A Wordpress based approach to building a new website?

Tim Gray · Oct 23, 2010

If you are on OS X, Transmit is a really nice FTP/SFTP application, but it costs money. Cyberduck is almost as nice and is free. Either one should let you drag and drop the bulk of your site onto the remote server. You'll obviously need to make sure mysql is setup on the remote server and you might need to edit the wp-config.php file (or whatever its called) to make sure paths and things are set up correctly for the remote server.

Paul Sorensen · Oct 23, 2010

Tom Kershaw said:
Tim,

Do you have any advice in terms of uploading a locally hosted Wordpress site to a remote server (linux based in my case)?

Tom

It can be very easy if you are creating a custom theme and the actual content will be loaded directly on the server, which would be the most common way to handle a Wordpress site. If that is the case, do a fresh install of Wordpress on the remote server and then move the custom theme folder from your locally hosted site to the remote site. (It lives in wp-content/themes inside of your wordpress directory) Once it is there, you can change the theme to your theme and start adding content.

I am not too good at MySQL and basic server maintenance, so uploading the database to the remote server and making sure that the everything is named properly and all the settings are correct is more than I am comfortable with. I would personally rather load the content to the remote server directly once the site is set up.

By the way, I was about to recommend MAMP to you and then I read your post about having discovered it. I totally love MAMP, again since I am not a Unix head, it is just wonderful to have it all ready to go like that.

Paul Sorensen · Oct 23, 2010

daltonrooney said:
Howdy,
I am the author of the Portfolio theme linked to earlier in this thread. As you can see, a WordPress site does not have to look like a blog!

I also released the slideshow functionality that powers that theme as a free plugin, which you can find elsewhere on the site. I've seen some great uses of this code, such as here: Dead Link Removed. Tracy used a theme called Headway, along with my plugin, to make a pretty amazing portfolio.

I have set up a few dozen photographers on WP now, and so far everyone has loved it. Best of luck!

Dalton

I just purchased your theme to play around with and I probably will end up using it on my site in some form. I want to thank you for making the plugin available and making the theme so absurdly cheap. I hope you are making a little money on it because it really looks slick.

clay · Oct 23, 2010

Just my 2 cents for anyone who has been following this thread and scratching their heads about all the geeky unix-head stuff - Don't get scared away. This is sort of inside baseball stuff that you really don't have to know. Wordpress is a fantastic way to go to get a professional looking site installed very quickly.

After looking at Dalton's theme, my recommendation for somebody who just wants to get a site up and going with minimal cost and headaches is to buy his incredibly priced theme, download the free Wordpress 3.01 and find a good hosting service that will give you mySQL access and just install your site and go. The only truly geeky part you may encounter is setting up the database on the server. Some service providers make it easier than others. But it is so common nowadays, that if you find a provider that gives you any static, just look for another one.

Tom Kershaw · Oct 23, 2010

Paul Sorensen said:
It can be very easy if you are creating a custom theme and the actual content will be loaded directly on the server, which would be the most common way to handle a Wordpress site. If that is the case, do a fresh install of Wordpress on the remote server and then move the custom theme folder from your locally hosted site to the remote site. (It lives in wp-content/themes inside of your wordpress directory) Once it is there, you can change the theme to your theme and start adding content.

I am not too good at MySQL and basic server maintenance, so uploading the database to the remote server and making sure that the everything is named properly and all the settings are correct is more than I am comfortable with. I would personally rather load the content to the remote server directly once the site is set up.

By the way, I was about to recommend MAMP to you and then I read your post about having discovered it. I totally love MAMP, again since I am not a Unix head, it is just wonderful to have it all ready to go like that.

Paul,

I've just visited your site and note the control you've been able to exercise over the design of the site. Do I take it www.paulsorensenphoto.com is built in Wordpress?

Tom

Paul Sorensen · Oct 23, 2010

Tom Kershaw said:
Paul,

I've just visited your site and note the control you've been able to exercise over the design of the site. Do I take it www.paulsorensenphoto.com is built in Wordpress?

Tom

No, actually, this is a commercial template driven site that is on its way out. It is from Portfoliositez.com and I did it to market a short lived attempt to do weddings and portraits for actual money. I am going to remove the link from my footer because it is all non APUG appropriate and not the work that I really wish to share with the world anyway.

