smugmug website

I started a p/t photo business in December and have decided it's time to put together a website. I have come to realize that there are a lot of options out there so I'm asking for help. Who do you trust with your valuable photos and why. I'm not very tech savvy - aside from knowing how to use my camera and printer - so I'm looking for a site that will host (is that the right word?) my website. I've seen smugmug and am impressed with what they have to offer and the appearance of the site. Any pros/cons re: smugmug? Any help and constructive advice would be appreciated.

Hi, I created a Smugmug website in January. I found that I had to hunt through their forum to copy and paste code to help create it. I had it up and running in about a week. Since I had no coding experience, I feel that I did good. By the way, there is a 50% off offer for Smugmug your first year at this site http://scottsphotoblog.com/. Feel free to check out my website www.briansnyderphotography.com. Before deciding I googled for Smugmug sites to see the variety.

I've had a Smugmug site for several months now (you can see the link below my signature) and I'm pretty happy with it. It's been a valuable tool for showing my work to clients and potential customers. I decided to get the power account, rather than the professional account because you pay quite a bit more for transactions. I may yet upgrade so I can offer sales directly from the site, but I was mainly looking for a flexible showcase for my work and wanted to get that organized first.

If you have or want your own domain name, they have a deal with Godaddy that allows you to use it on on your Smugmug site.

The design tools they provide are pretty flexible but still simple to use. I'm not a web designer and I didn't have time to fool around with a lot of coding, so I just used their templates. It didn't take long to get it up and running. They provide a lot of tools for customizing your site and I'm hoping to do more of that eventually, but I liked the fact that I could get a pretty good looking site "out of the box."

You could consider Drupal with the Ubercart module.
I work at a webdevelopment company and we use Drupal for all our website. It is a Belgian product and pretty powerfull, with a whole community supporting it. There are many module allowing you do implement virtually everything. A while ago I used the Ubercart module and was pretty happy with the possibilities the module offered.

Thanks all to the advice. Lydia, the lionfish photo is amazing. Will continue to research website possibilities. If you know of any other hosting sites, please let me know. Thanks again.

I have a smugmug site (power account) and have been satisfied with it. I know nothing about HTML codes, etc. but they have free forums where they give you step-by-step instructions on how to customize many features (you can simply cut & paste most of these codes into your site). Or you can just use one of their many templates. It's very flexible and it's really up to you (and how much time you want to spend) how your web site will look. I had a problem a couple months ago and I received prompt help via e-mail, and when I still couldn't fix the problem, the customer rep went into my page and fixed whatever code I had inadvertently screwed up. I took advantage of the domain name deal with GoDaddy, which makes my web site name a little easier to find. Hope this helps.

I've had an account at smugmug since 2006 and have over 5000 images on it. I use mostly their templates. I chose one template for all my galleries so that I have a consistent look. You could do the same or change it up for different types of galleries you might create for different purposes. It is easy to set up galleries. There are problems with keywords (it usually takes my last keyword entered in Photoshop and concatenates the filename with it). They have not solved that problem yet I don't think. So, in Photoshop I always add a last dummy keyword. I have a Pro Account and think it is worthwhile to showcase my work. No sales directly from the site, but have sales BECAUSE I have a site showing what I can do. I have mentioned several features I wanted to have and they have incorporated them into their software - Yea!! Customer support is very fast in responding and I find them very helpful. You should get your own url and apply it to your account. Goes without saying if you are in business. There are other issues where your keywords only work on their site for searching. And they have an area for keywords that is suppose to ONLY be for their site but that the search engines actually find - which I told them was a benefit and that they should advertise that as a feature. I figured it out and use it for the purpose of the search engines outside smugmug (think google). You will note that when you have software look at your site to see how it stacks up for the search engine spiders, that some of the key data is for smugmug itself and not your website. This is one of the few BAD things that occurs. Maybe there is a way around that if you add your own programming. I quit being a programmer 25 years ago and do not want to do it again. I want to make images, not programming code. On the whole, I like Smugmug and just signed up for another year Pro account. Hope this helps.

Troup

The website I have listed here on NPN is my Smugmug site!

One more note on photo sites. Be careful about the fine print from the site. FACEBOOK was trying to change its user agreement to take ownership of all photos posted on Facebook, plus whatever you wrote on Facebook. Can you believe that???!!! The ASMP apparently was very helpful in getting the Facebook people to remove that wording. However, they are still looking at how they can do it and not get sued for copyright infringement. On the other hand, if you "sign" their agreement and the fine print says they own your photos, then you are going to have a hard time suing them. So, be careful with the fine print with ANY site where you post photos. You just might be giving up your rights to your images regardless as to copyright law about intellectual property.

