Choosing A Web-Hosting Service - Professional Photography -
Professional Photography » Choosing A Web-Hosting Service
Choosing A Web-Hosting Service

By Jon Canfield 

Back in June, fellow blogger Wayne Cosshall had a great post on Getting Your Web Presence Right. I thought I’d expand on that a bit and focus on what to look for in a web-hosting service.

There are any number of hosting services available, with prices ranging from free to hundreds of dollars a month. Of course the prices are all based on the features you receive and the amount of support you get. As is often the way with the world, you tend to get what you pay for. Basing any business on a “free” service is usually a very expensive proposition in the long run, whether it’s an issue with reliability, bandwidth, having to deal with banner ads, or a number of possible issues. Nothing turns away customers faster than a bad first impression, so I strongly recommend shopping around and choosing a service that will guarantee you the type of support your business needs.

This doesn’t mean you need to spend a fortune though. For example, I’ve used (and have heard from others who use), bluehost.com. Depending on your needs, you can get started for as little as $7.00 a month, and a number of different features will let you grow your online presence as you need to, with features such as shopping carts, discussion forums, etc.

One area photographers must pay special attention to is the limit on data transfer and storage. This can often involve a hidden expense and it’s easy to hit the lower limits when photo collections are involved. You’ll also want to be sure that photo galleries are possible, whether you create your own in Aperture or Lightroom, or you prefer to use something like Gallery or Coppermine.The other alternative, and a very good one if you don’t want to do the design work or you need an immediate web presence, is one of the photography-oriented hosting services such as Live Books. These services will give you a professional site with a minimum amount of decision making on your part, but you’ll pay for the privilege ($800 and up for setup, $90 per year for hosting). But with our schedules that’s often much less expensive than the time it would take away from our photography to set up a website from scratch.

It’s almost impossible for a business to survive in today’s world without a website. By doing just a bit of research ahead of time, you can make sure that whatever path you take can grow with you and give you the professional look you need
Posted 09-19-2008 2:01 PM by Eileen Fritsch
Filed under: ,
Powered by Community Server (Non-Commercial Edition), by Telligent Systems