Using Photocrati for my website

My new JeffColburn.com site has launched. Head on over and take a look.

It now offers:

* The ability to click on any image to see a larger photograph, so you can more easily see my images
* Working well on mobile devices
* A shopping cart, to make purchasing photographs faster and easier
* And for me, fast and easy updates to the site

For the past 16 years I've been hand coding all of my websites, and augmented that with Dreamweaver when it came out. But I'm changing things to give me more time to take photographs, and spend less time doing the business stuff.

To that end, I've spent the last several months researching how to make the maintenance and updating of my website faster and easier. I decided to change my website to a database site, and checked out Photocrati, Zenfolio and Photoshelter. I went with Photocrati because it's easy to use, includes a shopping cart, and costs much less than any other database site with a shopping cart. Also, they don't charge a fee for every sale like Zenfolio and Photoshelter do.

This was the first step of a revamp of my photo business to make it easier to maintain. Most of these changes you will never see, except that I will have more photos to show you.

Head on over and take a look, and let me know what you think.

Have Fun,
Jeff

Keep in mind the first and utmost important aspect of a photography website is aesthetics. This should tie into logical ease of use as well. Aesthetics is after all the business a photographer is in. The look of a site is the first impression a visitor receives and possibly the first they remember later. Aspects such as the cost to the photographer need to be looked at in long terms. The four bullet points you mention are available at every photography hosting sight I know of.

It’s always a vision in progress to keep a website viable, looking top notch, and functioning for the benefit of potential customers. They see the frontend and honestly don’t care about the backend. I would think we all struggle to do the best we can within our financial limits. I have always leaned towards what I should have instead of what I can afford at the moment, again thinking about the future.

I will mention this since I just dealt with it again today. The ability to upload high resolution print ready files to your own website that clients such as art dealers and distributors as well as publication producers can then download is, in my opinion essential and becoming more so all the time, 200mb files are not uncommon. The majority of my own sales are print ready files of specific criteria that customers request. Also you mention a hosting sight charging a fee for sales. I am not sure about photoshelter but as far as Zenfolio you just need to have your product set as self-fulfilled and there are no fees involved.

Hope it works well for you.

Hi Brad,

All good points. It really depends on the photographer, their needs and their clients. Most of my sales are in a gallery, with very few sales online. Most of the photographers I know also have very few online sales. But since you're selling so much online, and working with large files, your needs would be different than mine.

As I said in my OP, the main thing I was looking for was a site that's easy to update and maintain. Photocrati did that well for me. Also, being a Wordpress site makes SEO pretty easy.

I contacted tech support several times when putting this all together, and the people at Photocrati were fast to respond and very helpful. But be aware they are only available M-F during regular business hours.

All in all, I'm very happy with my choice and look forward to easily add photographs and articles.

Have Fun,
Jeff

Hi Jeff. I was an early adopter of Photocrati. It is a wonderful tool. If you can work with wordpress you can easily work with Photocrati. This software has a wide variety of theme choices with an almost unlimited opportunity for customization. With it you can present a simple/elegant site, an extremely sophisticated site, and even what appears to be a somewhat outdated site design. Its all up to you. Looking through some of the new looks available within this theme it's apparent to me that it's time to consider a bit of revamping of my own site.

I you're happy with your site, that's really what matters. To me, it's reminiscent of sites when blog-sites first started to become popular. There's nothing wrong with that but I can see where some folks might view it as being a little "dated." Again, if you're satisfied that's what matters.

In case anyone is curious about the versatility of Photocrati, check out some of the websites powered by it: http://www.photocrati.com/testimonials/. I find the variety a bit amazing. (In case anyone is wondering, no I don't work for the company. Like I said, I was an early adopter).