This project started a looong time ago, when I first started working with Ellen Petty of Identity Kitchen. As we worked together on custom blogs and websites for photographers, we started brainstorming ways to make something similar available to everyone. The goal was to create Affordable, Easy-to-use, WordPress Portfolio Websites for Photographers.

Our Goals

We put together a long list based on what worked best with the common features we were using in our custom sites: social media integration, customization, easy-to-use backend, unlimited galleries, integration of fantastic photography tools like ShootQ, etc, etc. Like all of our custom sites they needed to be an all-in-one website AND blog, all built in WordPress and 100% HTML – no Flash.

Flash sites are invisible to iPhones and create difficulties for search engines. Unfortunately, until now, Flash templates have been the only realistic option available at an affordable level. Regardless of what was used for a website, we were seeing a lot of people still use WordPress for their blog, often combining two or three website and blog services to manage it all, sometimes even hiring separare designers or programmers to work on them.

There is a good reason why WordPress and HTML based sites were not being done on an affordable level. WordPress is software that needs to be installed for each site. You can purchase “themes” or templates for WordPress but these also need to be installed. It requires some knowledge of databases, HTML, a programming language called PHP – all pretty overwhelming if you don’t know how to use it.

The Answer

The answer was to use a lesser known version of WordPress, which allows an entire network of sites to run off of one installation. Once the basic framework is developed, anyone can then sign up for a site by just entering some contact information. No HTML, no installation, no upgrades to worry about. You don’t need a hosting account. You don’t even need to wait for us to respond to an email or return a phone call. Just sign up and the site is ready.

You can check out all the features on the main site: http://photographyblogsites.com or to really see how it works sign up for the free 7-day trial.

Lifetime Offer

In celebration of the launch, we are offering an introductory lifetime membership for $499. That includes our search engine optimized blogsite, any new themes, 4 GB of hosting, our support, maintenance, upgrades and much, much more. For a full list of features visit our features section. No recurring costs…ever! But act fast! The offer will expire 11:59 PM on November 30, 2010.

Feedback

This is growing community and we are continuing to build and improve everything about the site – the way the main site itself works, suggestions for new features, etc. We have setup a support forum to take any and all feedback. We’d love to hear your thoughts as we will keep developing PhotographyBlogSites to be the best they can be.

Thank you to everyone who has helped with feedback and ideas throughout the process – we couldn’t have done it without you!

Now, you know how proud we are of our Search Engine Optimized, WordPress powered, custom portfolio blogsites. What if there were an entry-level, template-driven, DIY, portfolio blogsite available? No more updating your blog at one address and your portfolio at another. No more calling your webmaster to make changes to your site, update your entire site as easily as creating a blog post. You can even customize the site to match your brand.

Now, what if it was affordable to everyone and included installation and set-up? Interested?

Sign up here for more information.

Here’s a blurry sneak peek…

Some added details of my own:

There are a lot of sides to this project, including some exciting resources for anyone, whether they use the new BlogSites or not…

• There will be an FAQ and tutorial site, complete with screencast videos for everything WordPress.
• There will be support forums for plugins, and technical issues.
• SEO Image Galleries. This new site is also the home of a plugin currently released in Beta called SEO Image Galleries. It is available at the WordPress Repository, or can be installed directly through the plugin browser on any self-hosted WordPress site.

Plus lots more…

Sign up for our Beta list here: Photographyblogsites.com

You can also follow us for updates on Facebook and Twitter.

A Look At the Site

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A Look At the New Blog

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Details: Social Media Links

Details: Custom 404 Page

As I explained in the post about another site, the 404 error page is one of the most overlooked aspects of any site. A site should be able to handle when something goes wrong. If you have ever reached a site that said something like ‘The Page you are looking for can not be found,” you are looking at what is called a 404 error page. 404 refers to the numerical code thrown back to the browser by the server. Generally, these pages are ugly and not very helpful. The standard WordPress 404 will simply provide a serach box, if anything and will probably be a plain page. But wouldn’t it be more helpful to provide suggestions for what the visitor might be looking for?

It is possible to add an instant search result to these pages, using the url that the person was looking for. Rather than saying the site can not find that page, we have the site do a quick search and see if it finds anything close. This is great because a lot of these errors are just misspellings or typos. But the search will probably find it. Just in case the search fails, I also have it list the categories and archives links.

