16/04/2008 04:54:58

I bought one from Flashmint.com. Had to do a lot of internal editing though.

They've new ones now where everything is editable from a control panel, names, menu titles, about pages, news etc etc for $199..

my site is http://seanmcfoto.com. Wish I had imagery like yours for it though ;)

07/04/2008 12:59:34

Heya, yeah updating can be a pain in the arse but it doesnt have to be. For a start I do recommend you having a custom design built but there is no reason why you cant state to your designer to be that you want to be able to do gallery updates yourself. At this stage Lili your name is becoming a Brand and you need a website that reflects that you are one of Irelands leading fashion photographers. Most photographer can make do with a simple design to promote their work but you dont really fall into that catagory. Its your International shop window. In terms of automated 'sexy' galleries SlideshowproDIRECTOR(http://slideshowpro.net/products/slideshowpro_director/slideshowpro_director) is probably one of the niftiest out there. Totally customiable, robust and easy to use. You can keep on adding galleries till the cows come home. You can change its appearance from the button, colours, size of thumnails - pretty much everything - though you would need a designer for this as it would need to be edited in Flash. The default gallery can be customised too in term of colour gallery speed etc. Heres what I would do..Design a really funky original CSS layout with not too much distraction. have one section for the gallery and update that section only. And thats it. If ya need any help you know where to find me! jx

06/04/2008 14:14:39

yeah I totally agree about the web designers- that's why I never ever had my site designed for me and always do it myself so that I can update it whenever I want. I just want a 'sexier' gallery.. if you know what I mean. and possibly without the logo of the gallery software on it!

I will definitely check out these links you gave me (*gone off researching*) so thanks a mill. Lilix

06/04/2008 14:01:11

I know the feeling! I'm in the same boat myself. Sure, having a hand coded website is great because you can customise it, but unless you go down the road of getting to grips with PHP and CSS, not to mention good old plain HTML, then a "handmade" website can be a real pain to maintain. Building a website is easy, but keeping it updated is not and that's where most people (including myself!) fall down.

Lot's of people here and elsewhere use Clikpic. Others use various similar offerings from other providers such as Photium. I've considered a lot of these but am not totally convinced so I've started looking at what some of the more well known US photographers use and this brings me to Bludomain

Bludomain seem to offer two packages - a $100 and a $400 package. They cater for an extensive number of photographers, including, like I said, some of the more internationally known ones. Their homepage has a link to a long list of their websites and these are well worth looking at. Some are better than others of course.

Other than that, I've considered both Foliolink and Livebooks, but both are quite a bit more expensive than Bludomain although I think Livebooks is well worth considering.

I'm still at the researching stage, so haven't made a decision yet. Let me know what you eventually decide as a solution. One thing I would advise against is having a custom site designed by a web designer. In most cases you will forever be tied to them for updates and changes and that can get very expensive. If you do go down the custom web design road, make sure you get a decent CMS (Content Management System) as part of the contract.

One other thing to remember about flash is that flash sites and flash galleries cannot be indexed by search engines. There are ways around this, but they are not perfect, so if SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is important, you need to keep this in mind.

Hope this helps somewhat and hasn't muddied the waters for you!

- Thorsten