So you’ve followed step a and b and decided that a new photo site is what you need to create? Perhaps you’ve finally understood that it’s neither difficult nor expensive to create a professional portfolio? Or that the monthly subscription you have with a local web designer is pretty much a ripoff?
Creating a site using Wordpress isn’t difficult. You can leverage the power of a great community to put together a professional site – for very little money. Or you can pay for premium services to customize the site exactly as you want it, still at a fraction of the cost you would pay for many other web design services. But in order to get the most out of Wordpress it’s important that you understand what the application is. You want to work with your software, not against it.
I’ll go over the important parts below. This summary will only take you three minutes to read, but it will quickly help you determine if Wordpress is for you or not when coupled with the first parts of Wordpress for Photographers 1.
What is Wordpress, and how come it’s available for free?
Wordpress is one of the largest open source content management systems on the internet. Open source means that there is not one individual person or company behind it – the code is open for anyone to use and improve. This is the part that makes it free. A content management system is an online application that lets you edit a website without getting into the code. You just type a text into a box or upload a photo through a beautiful interface.
People work on Wordpress for very different reasons – the first do it to use it in their business, the second want to learn new skills, and the third want to contribute to something larger than themselves. The result is a great piece of software that rapidly evolves and gets better.
While Wordpress started out as an easy-to-use blogging platform, extra resources made by people who like the application can turn it into almost anything. These resources generally come in three categories: plugins (add-on programs), themes (different looks) and third-party resources (stuff that you don’t install on Wordpress yourself, but hook into your site through other means).
There are two different versions of Wordpress. You can either download and host the application yourself, or you can go to wordpress.com to get a free (photo)blog. Wordpressphoto.net is only about the self hosted version, since it’s with it we get the most out of the software.
If you want to know more about the history and infrastructure of Wordpress there’s a nice article on wordpress.org. Wikipedia takes you even deeper.
What kind of photo sites are Wordpress suitable for?
Wordpress is great at powering content driven sites. These include:
- Photoblogs – regularly updated sites with a photographers latest photos. Their focus is on creating a conversation with visitors, and often show more experimental work than portfolios. I’ve used one to improve my photography over the course of a year and a half. Moodaholic by Kenny Weng is a beautiful example.
- Portfolios – showcases a photographer’s or a company’s best work. It’s not as often updated as the photoblog, but is great to show potential clients to so that they’ll quickly get a feel for your work. (Certainly easier than running around with prints.) George Butler has got a nice section on his site that works in this manner.
- Stores – sites built to sell photography. Useful if one wants to control the commercial chain and cut out middle hands. It can be as simple as a photoblog using some add-on services, or it can be a dedicated niche site. We Create Photos by myself is an example of the latter.
If you plan on creating something that falls into one of these categories, Wordpress will be able to handle it with ease. That doesn’t mean Wordpress cannot do anything else, but chances are it might require some more customization.
What Wordpress won’t do
While Wordpress can handle most of the technical stuff, it can’t handle everything. You might run into hosting problems, traffic spikes or want to do serious customization, and then you’ll have to crawl through some code or get familiar with tech terms. In the upcoming parts of Wordpress for Photographers 1 I’ll teach you how to avoid almost all of this when you start out, but you should be aware that you might need to learn or outsource this later.
The application is pretty flexible when it comes to what it can do – not least because of the many plugins and themes out there – but certain things require more customization. Since Wordpress started as a blogging platform it helps if you can plan your site structure into the concepts of posts (content that’ll be chronologically organized) and pages (static content).
Wordpress also won’t get you visitors to your site, but being a photographer you should be great at storytelling and capturing minds anyway 
Other takes
Still not sure? Here are some links that might help you decide if Wordpress is for you.
- Self hosted Wordpress vs Wordpress.com – maketecheasier.com explains some key concepts of Wordpress and does a quick comparison between the self hosted version and Wordpress.com.
- 10 Weblog engines reviewed – a good comparison by Smashing Magazine that can point you in other directions if you find Wordpress isn’t for you.
- 10 things you can do with Wordpress – WPcandy.com shows potential uses for Wordpress. Not all of these are photo related, but they give you a good idea of things Wordpress can do with a bit of development.