If you are looking for a flash driven template site, I really like them, they offer a nice system and good looking templates for a far better price than any of their competition that I could find. Of course, being flash it is iPhone and iPad unfriendly.

Tom Kershaw · Oct 26, 2010

I have a question on how to build a drop down menu which doesn't entirely rely on 'Pages':

See video:

http://www.tomkershaw.com/apug/wordpress_thesis_ddmenu_question.mov (with audio)

Tom

Andrew Moxom · Oct 26, 2010

That would be me I think Ike??? I too like the Wordpress format very much. Dalton's theme is really simple to work with.

deisenlord said:
Tom,
Kerik's site is using Thesis.

Dalton,
I like your theme as well, very clean. I turned a friend onto it who's using it.

Kerik · Oct 26, 2010

I am using Thesis, too.

David Brown · Oct 26, 2010

clay said:
Just my 2 cents for anyone who has been following this thread and scratching their heads about all the geeky unix-head stuff - Don't get scared away. This is sort of inside baseball stuff that you really don't have to know. Wordpress is a fantastic way to go to get a professional looking site installed very quickly.

Thanks, Clay - I (and, no doubt, many others) feel better.

waynecrider · Oct 29, 2010

Well thanks to all for the insights. I am now a WordPress.com blog junkie till I host my own site later, and just in dealing with the issues of the free blog I find I am sitting and reading a little too much and have many questions. In searching the available themes's while checking this all out, I found some for sale that were quite slick if you wish to buy one and serve up your own PhotoBlog.
Since many of us are probably invested in various paths to show our work, WordPress being just one, I wonder if a separate forum category would be allowed here for conversations, or does that exceed the scope of the site?
I have been a member for a long time, but the limited focal point here prevents me from subscribing when my photo endeavors entail encompassing the whole equipment genre so to say. But I do enjoy the company and the conversations here and I am an avid film supporter.
Perhaps DPUG when online will prove the successor for me and give me reason to subscribe.

Tim Gray · Oct 29, 2010

Wayne - as long as you shoot some film there are plenty of worthwhile discussions to be had here. While most of us do at least some wet printing, many of us finish off with scanners and/or shoot digital.

Michael W · Oct 29, 2010

Does anyone know of a wordpress website theme that allows horizontal scrolling display of images? I think I'd prefer that to the standard indexhibit style page number click throughs. I've been searching and looking at the wordpress themes page but can't find anything.

Tom Kershaw · Oct 29, 2010

Michael,

I think I saw something along those lines while looking through the options. I'll try and remember.

Tom

waynecrider · Oct 30, 2010

Michael W said:
Does anyone know of a wordpress website theme that allows horizontal scrolling display of images? I think I'd prefer that to the standard indexhibit style page number click throughs. I've been searching and looking at the wordpress themes page but can't find anything.

If your setting up a free blog at WordPress there are two I found. Just do a theme search with "photo" as the search term. There is a third that I think had horizontal scrolling and I found it using "photoblog" as a search term.
If your looking for a theme for a site that you are serving up, I ran across a couple thru this thread that I researched, neither free.

1. http://thethemefoundry.com/
2. http://www.prophotoblogs.com/examples/

Paul Sorensen · Nov 5, 2010

Well, I finally got my new site mostly together. I am still scanning and loading work onto the site, right now it is a little sparse. I built it using the Portfolio theme discussed in this thread previously, with significant changes to the CSS myself to get something that felt a little more custom. I can't recommend Portfolio highly enough for anyone who is considering doing a WordPress based site. http://daltonrooney.com/portfolio/

One more item of interest, I found out that you can get free online backup of WordPress sites (up to 2 GB) from iDrive. If you have a really massive WordPress site and need more space, it is available too. My site came to just a few megabytes. They have a plugin for Wordpress that automates the backup process to the iDrive servers. It seems far easier than most of the other options I have come across, so I thought I would pass it along.

The site is at http://www.paulsorensenphoto.com. Thanks for the info everyone, this was a very helpful thread and got me going on the site finally.

Tom Kershaw · Jan 2, 2011

UPDATE

Returning to this topic, in terms of photo galleries; aside from Clay Harmon's approach, has anyone used Slideshow Pro Director, possibly integrated with Wordpress and 'Thesis'?

