Photo club website setup

jch2103 · October 22, 2017, 12:50:33 AM

I've gotten tagged to start managing our photo club website http://flatironsphotoclub.org/. (Monthly meetings of two groups, ~40 members, monthly image competition with 20-30 images, nothing particularly fancy at this point.) Hosted club website runs Wordpress with simple content, minimal plugins. I haven't yet gotten details about hosting, security, etc. Given the limited nature of the content, I don't think IMatch Anywhere is warranted at this point (amount of content, need to add database to web host, etc.).

I'm looking for any insights/recommendations anyone might have regard best practices, recommended plugins, etc., etc. One of my goals is to keep things simple, both for my own workload benefit and for eventually passing the work on to someone else.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

JohnZeman · October 22, 2017, 02:01:35 AM

That's a nice looking clean web site there John. I've pretty much retired from it now but I was a professional webmaster for 20 years. I can't offer any suggestions about WordPress though, I had a little experience with it several years ago and it seems to be a good way to create and maintain basic web sites.

FWIW for years I hand wrote all of my own code, now with the emphasis on web sites being mobile friendly (suitable for viewing on smartphones and tablets) I've switched to a program called Mobirise (https://mobirise.com/) that generates the code for me. I'm not recommending it for you because WordPress is good, just mentioning it in case somewhere down the road you're looking for an alternative way to maintain the web site. As an aside if you ever did switch you would have to rebuild the entire web site from scratch.

One comment I would make about the current web site, is there is a LOT of content on the home page. Way too much content in my opinion. I'd break it down into multiple sub pages of photos if it were me. However it does display nicely on my iPhone, so the site is smartphone friendly.

And I don't recall if WordPress gives you a way to back up your web site files, but you might want to look into that as well.

All in all it's a nice looking impressive web site. Good luck with it.

jch2103 · October 22, 2017, 06:10:33 AM

Thanks, John. I agree that the folks who set up the site did keep a nice clean design, much better than some I've seen (I can't take credit for that).

WordPress seems to offer two basic layouts, blog and web page. It seems the folks who set it up chose the blog style. I'd like to investigate how to set up photo galleries to keep everything from being on the home page. One step at a time...

Jingo · October 22, 2017, 02:13:10 PM

Hi John - there are a good number of galleries that work nicely with Wordpress... there are even complete themes that are designed for this exact purpose. They can get complicated to setup... but once established, they function well. Check out a few of these here: https://themefurnace.com/blog/free-wordpress-photography-themes/

sinus · October 22, 2017, 06:57:51 PM

This is an interesting page, what you have.
Wordpress offers quite a lot for photographers.

Our page is also based on wordpress, with help of such a theme, like Jingo posted.
http://www.sinusbild.com/live/

Aubrey · November 22, 2017, 09:19:09 PM

Quote from: JohnZeman on October 22, 2017, 02:01:35 AM

FWIW for years I hand wrote all of my own code

I came across some code writing of my personal page that I did in 1997. It now looks pretty tame! But in those days a text editor was all one needed.

Aubrey.

Aubrey · November 22, 2017, 09:22:51 PM

Quote from: sinus on October 22, 2017, 06:57:51 PM
This is an interesting page, what you have.
Wordpress offers quite a lot for photographers.

Our page is also based on wordpress, with help of such a theme, like Jingo posted.
http://www.sinusbild.com/live/

I've seen your website before and was most impressed. I expect that you are using a "non-free" wordpress template. What is your theme?

I've been using Site Origin (Free) but I'm not very excited with what I can do.

Aubrey.

BTW: most impressed by your photography.

Jingo · November 23, 2017, 03:09:50 PM

I've always been impressed with the photographs from Markus... a true professional!

Looks like the Invictus wordpress theme: http://themes.doitmax.de/wordpress/invictus

sinus · November 23, 2017, 05:01:30 PM

Thanks both of you, Aubrey and Andy (Jingo)

And yes, Andy is right: this is the invictus-wordpress-theme. As far as I know, the author is a german man.
I bought it and it looks quite nice.

And you all know, I think, to hold a website current, this is a lot of work and does use time.
That is the reason, why a long time I did no news, but at the moment I do http://www.sinusbild.com/live/news/ but to be honest, it is not very current and a bit boring.

As Mario will also know, a good website does require a lot of time.

But, of course, always nice to hear a compliment! Thanks!