I am currently using live books, but I feel they are so limited on what you can do and was suggested to wordpress - themes can be seen at themeforest.net

Do you know of any "creative" people that are using wordpress for their websites?

Thanks,
Jack

I was with Livebooks for four years and shared your frustration. I never really felt that my images were large enough but they've been the standard for so long. Last month, I left them for format.com and felt like the change has helped. I paid the $68 yearly fee upfront and saved a bit, especially when you compare it to Livebooks. The only complaint I have with Format is the limited selection of fonts.

There are thousands of WordPress themes specifically designed for photographers and other creatives like designers.

I use a WP theme by Graph Paper Press, but there are many others. Theme Forest has a whole category just for photography and design.

Edit: let me add, if you have no knowledge of coding, HTML, or CSS; and don't know or aren't comfortable with doing updates yourself and installing plugins and configuring widgets, then WP might not be the right choice. (But you can hire someone to do that stuff too.)

Photoshelter is a nice service specifically for photographers. I don't like, however, that their templates limit the size your photos can be in a gallery. There doesn't seem to be a way to alter that. But if you don't know anything about coding or plugins, it's a good choice. Great SEO also.

I purchase all my WordPress from ThemeForest http://themeforest.net.  The currently advertise that they have about  1,201 WordPress Themes & Templates for and / or designed for photography.

http://themeforest.net/search?category= … p;utf8=✓

Chances are pretty good that you will be able to find a template to your liking at ThemeForest.

These are a couple of websites I have built for Friends using WordPress templates purchased from ThemeForest:

Daniel Chase Photography - http://www.danielchasephotography.com
Peggy Zickowski Photography - http://www.pegzphotography.com

I have decided to use a template, Avada, for my photography website that was not specifically designed with photography in mind, but is easily configured to work well:

http://theme-fusion.com/avada/fashion

Best of luck to you in your search for a template that suits your needs!

Jim

Why I am thinking of a World Press compared to a custom.

What I have learned in the past is if someone builds a custom site for me then that person drops off the earth or is no longer doing websites I then have to go and find someone else to work on that site in which he/she did not do - more times then not they don't want to touch anything they did not build.. 

SO

Moving forward I was thinking as the best long term solution is having a word press site that way most web designers can work on it...

Yes, many developers should be able to work on your site in WP. You can hire people to do everything from uploading the galleries to just making modifications or configuring where the widgets go, or changing the footer, or colors, etc.

It's a good system. I just don't think it's the right one for someone with no knowledge of HTML/CSS; no desire to learn; and no wish to pay anyone to do the work for them. Because you do have to know a little bit about how to work the back end, or you have to pay someone to do it.

You can find a LOT of people who are willing to work on it for pay though! Or learn yourself - it's a good skill to have.

Getting a WordPress site up and running is incredible easy, something that you most probably can do yourself with just a little bit of instruction.  Also, you need absolutely no knowledge of HTML / CSS if you are using a template unless you want to change a behavior that was designed / programmed into a given template.

I disagree with that, after using WP templates on a variety of sites since 2007. Especially if one is using a template that doesn't have a lot of, or any, options built in to change anything as basic as the colors.

Sure it's possible to use a template without changing a thing. You still have to understand or want to learn how to do updates, install and configure plugins, and manage widgitized areas. I also use FTP all the time - something else that makes certain things easier and which many people have no clue now to use.

Also it really helps to understand a bit of HTML as the WYSIWYG text area for posts will often not behave exactly how you think it should. Strange occurrences are easily corrected if using the visual editor.

I suppose if one picks a theme with many variation options built in and who may not be using a blog at all and who doesn't use many or any plugins or widgets, then one doesn't need to know anything except how to upload and type.

If you read my post again, you will note that I said I said "you need absolutely no knowledge of HTML / CSS if you are using a template unless you want to change a behavior that was designed / programmed into a given template."  I am assuming that the OP will use one of the many many templates designed with photographers in mind.  And I still stand by that statement.  If you start with one of the very basic templates, then that knowledge would be useful, by I do not understand why someone would do that.  I would not even design a WordPress template from scratch... personally.

I having been building website for over 25 years now and actually taught advanced website design at a Southern California Community College for a while.  I have also own and operated an ISP that specialized in website development and programming, so I am speaking from years of experience.  I have also been building WordPress site now for about 3 years and pretty much only use WordPress for any new clients and am in the process of converting all old clients to WordPress as well.

