Website Planning: Hosting

Check out my photos on Flickr and DeviantArt

I started this series before and my first post that this is replacing was utter crap. So, as my 2nd attempt I hope it shall be better.

As you all know, I am a photographer and the most important tool in any photographers arsenal is their portfolio. Now of days you can still keep your physical portfolio for job interviews, but how do you get to the actual Interview? Let's skip past all of the cold calls and luck, Its by having a good digital portfolio.

There are several options these days for making and keeping a portfolio online. A few are free and others take time, skill, and a web savy programming guy to keep. On this post, I am just going to mention a few of your options and the series of posts that follow, I will describe the process I am going through for making my website.

The easiest options available are through free services such as DeviantArt and Flickr. Both sites have a strong presence and have an extensive amount of forums where you can ask any kind of question imaginable and get a decent answer. Both of these sites offer extended services for an extra price such as detailed statistics extended space for storing more images and videos. DeviantArt also offers the ability to order your prints with the commision going to you, and the ability to make a custom portfolio with your own web address.

A couple other free services that are fairly easy to setup is by signing up with free blogging services such as wordpress.com and Blogger.com. They only take minutes to setup, choose your color scheme/template and to get rollin. With either of these options, you can mesh it with Flickr and make a set/slideshow on Flickr and then post it on your blog. Its a bit harder to go this route because there is a bit more you have to worry about custimization wise, but if you are more of a computer oriented person, It should come more naturally to you.

And the last option is to do what I am doing which is building my own site from scratch. This is the hardest  of the options because you have to know some programming. At the moment, I know I am going to be building my main site using Flash, but I have to check and see what my options are for having a mobile site.

If you are looking at building up your portfolio check out some of these links:

Sign up for DeviantArt

Sign up for Flickr

making a portfolio site using wordpress

making a portfolio using Blogger

Great resource if you want to build your own site

What are some of your experiences with starting your web site, and have you found any success