template websites

Debbie… So much more complex than that. It depends on the purpose of your website. If it’s for media distribution, it’s hard to beat Photoshelter.

If you’re looking to showcase your portfolio, blog, etc, Photocrati, Pro Photo Blogs, Themeforrest…. all are wordpress based, easy to set up, and look good.

For hosting, I like Bluehost.

What do you want your website to do? How do you want it to look? I am very lazy about these things, and have for a long time been relying on existing clients, so I’ve been pretty slack about my web presence. I actually rely on three sources for my web site; I have my domain name registered with a registry, then I link that to a template website operated by an company called “onlybusiness.com”, and then I link that to an archive site, “pbase.com”. This has the virtue of being very cheap, but is limited in its functionality. You should have a look at several photographer’s websites, try figure out what you like, and maybe start asking questions from there. Something like what I have is not great, but it’s a start. I may keep an eye on this thread and try to learn a few things myself. Good luck.

Not exactly a template website, but a CMS (Content Management System)excellent as an online portfolio and due to be updated this week http://www.indexhibit.org/ would highly recommend, simple, minimal and customisable (the new version even more so).

There are too many options out there… If oyu plan to sell through your website, Photoshelter is unbeatable. I’m using Zenfolio, there’s also Photodeck, Livebooks, Tumblr, even Flickr, depending on what do you want the site to do.

if you want to take the time to learn and design your own, this guys tutorial on youtube is a pretty good introduction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMZARc_GdLE&feature=relmfu

I’ve been using wordpress templates run through dreamhost for years, variety of formats all over the web to choose from. graphpaperpress especially is a great place to start looking if you’re thinking on wordpress templates.
building your own this way is obviously a bit more intensive than flickr and such.