Web designers out there

[tnf]

I need to get a business website up and running in the near future, and my website design experience is only limited to purely functional websites and simple stuff like setting up phpBB.

A lot of the photography websites I've seen have annoying, 30 second long flash intros (some that you can't skip) - not at all what I am looking for, personally. But I would like a clean, easy-to-navigate site that would allow customers to see galleries of their shots and the other typical components that you'd find in a photography website.

What's a reasonable price to have someone design a site for a business? And here's an example of something along the lines I'm thinking of - minus the irritating music that starts when you open the site.

http://www.elsasserphotography.com/


Or should I just buy software that walks me through the design myself?

[4days]

minus the irritating music that starts when you open the site.

there's a difference between irritating and a crime against music.

could you do something with an open-source script? e.g.

http://coppermine-gallery.net/
http://www.phpalbum.net/
http://www.plogger.org/

[Fender]

I know this guy: http://brian-palmer.net/
Too much, or kinda what you had in mind? I could ask him what he did.

[bitWISE]

Myself and a guy I work with charge $50 an hour for custom freelance stuff like that. Depending on the specifics you'd probably be looking at around a grand. Would you also need to setup hosting?

You'd probably get the best deal with someone who already has a premade site like that you can customize.

[tnf]

I know this guy: http://brian-palmer.net/
Too much, or kinda what you had in mind? I could ask him what he did.

Maybe a bit more than I am looking for, but I'd be interested in finding out what he did.

I know my domain registrar (dotster) has pre-made website templates, but I tend to avoid pre-made templates of things like that.

[PhoeniX]

The Brian Palmer site was made with FlashPalette Mini 01 Plain.

Flash is very bad form. It looks nice, but kills your search rankings most of the time. Especially when pretty much all effects of that template can be replicated in standard HTML.

[Dr_Watson]

http://www.elsasserphotography.com/

I find that kind of wonky myself.

[bitWISE]

The thing I dislike about Flash now is that it doesn't fit in well (if at all) with mobile browsing. Flash belongs only in RIAs and full motion animation IMO.

[Fender]

wtf did phoenix's responses go?
anyway brian-palmer.net was setup using http://www.flashpalette.com
edit: q3w is acting strangely

[PhoeniX]

It's still there .

[l0g1c]

Poke around here:

http://smugmug.com/

Lots of customization, private galleries, ecommerce stuff built in. I've heard good things about it, but never used it myself.

[tnf]

wtf did phoenix's responses go?
anyway brian-palmer.net was setup using http://www.flashpalette.com
edit: q3w is acting strangely

Awesome link, that may be what I end up doing.

[Κracus]

I'm actualy reading several books on .NET right now, fun stuff but other than a few XNA games I've put together using C# I haven't done much web stuff yet unfortunately.

I just started a book on php, css and xml too that's interesting.

My biggest issue is that I don't have a pc at home to really create some long term projects to work on so I'm mostly stuck doing small scale stuff at work on the side. good practice tho.

Maybe someday I'll be enough of a guru to do something nice.

[bitWISE]

[Dr_Watson]

btw, you don't need flash.This shows you how easy it is to make a gallery application with php. Granted it isn't very pretty but I threw it together in a few minutes for project photo diary in my wines of the world class last year. Wouldn't take much effort though (maybe a day) to pretty it up with photoshop and add a back-end management interface.
Right now it just pulls from the directory it's aimed at. I dump a pile of photos in there, open it up the first time and it gives me a box to type in the descriptions, after the first cycle of labeling everything it reads the descriptions from the files wrote during the first pass.

[PhoeniX]

Alternatively there's lots of PHP galleries you could use.. such as Gallery2. You could even couple it with some form of Lightbox clone, i.e. Slimbox and you're all set.

[MKJ]

avoid flash if you dont need it. people need to get over the oo sparkly factor and use flash for RIA only

[MKJ]

also, http://www.pic-a.net

js/ajax only, pretty awesome but highly WIP

[bitWISE]

For some reason the idea of making a portfolio site gave me a strange sense of motivation. Here is a rough but functional demo of what I came up with. At the bottom of the thumbnail grid, there would be some kind of pagination control (i.e. First 1 2 3 Last).

http://laceratus.com/demo/

If you're interested, I could probably hook you up for the price of that flash template. I'd just need to make it dynamic and clean up the design and match it to your color scheme with real logo. (I did the faux 3D off-hand in Photoshop and now that its done I can see some things I'll need to fix. I also mixed in a table with the div layout because I couldn't justify the time it was taking to make the god damn thing when I could just use a simple table to wrap it.)

[Giraffe }{unter]

http://www.fotoplayer.com/index.html

[tnf]

I think this is an example of everything not to do with a flash intro:

http://www.insightphoto.com/

[Transient]

For some reason the idea of making a portfolio site gave me a strange sense of motivation. Here is a rough but functional demo of what I came up with. At the bottom of the thumbnail grid, there would be some kind of pagination control (i.e. First 1 2 3 Last).

http://laceratus.com/demo/

Nice mouseover.

[JB]

I think this is an example of everything not to do with a flash intro:

http://www.insightphoto.com/

word

[DTS]

What are "the other typical components that you'd find in a photography website"?

When I visit a photography site, I only expect to find pictures, perhaps with some comments and/or titles. Of course there's room for a photographer's profile.

Why don't you just use Flikr, or something? What's wrong with that? (I don't know much about it myself.)

You could just have a simple site with pictures and some text. Elaborate graphical designs and effects won't improve a picture gallery; the focus should be on the pictures and any accompanying text, not some fanfare framework surrounding it.

You think of a traditional, physical, art or photographical art gallery, and how simplistic that is. People dion't go to photo galleries to be dazzled by special effects, they go to look at the pictures and read the titles and any comments that accompany them. Maybe to discuss them aswell.

Don't take this to mean you should use the web-conventional light-bulb-bright white background, though...

[tnf]

Flickr is just a photo-sharing website. Not a bad place to get feedback from professionals and other talented photographers, but it's not where you want to direct clients.

As for the rest of your post - it's almost like you don't follow what is going on here.

Business photography site. Not just a site to post my pictures on.