-type link pages) & having a simple, but fun “appearance” where the photos get the majority of the interest. (We also use a simple lightbox viewer where if you click on a photo — it goes into a simple manual slideshow for larger detail view).
I’d found a menu system that I liked & we’ve been using that to compartmentalize the different group “modules” & projects on the site (includes our designed pdf-zines for downloads).
I update with weekly photos, uh… weekly & the varied other projects are even more randomly added. We’re planning a bit of a site overhaul as we’ve recently switched hosts (from the Netherlands to the UK)… so any comments, we’d surely take onboard. Thanks.
It’s been interesting seeing the different ways you all use the WP front-end. In all honesty, I find it a bit clunky (but then, we’re still using 2.5 & I’m worried about compatibility issues with some of the elements that are important for us).
|
|
Get notified when someone replies to this thread:
|
 via RSS
Recommended
|
 via email
You can unsubscribe later.
|
|
|
Participants
|
Chhandak Pradhan
Freelance Journalist /Pho
(scribbler & shooter)
Siem Reap
,
Cambodia
En route to
Kolkata
(ETA:
Dec 2 2009
).
|
|
Gidi Morris
Trying to figure out
[undisclosed location].
|
|
Blue Perez
Photographer
Plaka, Crete
,
Greece
En route to
Ostuni
(ETA:
Dec 2 2009
).
|
Keywords
|