Tom

Tom Kershaw · Feb 9, 2011

Markster · Feb 9, 2011

I suppose that's the way most porfolios go these days, and visually some of them DO look very nice. However, I'm a bit annoyed at some pages that over-do flash, or scripting, to the point where the page loads and for 10 seconds you can't scroll or click because it's not done "running" things behind the scenes.

I think you can do a lot of nice things (exercise the ol'e HTML magic, if you will) with basic tables, and some rudimentary javascripting.

Personally speaking, I wonder "Why does that page look and feel like a blog? Is it a blog? Shouldn't it be a portfolio" when I view some of them. I say if it's going to look, feel, and act like a blog, just create a blog. Many people use those to a great degree of success. If you're going to make it a webpage (i.e. not a blog) then stay away from those elements of a blog that give the wrong feel.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm totally supportive of the opinions posted above me, I'm simply adding my 2 cents as well. The question I had was: Why do you need a MySql database? The answer I inferred was "to automatically update new posted content on a regular basis" and my response was "but... isn't that a blog?"

I know, I know.. I'm not one to speak. I don't even have a photography webpage, and I'm not up on the latest marketing trends and so forth. My HTML has been more recreational over the past 13 years or so, but I have been active enough to pick up on a few things.

Ian Leake · Feb 9, 2011

Markster said:
The question I had was: Why do you need a MySql database? The answer I inferred was "to automatically update new posted content on a regular basis" and my response was "but... isn't that a blog?"

I have database because of two reasons:

1) There's a blog on my site
2) once all the data about pictures is in a database it becomes much easier to use them on different web pages. If, for example, you want a "picture of the day" on your home page then you need a database of some sort

It was actually this second reason that persuaded me to add a database, and it hugely reduced my maintenance workload. The blog is relatively new.

Markster · Feb 9, 2011

Forgive my ignorance, as I don't run a blog myself (haven't in many a year) but isn't that [the random picture] something you might find in a blog setup? I mean to say isn't that a tool or plugin they use? Or is it not very common? Just curious.

Paul Sorensen · Feb 9, 2011

Markster said:
Forgive my ignorance, as I don't run a blog myself (haven't in many a year) but isn't that [the random picture] something you might find in a blog setup? I mean to say isn't that a tool or plugin they use? Or is it not very common? Just curious.

And the common blogging platforms are MySQL database driven.

I suspect that a random image plugin would be available for Wordpress, probably for free, but that does not change anything in regards to having a database.

Wordpress is a wonderful platform not only for blogs but for general sites as well. It makes the updating process much easier and makes adding pages also a breeze. Don't get lost in the fact that it is primarily a blog platform, it is much more useful than that.

Markster said:
I think you can do a lot of nice things (exercise the ol'e HTML magic, if you will) with basic tables, and some rudimentary javascripting.

Certainly you can, however if you are still using tables to lay out your pages, I strongly suggest learning CSS, it is far more flexible, not that hard at all, and is the method supported by standards going forward. CSS is designed for page layout and formatting, using tables is a hack that folks figured out since HTML was originally developed without much in the way of formatting tools.

Markster · Feb 9, 2011

Maybe it's a throwback to how I learned HTML, but I always considered CSS to just be the eye candy. I always mentally pictured the tables underneath it. So, yes, I guess when I say "tables" I'm including CSS.

Sorry for the confusion, and I hope I didn't hurt any creative development with my "negative waves"

Tom Kershaw · Mar 17, 2011

Hello Greg,

Just spotted this update to the thread. I've started to put something together using Slideshow Pro director and Wordpress (Thesis). The integration of SSPD and Wordpress was rather confusing as the documentation points in the wrong direction; i.e. one doesn't use the SSPD Wordpress plug-in, simply a more standard embed within the HTML.

Tom

ME Super · May 18, 2011

Tables vs. CSS

I do web site development for a living for a state university. One of the things we are big on is accessibility for disabled people, especially for blind/low vision users. Many of these folks have screen readers such as JAWS (Job Access With Speech) that read the screen to them. When JAWS encounters a table with 12 rows and 4 columns, it will literally say to the user "Table has 12 rows and 4 columns" and then start reading the table. If you're using CSS for layout, JAWS won't say that to the user.

Tables are okay for presenting tabular data, since that is what they are intended for. But for layout, you should really use CSS. It is very powerful and not terribly difficult to use.

ME Super

A Wordpress based approach to building a new website?

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