Resources to Build a Pho­tog­ra­phy Web­site Like — Doug Nie­der­miller Photography

I’ve been work­ing on the Doug Nie­der­miller Pho­tog­ra­phy web­site for lit­tle over 2 years using the trial and error method and lots of self edu­ca­tion.  After all the time I spent build­ing and rebuild­ing this web­site I thought it would nice to share the resources I found to be the most use­ful that brought this web site to where it is today.

Types of Websites

There are sev­eral types of web­sites: Government/Political, Non Profit, Retail, Prod­uct Infor­ma­tion and like this one, which is an Inde­pen­dent Infor­ma­tion Con­tent site.

Get­ting Started

The first book I bought that really helped was Ros­alind Gardner’s  The Super Affil­i­ate Hand­book.  Not only is this a great book on affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing (mak­ing money sell­ing other people’s stuff), but a great book on get­ting started with a web­site or blog.  Ros­alind steered me towards a self hosted web­site Word­Press CMS (con­tent man­age­ment system).

Affil­i­ate Marketing

Some­thing you might be ask­ing, what is affil­i­ate Mar­ket­ing?  If you look on many web­sites you will see ban­ners and links to mer­chants out­side of that web­site like Stu­dio­press or B&H Photo, etc.  How this works is when you go to a web­site and click on a ban­ner ad or link, and then you buy from that mer­chant, the web­site owner receives a com­mis­sion.  If you don’t buy, they don’t get a com­mis­sion, in most cases. So, remem­ber,  if you like a web site and value the infor­ma­tion and the home­work they’ve done for you, by click­ing thru and by buy­ing a prod­uct or ser­vice you may want from that mer­chant, you help sup­port that website.

Word­Press

Word­Press is the num­ber one open source web blog­ging soft­ware.  In other words —  it’s free!  So, if you’re inter­ested in cre­at­ing your own web­site or web blog, I encour­age you to  con­sider Word­Press.  To start with, you don’t need a bunch of  HTML expe­ri­ence  to get going like you do when you’re start­ing a web­site from scratch.  Word­Press has 2 types of blog­ging options  — a wordpress.com account and what I use and highly rec­om­mend is a self hosted Word­Press account.  Both are free, but the self hosted accounts require inter­net host­ing account.

Inter­net Host­ing and Domains

The thing you will need is a web­site host­ing account and URL or domain web­site address.  The one I used is Dot 5 host­ing but, you can use just about any host­ing com­pany you wish.  Dot 5 host­ing has both domain reg­is­tra­tion and Word­Press on their site and is less than $100 for 2 years. A domain costs about $10  for a year.  Don’t  for­get domain pri­vacy.  It will pro­tect your email address, phone num­ber and other pri­vate  infor­ma­tion and it runs about $10 a year.  Once you have your own domain or URL you can acti­vate Word­Press.  The next thing you will need is a Word­Press theme.

Word­Press Themes

I also can highly rec­om­mend the Stu­dio­Press Gen­e­sis Themes. The ones I use are the Gen­e­sis Theme Frame­work,  Stu­dio­Press Land­scape Child Theme and Stu­dio­Press Lifestyle Child Theme on our travel web­site(DCM Travel Reviews)  Of course, you can use one of the thou­sands of free Word­Press themes, but the Stu­dio­Press themes are packed with options and great sup­port.  Note: Stu­dio­Press themes only work with a self hosted Word­Press account.

Word­Press Plug-ins

Plug-ins are small or large pro­grams that attach to Word­Press and themes that add func­tions to your Word­Press blog or web­site.  There are a thou­sand plug-ins for Word­Press and most are free.  Some take dona­tions and some have pro ver­sions for purchase.

List of Resources

Here is a list of plug-ins I use in my web­site. All are free. Some take dona­tions AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email But­ton After The Dead­line – Spell and gram­mar checker Akismet – Spam fil­ter Bro­ken Link Checker  — Checks for bro­ken links on your site Com­ment Reply Noti­fi­ca­tion – Noti­fies com­menter when you reply by email Gen­e­sis Sim­ple Hooks — Adds a bunch of func­tions to the Gen­e­sis Themes Gen­e­sis Sim­ple Side­bars — Add more func­tions to the Gen­e­sis Themes side­bar Google XML Sitemaps — Adds an auto­matic Google XML sitemap (A must) Map­Press Easy Google Maps — Add maps to your post Sim­ple Face­book Share But­ton — Share posts on oth­ers Face­book walls Social Pro­files Wid­get — Fol­low but­ton Twit­ter, Face­book, feeds, Flicker, etc. Tweet­Meme Retweet But­ton — ReTweet on Twit­ter WordPress.com Stats – Your web­site sta­tis­tics WP-Cycle – Slide show on home page WP Sim­ple Adsense Inser­tion — Insert Google ads on your site WordPress-Database-Back up – Backup your web­site data

Other soft­ware I Use

Microsoft Expres­sion Web 2 – HTML  and text edi­tor Microsoft office Home and busi­ness 2010 Smart FTP – Trans­fer files to and from your website

Pho­tog­ra­phy Related Software

Adobe Pho­to­shop Light­room 3 Soft­ware for Mac & Win­dows – photo edit­ing cat­a­loging and flash gal­leries on this web­site Adobe Pho­to­shop ele­ments 9 — Photo edit­ing Topaz Labs plug-in Bun­dle – Photo enhance­ments Pho­tomatix Pro 4 – HDR photo enhancements

Video Train­ing Education

Microsoft Expres­sion Web 2 -  Total train­ing — video train­ing — Microsoft Expres­sion Web on DVD

lynda.com soft­ware train­ing — Online video train­ing. also on DVD’s  – Adobe Light­room 2 & 3, Word­Press, SEO, Adobe Pho­to­shop Ele­ments, Twit­ter, Face­book, Google Ana­lyt­ics, Web­site Opti­mizer, Excel, Word, Expres­sion Web, PHP,  Pho­tog­ra­phy, Web Design, Adobe Pre­miere Ele­ments, HTML and over 900 other train­ing videos

Books and E-Books

Super Affil­i­ate Hand­book HTML, XHTML & CSS For Dum­mies Word­Press For Dum­mies Using Microsoft Expres­sion Web 2 Search Engine Opti­miza­tion All-in-One Desk Ref­er­ence For Dum­mies

Inter­net Host­ing and Domain

Dot 5 Host­ing and domains

Con­tent Man­age­ment System

WordPress.com — Account (no host­ing account required) WordPress.org — For self host­ing accounts (recommended)

Word­Press Themes

Stu­dio­press — Gen­e­sis frame­work and the land­scape theme for the pho­tog­ra­phy site Stu­dio­press — Gen­e­sis frame­work and the lifestyle theme for the travel site

Other util­i­ties — Keep your PC backed up and run­ning smooth!

Acro­nis True Image Home 2011 (Eng­lish) PC back up utility

Speed Up My PC Click here to improve PC per­for­mance. This util­ity will helps you keep your PC run­ning fast.

Reg­istry Booster Click here to run a Free Reg­istry scan. This util­ity will helps you keep your PC run­ning smooth.

Con­clu­sion

Pho­tog­ra­phy is my pas­sion and a web site is a great way to share your pho­tog­ra­phy and maybe make some money!  This is just a cliff note ver­sion of build­ing a web­site. These are the major aspects to con­sider when build­ing a Word­Press web­site or blog.  If you like my web­site and would like to cre­ate a web­site of your own, this list and arti­cle may help you get started.  So, do your home­work and start your own pho­tog­ra­phy Word­Press web­site or blog.

Good Luck!