Troup

Sorry, one more note - be carefull with reading the fine print on sites running photo contests, too. Some of them claim ownership of your image even if you did not win anything. And if you did win something, some may take all rights for that image. You have been warned!

Troup

Hi,
I have been very happy with www.betterphoto.com website package. You have a lot of opportunity with their templates to customize the site how you want it. The costs are not bad when compared to what they offer and some of the other sites available.

I'll also throw in a hearty recommendation for Smugmug as well. I originally had a standard account but added the Pro account when I wanted to start up a "pro" website. I'm much more open to web programming/coding so I didn't find the process of customizing that hard. I will echo the other comments that their web forum has VERY helpful folks (not to mention the Smugmug staffers who also frequent the forums).

It seems like they've been on a roll with site improvements. They just recently added a second print lab (Bay Photo) option for print fulfillments.

Anyone every use Zenfolio? If so, what is your experience with them.

Patricia,

If you check back a few weeks in the posts, you'll see a Zenfolio post that I made...there are several comments on that page that may help you.
Kate

Don, I've had a SmugMug web site for about 3 months. I'm still learning about how to set it up, but so far its been easy and when I've had any issues it has been a real pleasure to work with their tech folks. Most of the time I can ask to replicate something from another web site and they send me the necessary code and advise on how to tweek. I went ahead and got a Pro account and believe it or not I've already sold a few prints. So far, so good.
Reed

I like my smugmug site -- a lot! I have had sales off of it from nature, pets, weddings, babies, etc.

I also have a zenfolio site, not as easy to maneuver around, creating pricelists is a lot of work, but I use it mainly for gallery exhibitions because I can create one gallery per exhibition AND offer the same frames as in the exhibition. Smugmug doesn't offer framed photos to sell (yet?) and we needed a place to sell framed photos. I make a trifold brochure up for each exhibition and on the last sixth of the brochure we have the 16 frames offered. Zenfolio is paired with MPix and their quality for prints and frames is very good.

"Anyone every use Zenfolio? If so, what is your experience with them. "

Yes I use Zenfolio, and I love it, very reliable and very easy to use. I joined using their basic service, got my domain from 1&1 and just pointed it to my Zenfolio site and wallah. http://jdebordphoto.com Easy as cake honestly. I can't speak enough good things about Zen, I am truly happy with them.

This is my first forum reply and am now on a trial membership, and first I want to say thank you already for all the information I've read throughout the different topics. Just on a side note, I've been using ifp3.com for my photo site for over a year--I'm not very "tech" savvy but found it fairly easy to setup and maintain. My site is www.billmailephotography.ifp3.com. It's a mouthful, and I still use the ifp3.com extension, but for "extra" you can customize your URL. Thanks!

Bill Maile

I've used an ifp3 based web site for over a year & recently decided to go for the annual subscription. This is a Flash web site with searchable keywords & lots of bells & whistles to support your photo business. Take a look at my site: www.NaturalLifePhotography.com to see some of the possibilities. They have very good support & the site is easy to set up & manage.

Im can proudly say I'm quite Smug about Mugging my work on SM. I also use ImageKind, RedBubble and a couple other sites to host market and print my work for me. The SmugMug account is attached to my self designed website and I mocked up my SmugMug template to be similar enough to my main site that you barely notice that you left my site.

I've had great feedback from those who have bought prints from my site and they say that the set up I'm using was helpful in getting what they wanted. I find that the feedback from my clients has been the major part of why I am staying with SM.

I have a question about smugmug: does it print your photos for you and ship them? And takes only 15% of the price for that, including the printing costs themselves? Can't entirely read that out of their descriptions..

Yes- Smugmug facilitates the printing. The actual printing is done by one of two print labs: EZPrints or Bay Photo (you have the ability to chose which lab does your prints). I know Zenfolio has aligned with Mpix but I've been printing with Bay Photo before SM partnered with them and I've been very happy with their quality & service. All the prints I've ordered from them have shipped flat, which is not the case with EZPrints.

SM will also handle any customer issues with the prints they receive. As a pro, you actually set the price of your prints. Initially, the prices listed are the "at cost" prices so you have the option to set your own prices. That's your way to offset SM's cut from your sales.

Don't hesitate emailing SM directly with questions. Their staff is extremely helpful & responsive.

Many thanks for the answer!