Over the Christmas holiday I started a redesign of my photography website. As a web developer, my sites are always the last to get updated. It took me about four weeks because I kept changing it. I finally launched it but am still adjusting it!
Here’s some of the things I did:
- Combined my blog with the main site. Previously, they were separate. My blog had to be moved. I created the site platform on Wordpress with a responsive HTML theme and layout. My goal was to make the site minimal and make it easier to navigate and work well on mobile sites.
- Cleaned up my blog. SInce my photo blog has been out there since 2009, I had to put a redirect on the old blog url to the new one since I changed it’s path. I thought I wanted to keep old articles just so I could look back and see how far my photography skills have come but I decided some just didn’t add value. I cleaned up a few and dumped a bunch.
- Changed from PhotoShelter to SmugMug. Over the years I have tried out 3 of the most popular photo storage and shopping cart sites. I started with PhotoShelter, moved to Zenfolio for a couple of years and then back to PhotoShelter. Zenfolio, at the time did not have very good SEO and so I made the switch back to PhotoShelter. I think I have been on PhotoShelter for about 4 years. I also tried SmugMug a couple of times over the years and didn’t find it easy to customize. SmugMug though has come a long way since I tried them out in the past. Not only is their customer service the best but I found the pages easy to customize.
I also had a chance to create a new blog for my future travels with my husband in our RV. I hope to launch it in March. Stay tuned!
Like your new site, why did you leave Photoshelter? Currently, I am on Zenfolio but thinking of changing over to SmugMug( https://www.mikeswindlephotography.com/). I started the transiition to SmugMug a few months ago but seem to be having trouble with organization of images and galleries, but I will figure it out.
Thanks Mike! The reason I moved from PhotoShelter to SmugMug is that SmugMug gives you unlimited space and PhotoShelter charges for extra space if you exceed the limit. Not that I had exceeded my space but I have travel plans and will be taking a lot of photos in the near future so it makes more sense to go with SmugMug. Plus the interface on SmugMug is easy and more modern. PhotoShelter had not updated the admin panel and it feels ‘chunky’ and outdated compared to SmugMug’s modern interface. A contact to PhotoShelter took a couple of days to get a response. SmugMug’s customer service is simply the best. They respond same day and most of the times within the hour. I am saving $150 a year at SmugMug as well. It just makes more sense though I resisted it a long time :)
I would encourage you to contact SmugMug and get the answers you need to help you with your transition. They are more than happy to help as they have customer service reps available 24/7.
Love the new site. Very clean design and you have made the navigation transitions from Smugmug and WordPress back and forth work really smoothly.
Thank you Mark! Great to hear from you.
Like the new, responsive look. Thanks for sharing your work and your experience.
Thanks Roger!