Create a Personal Website

Techniques

17 September 2008 09:00

The Internet is an extremely powerful tool; it’s used day in and day out by millions of users across the globe for both work and pleasure. The huge amount of traffic that the Internet creates can make it a valuable tool for photographers who are trying to expose their images to their maximum potential. The sheer volume of people that access the internet also means that it’s a great way of getting feedback on your images. One great example of this is the Editors Choice that we run on a weekly basis on the Photoanswers gallery, which picks out the best six submissions from a week and displays them at the top of the gallery for all to see. Many of our visitors on our website regularly check these gallery pages to see what type of photographs are popular at the time and it’s a great place to read up on positive feedback and suggestive comments. 

If adding images onto a large online gallery doesn’t appeal to you, or if you already have and you’re looking for even more website traffic there is always the option of setting up your own website. A personal website gives you all the benefits of adding your images into a large gallery but the greatest advantage is that you’ll have much more control of the way that you want the images to appear on the web pages and the order in which they are arranged.

You may be thinking that you need to sit down for hours and learn all there is to know about HTML code and Adobe flash or commission a web designer to build you the personal website. Both of these options are possible but they’re very time consuming and expensive and fortunately there is another option in the form of web template packages.

A web template package can be purchased online and in return of a monthly or annual fee you’re given a website domain and templates on which to add your photographs. There are many of these website template sites available on the internet but firstly you should ask yourself a few questions about what you need and want from your personal website.

Do I want a simple website or a more complicated one?

How many photographs am I going to be uploading onto my website?

Am I going to have enough control of my images and arrange them as I want?

Once you’ve worked out roughly what you need from your website will depend on the website host that you should sign up too. If you fancy a flash website that incorporates animation, interactivity and music then you’ll need to purchase a flash specific web template but these will generally cost you a little more with these added features. If you’re looking for a simpler and less fussy website you’ll generally pay less but always enquire about the amount of images you can upload. Many services and packages will have a limit on how many photographs you can upload so always choose a package that meets your needs and requirements.



Setting up your domain name, also known as your website address shouldn’t be a difficult task and some website hosts will offer to set this up for you as part of the package. Make sure that you find out whether the website host will arrange this or not and if they don’t you can purchase a domain name that suits you from many website domain companies on the Internet. Expect to pay somewhere in the region of £5 for a two year domain name.



Once your registered and have your domain name arranged then you’ll soon be ready to start uploading photographs onto your own website for the first time. It’s completely up to you how you arrange these on the website, some may decide just to put a few of their strongest images in a gallery whereas others may want to upload every image they take. We recommend that you always keep on top and regularly update your website with new content, moving the latest images to the front in your galleries to make them easier to view. Remember that people are more likely to re-visit a constantly updated website than one that’s gone stale over time.

We’ve listed a few popular website templates for you to check out:

www.photium.com - 30 day free trial available (all the screengrabs you see on this page were taken from Photium).

www.fotopic.net 

www.photobiz.com - Flash web templates

www.bigblackbag.com - 7 day free trial available

www.homestead.com

www.ifp3.com - 10 day free trial

www.clikpic.com - 7 day free trial

We’ve also given a short list of domain websites for you to check out to see if your ideal website address has already been registered or not.

www.ukreg.com

www.123-reg.co.uk

www.lcn.com

If you happen to know of any others or would like to make a comment about your website host why not make a comment beneath.