To see it in action try this link http://plumtreestudios.com/blog/ wedding photograph. You can see that there are blank spaces in the link and there is definitely no URL there. But instead of an error, the site offers several posts that relate to those locations.

Details: Custom 404 Page

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Details: Custom Site Options

Across the top of most blogs, you could display the title and description of the blog, have a single image as the header (possibly an image that includes a logo, or the title of the site), or you could do something fancy like a fading slideshow of images. Picking any one of these would mean being stuck with it unless you know how to edit code yourself or want to hire your web guy again for changes.

So I have started including an options area in all my sites where the user can select any of the three options at any time. Not only that, the fading slideshow I use reads any image you put in a folder. All you have to do is upload images to the folder to change your slideshow. If you ever get sick of the fading images, just change the option and upload a single image right in the WordPress admin area.

Details: Custom Site Options

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With an existing website and a strong brand and logo already in place, I simply had to adjust colors and fonts to match the existing site. For the background image, I had to create a new image using the background of the current site, filling in the middle portion where the website sits. There were also some custom programming tweaks to make the menu work the way we wanted, fix the layouts of the category pages, etc. Then I added the standard set of WordPress plugins to help with optimizing the site’s performance.

For better visibility in the search engines, I added the All in One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress. It allows you to customize the all important title tag for every page of your site. For the title tags, we used ‘Los Angeles Wedding Photographer, Indian Wedding Photographer’. The site currently ranks in Google at #5 for ‘Los Angeles Wedding Photographer’ and #4 for ‘Indian Wedding Photographer’.

Existing Portfolio Site

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New Matching Blog

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A while back, I had also done a custom splash page for the main site, with links to all of her sites and the blog.

A look at the Splash Page

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A look at the portfolio site

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A look at the Blog

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Details: Post Titles

There were lots of little details that added to the finished blog, a combination of design elements and custom programming to add some life to the site.

With a long list of posts in a blog-style layout, there is an opportunity to add imagery between the posts or surrounding the titles as a way to help separate one post from the next. I used a combination of things for Jules’ blog. Behind the title, I added a version of the swirl design and flowers that make up the background of the site.

To the left of each post is a set of icons that change depending on the category – cake for weddings, camera for photographer related posts, a house for portraits and a dog for dog portraits.

Details: Custom Images for Post Titles

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Details: Custom Comments on the Home Page

Usually comments are made on the permanent page for a single post. When you are looking at a long list of posts, you first have to click onto another page and wait for it to load before making a comment. But with a little bit of trickery, WordPress can list the comments for each post anywhere, including right under each post on the home page.

You can also have some fun with the text area where you type in the comments. Adding the three information boxes across the top helped save space and the little flower makes another appearance as the background of the textarea.

Details: Custom Comments

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Details: Custom Social Media Links and Welcome Area

One of the most important aspects of building a web presence is to connect all of the different parts to each other and make sure they are easy to find. Right across the top of the site, just under the fading slideshow header area, there is an area with a picture, the most recent Twitter status, easy to find links to Twitter and Facebook, a series of links to Jules’ other important sites, and a little link for her book, Olive Goes to Hollywood. Another interesting twist was to make the image of Jules randomly change on each page load. Try refreshing the site and the image will change every time.

Details: Connecting

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Details: Custom 404 Error Page

This is one of the most overlooked aspects of any site… What happens when something goes wrong? If you have ever reached a site that said something like ‘The Page you are looking for can not be found,” you are looking at what is called a 404 error page. 404 refers to the numerical code thrown back to the browser by the server. The technical aspect is one thing, but generally, these pages are ugly and not very helpful. The standard WordPress 404 will simply provide a serach box, if anything and will probably be a plain page. But wouldn’t it be more helpful to provide suggestions for what the visitor might be looking for?

It is possible to add an instant search result to these pages, using the url that the person was looking for. Rather than saying the site can not find that page, we have the site do a quick search and see if it finds anything close. This is great because a lot of these errors are just misspellings or typos. But the search will probably find it. Just in case the search fails, I also have it list the categories and archives links.

To see it in action try this link http://julesbianchi.com/blog/Four Seasons & Il Cielo . You can sse that there are blank spaces and an ampersand in the link and there is definitely no URL there. But instead of an error, the site offers several posts that relate to those locations.

You can see another example of this in my post about the custom blog for Plum Tree Studios.

Details: Custom 404 Page

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