So you want a website, or dont want to pay a high monthy fee any more.
There are companies out there who will charge you an amazingly high price to build your website, and 9/10 of them will just use a template that cost them £40, but charge you £400. They will charge you to host your website, charge you more for a gallery system, space, and every time you want to change an image or a word charge £80, some will also take a % of your profits.
My first website that I launched in 2005 cost me £3,500 ($5000) and was done by a UK web design company in 12 weeks. My third website cost £200 and was completed in 4 weeks.
This is how.
You first of all need a domain name like www.oneFshop.com and you can buy these at several places like http://www.ukwebhosting.co.uk/. (it is vital that you buy this yourself, if you ask a designer/hoster to buy it they might well buy it in their own name. If they go out of business you may find your domain name put out to general sale) Companies such as UKWebhosting will also sell you web space from £9.99 a YEAR. A number like UKWebhosting also have some very clever on-line website building software that can be used to create some terrific results and are very straight forward to get up and running very quickly, they are also supplied free.
It is also possible for you just to use ULTIMATE to get a gallery up quickly, you just need your domain name with a bit of storage.
Another option that does require a little bit more knowledge is to purchase that $40 template for your self. One of the best is www.TemplateMonster.com. You have a bit of a learning curve but far less than say photoshop or your new camera. But forever more you will be self sufficent, you will never need to pay 1 cent for any website changes.
The website template below cost $19 (about £10) from http://allwebcodesign.com and can easily be changed with just notepad. It is very simple.
Another option is to put your website design and build out to tender. You do NOT need to be a huge company to tender your work out. I have placed several jobs out to tender to programmers and coders from all over the world. I am a regular user of www.getacoder.com have had some excellent work done, at a fraction of the cost (it is completley free to post your project, but i do reccomend that you pay the $25 deposit for a premium placement, it shows coders that you are serious and you do get your $25 back when you accept a bid). It is important to remember two things when you put your work out to tender with a website like getacoder.
1. You must provide an accurate and detailed brief (more the better.) use screengrabs, paint docs and word docs. If you currently have a website but it is hosted with an expensive all inclusive hosting company, then it is easy for you to tender to just copy your current website. In the past I have purchased a template I like from www.TemplateMonster.com, done my best with the template, uploaded, and then placed a project on getacoder for "Design Polish and clean up of code" bids are then entered by website designers from all over the world, and should cost between $200 to $400. You can as well ask for it to be SEO (Search Engine Optimised) extra $150ish.
2. Lay out clear payment terms and goals i.e. 50% paid when seen on their server, errors ammened and 25% paid when loaded on to your server, 25% paid 2 days after upload completed to ensure no bugs.
So you now have a great looking website at a fraction of the set up cost than when supplied by a 3rd party, minimum running costs and I have found with far less hassle. All you need to do now is add ULTIMATE Deluxe Gallery Software and you can start selling your images.
Click picture for demo:
Any comments or question please post and I try my best to answer.
Mark
Please to announce the release of ULTIMATE Free .94. Main changes are the structure of the css file (changes the look of Ultimate)
The support forum has been updated with instruction on how to change the style.css (it is quite easy once you master a few things) as well as a new catergory "Theme Store". If you do create an ULTIMATE theme please add the style.css to the theme store for all to share.
Mark
Should have this ready shortly, and instruction on how to create your own themes.
Like many, css is not one of my strong points, infact I know next to nothing. But over the last few hours have made three very different themes. The colours can easily be found at site like
http://www.december.com/html/spec/color0.html
You just need to open up the style.css in notepad find the correct colour from the above link and then find & replace (ctrl + H) in the notepad.
Is a very common request for Ultimate Free is to choose different colours to match your own websites. Hope to release something very soon so that you can easily match Ultimate, to the look of your website. Mark
Getting a few enquiries on "What's the Catch?" Please find below the only catch on oneFshop and ULTIMATE free gallery image software
:0)
Mark
