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Building a non-Flash photography web site

Grimace

Grimace

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Hey crew, I currently have a web site that relies (almost exclusively) on Flash to display content. For photography sites, there is actually a lot of cool stuff you can do with Flash navigation and display -- as most of us probably know. But, then there is the iPhone/iPad thing, which is making me consider other options (for the purpose of this thread, I'm looking for information on options, not opinions on yes/no to having a Flash site).

The trouble is, I don't really have a handle on the web options or even software titles that would support a photography-based site without using Flash. I have a quite comfortable with HTML/CSS, but coding each new photograph in without using some sort of database-driven system seems arduous.

Any thoughts on non-Flash photography web sites?
 
Hmm, usually those non-flash photography sites are blogs and these days, I see there are a value for having both flash and non-flash site for a photographer.

The problem I see in Flash is that in a poorly designed site, it takes real amount of time to load which drives the visitors away. This is where non-flash site steps in, blogs for example, visitors can usually tolerate slow loading pictures (cause they know they are entering a heavy graphic page and providing it doesn't take too long to load) because there are some text to read but when they stare at a blank screen with the word loading x%, they get bored and eventually leaves the page.

And with the whole iPad/iPhone thing. I think having a blog option is better then nothing 😉
 
You can use something like Gallery to control your image management. It allows you to upload zips full of images and it adds them to your online gallery. It includes a number of different themes that can be edited to create something that appeals to you.

http://gallery.menalto.com/

There are other options too, most are free and can work quite well.
 
Good point. I've been playing around with WordPress and I like it a lot. Even without the "blog" part of it, you can still create some easy to navigate web pages.

For showing photography portfolios, you don't need flashy, but simply functional doesn't always do well for marketing purposes.

Has anyone used iWeb to create a photography-based web site?
 
Grimace said:
Good point. I've been playing around with WordPress and I like it a lot. Even without the "blog" part of it, you can still create some easy to navigate web pages.

For showing photography portfolios, you don't need flashy, but simply functional doesn't always do well for marketing purposes.

Has anyone used iWeb to create a photography-based web site?
Click to expand...

My entire new site reboot is a seriously customized Wordpress install on my own server (links in the sig). Makes it really easy to edit text on the fly, edit/post blogs, etc all from a single interface.

I also run a Tumblr account for my shot of the day uploads from my iPhone and a wordpress widget imports the 1st image of the Tumblr feed when it loads. There is, of course, an option to actually go to the shot of the day tumblr feed off my main page.

As for my galleries, I DO use Flash because it makes it more difficult for people to swipe copies of my images. It's not impossible, but what they get is never good quality. All of my galleries are also output from Lightroom's Web panel. I find this combo to be the best work flow for me. YMMV
 
Grimace said:
Good point. I've been playing around with WordPress and I like it a lot. Even without the "blog" part of it, you can still create some easy to navigate web pages.

For showing photography portfolios, you don't need flashy, but simply functional doesn't always do well for marketing purposes.

Has anyone used iWeb to create a photography-based web site?
Click to expand...

If you're going with Wordpress, I recommend checking out the themes from Photocrati. They're reasonably priced, easy to configure, and produce a very useable site that doesn't bog the visitor down with too much nonsense; the focus is always on the images, which is nice.
 
i used iWEB..

i thought it would be hard..at first it was, but i got the hang of it and everything just came into place.

check it out!! you won't be disappointed!


web.me.com/LUTD

or just click the link in my signature. 🙂
 
Web designers often browse through portfolio websites of other designers for inspiration and ideas that can be used in their own work. Photographers, like designers, have a need to display an attractive portfolio for their websites visitors, and many photographers have excellent portfolio sites. In this post I’d like to take a look at 25 of the best. This collection is based on the quality of the portfolio site itself, not necessarily the work being displayed inside the portfolio.
 
Photo without flash

This website might be of interest to you if you explores ways to show pictures without using flash.

http://www.rupaloka.com

It actually isn't a photo gallery but an art gallery, still, the problem is the same.

The menu allows you to choose a category of object (if you aren't happy with the initial "show all"), then hovering over thumbnails give basic info, then clicking on the thumbnail gets larger view(s) and more info, clicking again on the larger view brings zoom.

Hint: Don't use the scrollbars, click on shaded objects (on the left or right of the focused view) to move there.

Lots of Javascript but not a byte of flash. I wonder how this looks on an iPad, I wish I'd have one to see.
 
I use minishowcase on my website, which uses PHP and no Flash. It is pretty easy to set up and get running. I had to update the code to work with newer versions of PHP however. If you decide to use Minishowcase, send me a private message and I can send you modified files that will make it work with newer versions of PHP.
 
Grimace said:
I love your Wordpress blog version! Which plugins/themes did you end up going with? The shadowbox pictureframing looks really nice.
Click to expand...

Thanks Grimace!

I use the TwentyTen theme, although I have done a fair bit of modification to the CSS and PHP already, its barely recognizable.

But seriously, wordpress. Wordpress pwns google.
 
I tried a few different site building things that used flash and couldn't get on with any of them... plus wouldn't work on my iPhone so knocked them all on the head.

Now just have a page on flickr and a site I knocked up in 30 mins on iWeb and have just added to it after time.

Only problem is it seems pictures are quite slow loading... tried a few different hosts but get around the same speed with whoever I used.

heres my example of a pretty simple (slow loading) iweb site

www.neiltunney.co.uk (the rugby tab at the top is where most the pics are... probably slow as there are so many albums to a page?
 
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