As far as doing updates of WordPress, most Hosting Companies now automatically do backups and installation of updates for WordPress.  I currently have WordPress sites running on about 5 of the major hosting companies and they all do so.  Installing and configuring plugins it one of the easiest things to do in a WordPress site.  I will admit that some plugins are a bit more challenging than others, but most are typically very easy to work with and they are supported really well.  I have had very little need to use FTP with my WordPress site as pretty much all uploads of files needed can be accomplished through the use of the hosting company's control panel, normally CPanel, and the WP Admin section of the WordPress site.

All the templates that I have purchased and used so far have multiple options for controlling the look and feel of the template such as color, font face and size, navigation placement & type, social networking icon style, type and placement, and Blog type, style and display.  Decide on and choose from the options and you are pretty much done and ready to start adding content to your WordPress website.  The typical WordPress template for sale at ThemeForest runs between $45 to $60 to purchase a single use license.

As I said earlier, I have not built a WordPress website from scratch and have no intention of doing so unless the client is insistent on have one custom designed for them.  In that case I will and will be charging a nice hourly rate to do so.  I am quite familar with most of the technologies used in the development of websites inclusive of HTML, CSS, Java, JavaScript, .Net, Visual Basic, Visual C#... etc.  I actually went back to school to finish my BS in Business Administration with a concentration in Information Systems Management after working in technology for corporations and owning my own technology company over the course of 30 years.  I will graduate fro San Francisco State University with my degree the Spring of 2016.

OP, if you have any specific questions about WordPress, I would be happy to try and answer them for you if you want to send me an message.

Might not be the "right" answer, but lately I've just had my photo's (watermarked) on OneDrive and provide the link to potential clients.

SquareSpace

Let me know I'm a Wordpress developer. www.alluresweb.com

My website is entirely wordpress and I did it myself: http://www.richardnorthwood.com

I wanted to put up a website fairly quickly, so I used a combination of carbonmade.com and weebly.com. It's not fancy, but it was a way to put up something very quickly and pretty much free if you keep it under a certain amount of images and pages. If you want more, there are some fees but not too high.

www.renatoalbertophotography.com

I looked at a lot of sites, but to get what I really want I will have to have a custom designed website.
So I put that one up very quickly, and looking for a developer to develop my permanent website the way I really want it.

So just a suggestion that if you are looking for something quick and cheap, carbonmade.com and weebly.com, might be a short term solution. For some photographers I know, it's worked for them on a permanent basis.

IMHO as always.

Afaik, Wordpress has a massive security issue that reportedly was unlikely to be fixed.
I am trying to find the security article to back my claim, but unfortunately fail miserably. Perhaps any web developer would like to chime in?

I gave up Wordpress almost immediately after this was disclosed and very unlikely to use it again.

I really love these guys:   http://format.com/

Super easy, lots of support, social media sharing if you want it, no right clicking if you want...intuitive to navigate.

Heres mine:   http://www.williampearcecox.com/


Good luck.

I just put a site up on wix.com. I had been using WP themes, and they are overly complicated and extremely hard to customize for those who have absolutely no knowledge about such things as web site building and coding.

I used to be fairly knowledgable about these things 20 years ago. If you want a highly customizable and easy to use and modify web site builder I would highly recommend WIX. They have domain hosting and you can transfer existing domains over with e-commerce available. The rates are pretty well priced as well for the paid version.

I took a good look at Squarespace and mocked up a trial site, but ultimately went with a great company called 22 slides (www.22slides.com) and I've been very happy with them. Good price, good service, and easy to configure. I have a private password protected proof gallery and it's a breeze to update new images. Highly recommended

www.jeanclaudephoto.com

I actually coded my own CMS and gallery generator in Python:

   http://www.reimeika.ca/page/portfolio

Although it's open source I don't really expect anyone to use it. I'm terrible at CSS, but still, I like to believe it has some interesting features (tagging, flexible sorting, automatic thumbnail/histogram generation). I'm currently re-factoring the code and adding some features like the ability to create square thumbnails, I'm hoping to finish version 1.1 by tomorrow ^_^

I agree, squarespace is the bomb.