I want a Gallery - how do I go about it? (or any web site for that matter)

[Kym]

I had a message from a member wanting to know how to set up a photo Gallery.
So that everyone can get in on it I'll layout some things to consider in setting up any web site.

Here is a check list of things you will need to decide and implement.


Type of Web Site (eg. Gallery with/without shop)
Domain Name (freds_photos.com.au or fredas_images.com etc.) .com.au will require an ABN
Software to run your site
Hosting
Backup (what if it crashes?)
SEO and site promotions


We will update these posts from time to time. They are just a skeleton to get us all thinking.

See this review http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?133282-Gallery-Software-Piwigo-Review

[Kym]

The first thing is to consider why you want a web site and what it will do for you.


What kind of Web site to deploy is a major business decision and must be considered with great care. Your choices affects both the effectiveness of your Web effort and its cost.

Lets be right up front about this. A Web site is an investment just like a piece of machinery, office equipment or advertising campaign. What you spend on it and what you get from it should be in direct proportion, but, just as with other capital expenditures, it is possible to spend just a little too little and get nothing.

Caution: This industry is entirely unregulated, and there are no standards for pricing or product delivered. It's swarming with people out for a fast buck who promise the world at a very low price. Results will not match expectations, but you've already paid.

"Business Card" Site: A single screen with logo, address, phone number, hours of business and brief description of products and/or services, and a link to your email box. An experienced Web person can get this done and up in two to four hours depending on what you want on it - figure $50 to $200. At the very least, it fills the empty space you got with your Internet service.


"Brochure" Site: A multi-screen site with extended product and/or services information, perhaps a map, e-mail links and other useful information. Costs are similar to creating a nice professional 4-color brochure of similar scale. Don't think you can just put up your brochure though, the mechanics are way different. At best the designer can cut some graphics and copy some text from your brochure.


"Mini-Catalog" Site: A larger version of the brochure site, but more product oriented and may have pricing. There will be forms to place orders, request quotes, etc. Production costs are similar to a color catalog of similar scale.

This kind of site can be nearly as good a sales tool as an e-commerce site, since most people still pick up the phone to actually place orders. You can't negotiate by filling out a form, after all, and a sales person may know about conditions, new products or price changes that aren't posted on the Web yet. Many people feel their credit card information is more secure that way, too, and given how easily most e-commerce sites are hacked, they're probably right.


"Information Site" - "Mini-portal": Sites of this type are designed to bring people back over and over by offering news, reference material, interesting information and links to related sites where even more information can be found. An information site may also include features of the "brochure" or "mini-catalog" site.

Cost varies in the extreme depending on who is doing the work and how that work is being accounted for. If it can be done as part of normal operations, so much the better. If you can apply volunteer labor, so much the better.


"E-Commerce" Site: On-line credit card sales are the hallmark of this type of site. Costs vary in the extreme depending on scale and approach. A site that is a member of an on-line mall can be fairly low cost (though limited). You may be able to get on a mall for $600 or so, but you'll need $15,000 or so to start anything significant.

Our article E-Commerce - Selling on the Web has information about the risks and advantages of this kind of site.


"Integrated E-Commerce" Site: Here the Web site is linked to or integrated with the company's back office processes. The on-line catalog is built dynamically from a database. Availability, on-line customer service inquiry and other "real time" features are integrated into the site. A couple million dollars will get your started.


"Portal": If you think you can compete with Yahoo, Microsoft, Yahoo, Alta Vista, and the rest of the big guys, this is for you. A few billion bucks will get you into this game, but doesn't guarantee success.


The "E-Commerce - Selling" site can be done at a lower cost, but only if you have very good technical skills.
Security is the biggest concern - i.e. how do you protect BOTH your customers and yourself?

[Kym]

There are many companies offering domain name services.

Eventually you will need to delegate your domain to your hosting provider so that your web site name is linked to your server.

Here are some tips for choosing a good name.


Choosing your domain name (the .com, .net or .org or dot something address that identifies your web site) is an important part of your Internet Marketing strategy.

