With the numerous options today to create a website, what is important and what is not ? How can you make your life easy but still have a bit of freedom ?

First of all, I see 4 options if you like to have your own website :

1. Learn PHP, Dreamweaver or any other coding language and design your site from scratch.
2. Buy a ‘prefab’ template you can use on sites like Wordpress and customise it yourself.
3. Use a drag-and-drop software like Sandvox or Everweb, Zenfolio, PhotoShelter
4. Oursource the creation of the website completely to a third partie 

As you can imagine, it all depends on how much time you have, or you are willing to put in the creation of your website.

1. Learn a PHP/ Dreamwaever etc

If you tend to make large websites, and make it your business to do so, well then the first option is probably genuine, programs like Dreamweaver and others give you the biggest freedom to design and change anything you want on your website. For me, a website is a tool I need, just liek any other in order to produce and show my photowork. All the time I put in my website I miss out somewhere else. (Eg Making and editing images)

2. Wordpress

Wordpress is becomming one of the most popular tools for building rapidly a website. In less then 15 minutes you can have something online that looks quite professional . As Wordpress itself is free,  there are a lot of templates of any kind available, most of them have a limited free version and a paid pro-version. 

Wordpress is ideal for marketing start-ups and eyecatchers who wants a nice looking website with not to many content.

So far, so good…. However, if you tend to customise your website you run into one problem after the other; the fact is that all these templates have limitations, you can by a widget, or add-on, or whatver to overcome that, but in the end you end up with a template and so many other stuff that you are paying a lot for it, still have to live with the templates limitationns and are dependable of all these third parties that newer versions will still be compatible with your template...

The whole mecano-based system does not give you any control over teh content, pricing, interdependence it is a never ending story of templates, limitationns, ad-ons, updates etc.

 To give you an exemple of one of these limitations : 

-As a photographer i mostly work in Portrait format (3:2) as opposed to Landscape format (2:3). Most of the templates work fine in Landscape, but when you add a Portrait image it is automatically cropped to a square, or something even worse. If you want it or not… If you discover this late in the process, you wasted a lot of your time….

- The image gallieries exist in some of the templates but they are seldom naet or customizable if you want them to be (with a stroke or border / with the name or number under the image ?)

My journey with Wordpress was a nightmare in bypassing one limitation after the other. If you want a bit of freedom, because you have a clear idea in your head about your website, there are better options IMHO.

3.  Drag and Drop Software

There are many applications these day that claim to make life easier in giving you full control and a half-automated software (no-coding)

I will not explain all of them, this has already been done (see urls at the bottom of this article). The main points for chosing such a solution is the followings :

- In wich way tou feel comfortable with the working and handling of the software; some feel easy to learn, others you will find quite awkward to learn.

Chose the one you feel at aese with, with most of them you can download a free trial for 14days or more to try them out :)

- How is there proce structure set-up ? Is it a one-off payment, or do you need to pay every every month ? (Zenfolio charges 28E per month, or 240E per year, Sandvox 70E one off)

Zenfolio looks more pro and has many more options, but at the end you want to display your work in a nice way, are you willing to pay for or the rest too ?

You probably want your websiet to exist for a long period of time, so calculate the difference in price in the long run !

4. Outsource everything to a third party.

If you have a bigger budget you can find a professional that creates and maintains your website, you might have to go every time to that periosn to make a change or an update but at least you will not lose a lot of time learning software and dealing with the issues mentioned above and spend your full amount of time on your photography.

Conclusion : Find your Solution.

As i was uisng IWeb in the past and i learned how to use it, i have a problem with all these called pro-solutions in which you are limited with the design of your website.

The templates look great, but if yiou want it a bit different, it is a real hassle. I have a limited budget and do not wnat to be charged every month for my website, 

My golden midway is everweb as it gives me all the freedom I needs for an accepatble price, it is marketed as the ‘future’ if IWeb and it has been designed like this, it looks more straightforward to me then Wordpress and Zenfolio.

Only pitfall, it only works on mac so far, ..

I hope you will find your own solution easier after this article,

Greetz

Other Sources:

http://alternativeto.net/software/iweb/

http://www.macworld.com/article/1163747/life_after_iweb_the_state_of_web_design_on_the_mac.html

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/sites-to-create-portfolio-for-photographers/