Better Photo websites?

[Fireball]

Anybody know anything about this pro photo website? Could one of you experts check it out for me? Pretty please? It comes to $29 a month.
http://www.betterphoto.com/sites4pho...roWebsites.asp

I'm still researching websites and really want one with these features:
-option for link to my blog
-unlimited galleries
-password protected for customers
-processing orders
-contact page
-about me page
-option to turn off music

I'm wanting something mid-range, not the el cheapo. Something classic but easy to use.

Any other ideas besides photobiz, bludomain and portfoliositez?

[csa]

I'm loving flashpallette

[Redneck]

Still recommending smugmug.com, even though it has become a lot harder to stay a fan of'em with their disappointing christmas card "upgrade" lately and their never ending "coupons and packages" story.

[Fireball]

I've got my galleries already at smugmug, but don't see a place where you can have a website. Am I missing something?

[kayumangi]

Maybe you need to move away from Blogspot and into Wordpress.

Wordpress lets you create both pages and posts; which means you can still keep your Smugmug gallery and blogging; and just create HTML pages dedicated to accessing those galleries; that's what I'm doing now.

[kula23]

You are not only one doing this. I have Smugmug but I need to find to make in one with my blog (wordpress) and my smugmug gallery. I will have to create on my own to save money. Most place that sell like over $100. Crazy.....good luck finding yours!

[Redneck]

Originally Posted by Fireball

I've got my galleries already at smugmug, but don't see a place where you can have a website. Am I missing something?

Yes, you're probably missing something. You can totally customize your Smugmug website and use "galleries" as webpages. You just need to fill in your html codes and set your custom header and footer.

Oh, of course I'm talking about the pro account at smugmug. I don't know what the restrictions with other accounts are.

[Fireball]

I decided to go with photobiz and am loving it! Soooo simple to use and the customer service is outstanding. They either call or e-mail me that day or sometimes out of the blue just to see how I'm doing. I was able to link my "ordering" tab with my smugmug gallery for now until it expires in April. Then I'll switch over to photobiz (which I already paid for).

I'm probably going to go live this week and will post a link as soon as I do.

[Some Idiot]

zenfolio

[Sonny]

Originally Posted by Fireball

I decided to go with photobiz and am loving it! Soooo simple to use and the customer service is outstanding. They either call or e-mail me that day or sometimes out of the blue just to see how I'm doing. I was able to link my "ordering" tab with my smugmug gallery for now until it expires in April. Then I'll switch over to photobiz (which I already paid for).

I'm probably going to go live this week and will post a link as soon as I do.

I demoed a couple of FlashPallette templates and wasn't impressed, but PhotoBiz looks pretty nice.

[LadyShutterBug]

i love photobiz! i don't use their shopping cart or use them for client galleries, instead i link the clients to zenefolio.

photobiz is EXTREMELY easy to change, be it texts or galleries... and they have a gazillion different templates to choose from. you can customize colors as well, which is nice.

mine is monkey-tree.com if you want to peek.

[Sonny]

What a bummer! I thought PhotoBiz was a winner. After talking to a rep, I found out that you MUST you PhotoBiz to host your website. Their hosting prices are almost triple what I pay now.

I have my own domain and hosting. All I wanted was to buy their template, but PhotoBiz does not sell their templates. Which make sense now, because $125 for a very nice CMS tmplate sounded too good to be true. They make up the difference by charging a lot for using their hosting.

Back to the drawing board.

[FleurdeLisArts]

That's odd Sonny....I just signed up with Photobiz this past week and still have all my hosting with yahoo. They didn't require the hosting to be turned over...the domain has to point to their servers but otherwise you can still have it pretty much however you like. I have a main site with Photobiz that I operate through their control panel and several other sites within my hosting environ that I operate through Dreamweaver because that is my modifier of choice.

I DID find out through searching and re-searching with most of these sort of companies they do not "sell" their templates.
If you want a flash file to load into Fl and edit with Dw or whatever you'll have to pay a web designer or learn enough flash to design it yourself.
There are some html based flash sites available to purchase in various places as a blank template for you to fill in and manage as you please. These are anywhere from $500 that I found in any decent looking template usable for photography.
To me...$125 and $15/month was a very easy decision.

Beat's not having a website up at all or worse the dreaded "under construction"....

I'll eventually build one of my own but while I am learning all the flash tools needed to do so, I'm very happy to say that Photobiz has gotten my biz :-)

Congrats Charrie!

[Wil_Bloodworth]

Originally Posted by Fireball

I decided to go with photobiz and am loving it! Soooo simple to use and the customer service is outstanding. They either call or e-mail me that day or sometimes out of the blue just to see how I'm doing. I was able to link my "ordering" tab with my smugmug gallery for now until it expires in April. Then I'll switch over to photobiz (which I already paid for).

I'm probably going to go live this week and will post a link as soon as I do.

Charrie,

I spoke to one of their representatives on the phone today and am considering moving all of my site from BluDomain to PhotoBiz. However, I don't see how PhotoBiz can replace my SmugMug account. Their pricing is based on the number of photos you upload so it would get really expensive very quickly.

What am I missing?

- Wil

[KenJulio]

Could you not bridge between Photobiz and smugmug, making smugmug have a similar look and feel to your PhotoBiz site ?