Here are some tips for picking the right name:


Try to go with a .com or .com.au.
It’s the name everyone associates with the Internet. Any other Top Level Domain (TLD) like .org or .net is just going to confuse people, unless it sounds better than the .com. For example, if you are about networking or a network, a .net is more natural. If your site is informational, you should use .info if it sounds okay. One of my favorite $10 domains is seosecrets.info. I think it sounds good. Hands down the most ingenious use of a TLD is del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site. The use of the .us TLD is absolutely brilliant.
Leave out the dashes and meaningless numbers.
If it’s a choice between this-domain.com, thisdomain123.com and thisdomain.net, take the .net. No one remembers to put the dashes or the numbers in, unless they are an integral part of the name like studio54.com or e-books.com.
Use the fewest letters possible to describe what you do.
I own Purple Monkey Media Group. Purplemonkey.com would have been perfect. It’s taken, of course. Purplemonkeymedia.com was not. I grabbed it. I could have taken purplemonkeymediagroup.com, but it would have been too long. Remember, every additional letter is a potential typing error.
If you have a domain name that needs to be reinforced, get a good logoand sprinkle it liberally on your web site, along with some slogan that will reinforce the name in people’s minds. You would be surprised at how inexpensive this can be.
If you can save a few bucks with your own domain name or by buying a cheaper domain name, do it, and use the money to get yourself placed higher in the search results or Adsense placement.
If you can’t come up with a descriptive domain name, go the other way.
Depending on your site’s focus, pick a memorable short name that will stick in people’s minds, get a great logo and include the name prominently in your advertising and marketing. It’s called branding, and it’s tried and true.
Ask your wife, friend, boyfriend, husband, dog, lawyer, associate, Mum, Dad, cousin, uncle, Police Chief, blog writer. They’re smarter than you anyway, and they are going to be the one looking for the site, not you. Some of my best ideas have come going to or from somewhere with my wife and just brainstorming.

[Kym]

Software selection.

There are many products that can do what you need and what you select is dependant on what you need.


Gallery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_photo_gallery_software

Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

Forum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software

Content Management System (CMS) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

Blog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblog_software


Some of these facilities can be integrated by the right selection of software components.

Remember they need to work on your hosting environment.

You may need to add skins (look and feel) to the software you select.

[Kym]

Hosting is not a simple problem.

Australian Hosting

Faster (much) for Australia users
More expensive (between 2 and 10 times typically), especially regarding bandwidth
Less options
Support can vary


USA based hosting

Slower to access due to distance and therefore ping times
Usually very low cost
Great support (24/7) due to volume of customers


Types of hosting

Shared - cheapest but subject to variable performance depending who else is on the server,
but usually a grunty server so on average gives good performance


Virtual Private Server - can get expensive if your need good performance, the lower cost options are ok for light usage.
These have a dedicated amount of CPU and memory for your virtual machine. You have complete control of the environment.
You need better technical skills for this option.


Dedicated Server - most expensive - you have a physical box of your own and control you own destiny.


You usually get two options for technical environment.
a) Windows Server with IIS, SQLerver and/or MySQL
b) LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/etc)

LAMP is often lower cost being Open Source. Both usually come with some form of Web control panel. We have a LAMP server with cPanel management.

The technical environment may limit which software you can deploy.
So be careful what you package together for your blog, gallery, forum or wiki etc.

Get good technical advice before buying a service, software or even your domain name.

See our site sponsors for hosting options (eStyles is Australian, HostGator is overseas)

[Kym]

Backup!

Find out how often your hosting provider backs up your databases and content.

You may need to set-up a third party backup that copies your site to another server (in another geography).

[Kym]

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and promotions

This is a big topic. Get some help.
Our forum software has facilities to enhance SEO such as site map generation and SEO friendly URLs.

We also (via robots.txt and security settings) block some content from the search engines.

You needs will vary - so get some help on this big subject.

[whytebate]

Not specific to Photography, but the Tourism Industry have a series of online tutorials - everything from choosing an ISP, CMS systems, why use analytics, right through to marketing hints & tips. They're FREE to download & I found quite a few of them useful when kicking off my own photography site: www.tq.com.au/ekit (http://www.tq.ocm.au/ekit)

[landyvlad]

Probably worth a bump, in light of the whole photobucket debacle.
Here's what I did...
http://landyvlad.net/wp/

Hope that helps someone.