Would you build a photography website using Wordpress?

I'm considering putting together a website and wondering if Wordpress is good platform to use for photography based site? I have found some nice templates, but just not sure on the back end how that would work?

Zenfolio has just introduced a simple blog feature. So you can have it both ways with ZF. I've played around a bit with the ZF blog tool. The main limitations I've run into so far is that it does not support categories (does have keywords) and you cannot set the length of the main page.

Kelly Cook

My point of view is more from the web perspective than the photographer's perspective when it comes to this question. (My "real job" is as a Web Administrator for a grocery company.)

I think Wordpress is a great option. There are so, so many themes, plugins, widgets -- no matter what type of site you need, Wordpress is usually a perfect fit. It's not one of those situations where you can kind of hack and manipulate something into working for a specific purpose, it's actually an intuitive solution and a ready-made fit, plus it can be customized to whatever extent you want or need.

I use Wordpress for my website. Not a photography one. I have not had any trouble with it. Many people/business use Wordpress.

Why not? Wordpress is a great platform to build a website off of

You can customize a Wordpress a lot more than you can Zenfolio. It depends on how much time (or money) you're willing to set aside to accomplish it. My Clark Photographic website is a Wordpress, if you want to take a look.

rmeyer7 wrote: My point of view is more from the web perspective than the photographer's perspective when it comes to this question. (My "real job" is as a Web Administrator for a grocery company.)

I think Wordpress is a great option. There are so, so many themes, plugins, widgets -- no matter what type of site you need, Wordpress is usually a perfect fit. It's not one of those situations where you can kind of hack and manipulate something into working for a specific purpose, it's actually an intuitive solution and a ready-made fit, plus it can be customized to whatever extent you want or need.

While this is true... as a Systems Adminstrator I find there are a few key concerns with Wordpress. First and foremost is security. This year alone has already seen at least a dozen medium-high risk security advisories. And that doesnt include all the potential security issues with users failing to follow basic security recommendations/guidelines.

The other issue is directly caused by what you consider great about wordpress. Wordpress itself is pretty resource intensive when it comes to processing power and ram. When you start adding 3rd party plugins and stuff... the required load can skyrocket... especially if it is a poorly written addon.

That said... Wordpress is probably not any better or worse than Joomla or Drupal for those issues... so meh Just something to live with I guess. All the same i prefer simple HTML sites... but that does take a little more effort.

Good points Geoff. I guess I could say that Wordpress is my best recommendation among the popular CMS solutions. For those who are managing their site's content themselves, it's much easier to use than others and probably no more or less secure.

I usually think from a content and functionality point of view, so it's good to get a Systems Admininstrator's perspective too.

geoffellis wrote:

rmeyer7 wrote: My point of view is more from the web perspective than the photographer's perspective when it comes to this question. (My "real job" is as a Web Administrator for a grocery company.)

I think Wordpress is a great option. There are so, so many themes, plugins, widgets -- no matter what type of site you need, Wordpress is usually a perfect fit. It's not one of those situations where you can kind of hack and manipulate something into working for a specific purpose, it's actually an intuitive solution and a ready-made fit, plus it can be customized to whatever extent you want or need.

While this is true... as a Systems Adminstrator I find there are a few key concerns with Wordpress. First and foremost is security. This year alone has already seen at least a dozen medium-high risk security advisories. And that doesnt include all the potential security issues with users failing to follow basic security recommendations/guidelines.

The other issue is directly caused by what you consider great about wordpress. Wordpress itself is pretty resource intensive when it comes to processing power and ram. When you start adding 3rd party plugins and stuff... the required load can skyrocket... especially if it is a poorly written addon.

That said... Wordpress is probably not any better or worse than Joomla or Drupal for those issues... so meh Just something to live with I guess. All the same i prefer simple HTML sites... but that does take a little more effort.

Isn't there extensions that lock up the security of the back end of these sites?

Missy J wrote: Isn't there extensions that lock up the security of the back end of these sites?

heh... sure. those will catch some of the basic/common installation and permissions mistakes people make... implement some of the best practices... if they are used. they do what should have been done anyways. In most cases though they wont stop a newly created vulnerability from being exploited. There are other applications that are better adapted for that, that can be run on the server... but it takes a more experienced admin to maintain that. And i dont know that many people use such software.

I posted about this. In a nutshell I got Wordpress as my blog website and then wanted to add a photography website as an afterthought (after not having a website for a long time due to my html illiteracy and way overshooting my website design). I still haven't gotten around to setting up the photographer website however it looks simple enough to me. But I guess it depends on what you want to do with it. For me I just want to show off my photos. If you want to be selling prints then I don't know about that... I'm sure there is a way though.

I just attempted my first Wordpress blog. "Attempted" as in "failed miserably". The Wordpress control panel, 'cuze me, Dashboard, worked Ok for building things up. But as soon as I needed to go back and revise the site, disaster. For even the most basic maintenance, the Wordpress dashboard sucks. Of course for those who always plunge ahead, never contemplate a do-over, this would not be an issue.

roadkill Kelly

Wordpress can be a useful platform if you do plan on updating it 2-3 times a week. We have found that wordpress sites that go unattended (especially for portrait/wedding photographers) make the photographer look undesired or out of work. However, if updates are given often it can create a community amongst your clients not to mention is excellent for SEO. The Wordpress admin is difficult to navigate. If you try out a free wordpress site and feel comfortable with how to add pages and posts but not with changing the design aspect of the wordpress site then it may be worth looking into our Flexsitez theme builder which will allow you to design a theme without having to touch the coding side of things

Good point about the Wordpress admin being difficult to navigate! I've been wondering about the SEO angle. When I run a Google search I seem to get a lot of blog hits. And hardly any hits for the typical online portfolio/gallery. Wonder if the search engines give some kind of preference to blogs in general (not just Wordpress)?

Kelly

SEO is all off page as much as on page. There is plenty you can do from SEO stand point with word press sites.