Last year my web presence was, frankly a mess!
- I had a portfolio website, for showing work.
- Photoshelter site for destributing images to clients.
- A blog on WordPress.com
- and various Social media sites…
But nothing looked the same or linked together… They all brought in work, but it was a nightmare of a journey traveling around the various sites.
Maintaining all three sites was another problem, I would export images to Photoshelter, then again for my blog and a third time if I wanted to update a Portfolio. But the extra workflow meant that the portfolio was rarely updated and the blog often neglected.
So at the start of this year, I sat down with pen and paper and worked out a way to bring them all together.
As I started to piece my new website together, I realised that Photoshelter, could do the whole site, from content management, distribution, archive and portfolios. To top it off, they integrate with WordPress, which has allowed me to produce one site, with one look and feel, for all my purposes.
I first joined Photoshelter back in 2008 when I needed a way to distribute images and store each days picks online when traveling. Over the years its grown and now is an important part of my work flow. Last year they sealed the deal when they introduced the portfolio feature. This meant that I could upload one set of images to Photoshelter and use the same images to mail too clients as well as for Portfolio purposes.
More importantly, it means I can update the entire site on the fly. I can have several Portfolios, showing a broader range of work all in one place.
I have been building the new site over the past few months, slowly piecing it together as and when I had the time between work commitments. Photoshelter make the process very painless, even through I initially made it much harder for myself as I started to build my own customised site with CSS, before realising that Graph Paper Press, who produce WordPress themes for photographers, with a few basic CSS tweaks, had everything I wanted.
I know have one website, which includes my Portfolios, a searchable archive, a blog and links too Social Media. Clients can download images direct from the site, contact me and see new work as it goes live. Also having everything in one place, should make it much easier for me to keep it up to date, meaning I can spend more time actually behind the camera!
I still have a few small changes to make, a few further simplifications, but its almost there.
I hope you like the new site, feel free to leave any comments or experiences you may have.
Links:
Your thoughts are welcome...