- 📸 ForegroundWeb Newsletter by Alex Vita
- Posts
- 📸 How bad is the situation? Quotes from pro photogs.
📸 How bad is the situation? Quotes from pro photogs.
Plus 3 quick tips on bespoke website vs templates, email accounts, and GSC properties.
Alex Vita
August 22, 2023 • Estimated reading time: 14 minutes
You're reading the ForegroundWeb Newsletter, all about photography websites. First time reading? Sign up here.
I’ve been writing a lot about the photography industry recently. Time to hear from pro photographers now, both good and bad perspectives.
ON TODAY’S AGENDA:
⚡️ 3 Quick tips: bespoke vs templates, email accounts, GSC properties
🧠 Deep dive: pro photographers on the state of the industry
🔍 SEO: redirecting WP attachment pages to media files
🖥️ Website examples: combining multiple specialties under the same roof
🔗 Links & Resources: are you embracing AI yet?
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
QUICK TIPS
1. Bespoke website design or a well-customized template?
Should you get some sort of template or just install a theme and you're done with it? Or should you invest in a more custom-built bespoke website?
And again, it's a big "it depends". It's a game of compromises.
You're trading flexibility for time and money, right? A custom website is more complex. It's more expensive, but it's more powerful.
Some people can not afford to go with a custom website.
If you do need to build something cheaper and you choose a template or a platform that just builds a website, and you pick and choose a visual template and you install it, at least do some work to try to differentiate it, to make it unique.
Because you might look like a thousand other photographers using the same template.
Put your logo in there, choose your colors, choose different fonts.
Go through the theme settings, through the template settings, and tweak how much you can to stand out from the defaults.
2. Does your website show a personal Gmail or Outlook email address?
That looks a bit unprofessional.
Many hosting providers offer free email service along with your website hosting plan. Alternatively, hire a developer to help you create your new email address on your own domain using Google Workspace (formerly G Suite).
The same principle applies to not having a logo, using free website tools (like WordPress.com instead of a self-hosted WordPress.org site), using default site themes (that thousands of other photographers use without customization).