Professional Photography Themes: Advice Desperately Needed!

  • Hi guys,

    We’re looking to set up a website for a professional photography business. We’ve spent scores of hours the last few weeks looking into every theme we could find online, both recommended and not recommended. But as is sometimes the way, the more we find out, the less we know. However, we are very clear about what we want.

    Therefore, I was hoping for some advice from you guys. Particularly, which themes do you think we should go for? Any and all advice would be massively appreciated; I’m losing my mind now, to be honest, and have long since lost objectivity! Another set of outlooks on the matter would help us immensely.

    Things we are looking for in our website…

    1. We want to use www.remarpro.com. I’ve got blogs at wordpress.com, so I’ve known about WP.org for a while. It’s fantastic and I am sure it is the best bet for us. Therefore, we want to base our website on it (although we are happy to have the website hosted elsewhere if the themes included in WP.org aren’t for us).

    2. We like the look of two websites in particular.

    The homepage of https://www.danimantis.com is great. We like the parallax thing and how it has been done there.

    We also love the look of https://www.chikophotography.com ‘s homepage because the animated grid is only 2 x 2 and thus enables visitors to see plenty of images but fairly large.

    We’re looking for a clear and easy-to-browse website that has a few images on the front page to show off a bit of variety and a menu somewhere which easily links to other stuff (see danimantis.com and chikophotography,com for good examples of what we would like).

    3. We want to have private galleries which are password protected for particular clients. We give the client the password, they type it in, and they have access to the gallery in question.

    4. We would like a shop function.

    * So clients can use the private galleries function and order photos from there.
    * So general visitors can look at publicly displayed / non-password protected photos, which are for sale in the store, and buy those.

    5. We are happy to use plug-ins or whatever is required if adding to a theme is needed.

    6. We are not techy at all, so things have to be straightforward for us to do.

    7. We want to be able to add, change, upload, alter images (etc) on the websites ourselves, regularly, and with the minimum of fuss.

    8. We want the website to display properly and be functional whether visitors come via a mobile phone, a PC, an iPad etc.

    9. We don’t want the website to be too demanding to open up for visitors. I think it’s called “lazy option compatible” or something.

    10. We want to put our logo on the homepage in a not-hidden / sort of obvious way.

    11. Synching / direct transferal from LightRoom would be a big plus.

    12. The website shouldn’t be prone to crashing for any reason.

    13. Ideally, the theme will have decent tech support and stability behind and underlying it.

    14. We’re ideally looking for a dark skinned theme, potentially with a touch of vintage or old class to it; but we could settle for modernish dark.

    15. The theme shouldn’t force us into linking to Instagram or whatever.

    Well, I really hope you guys can help us. As I say, we’ve done absurd amounts of research including long emails to theme makers. Yet I’m less clear than ever on which theme is for us. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Kind regards,

    Bryan

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Hi there!

    It can be very confusing when trying to choose a theme ?? Here’s some ideas for you that I hope will help you in your choice…

    1. www.remarpro.com

    Just wanted to make sure you know that www.remarpro.com doesn’t actually provide hosting, only the software. To set up it’s usually just a one-click install with a company like Bluehost.

    No matter where you host your website you will have access to all the free WordPress theme’s hosted in the repository and all other third-party premium themes.

    2.

    Danimantis.com -> This one doesn’t appear to be a WordPress site but I see what you mean about the Parallax.

    Many themes offer this feature but even if yours doesn’t you can add this functionality by installing a Parallax plugin.

    Chiko Photography -> Also doesn’t appear to be a WordPress site. I really like the grid-slider effect. You could also achieve this independently by using a slider plugin.

    3. Private Galleries

    You can actually do this quite easily in WordPress as each page has visibility options. If set to ‘password protected’ the page content will be hidden unless you enter your password. You’d simply add your client’s gallery to a page and give them a password so only they can view the images.

    4. Shop Function

    One of the most popular e-commerce platforms for WordPress is called WooCommerce . It’s very flexible and fairly straightforward to implement.

    5. Syncing with Lightroom

    There is a plugin called WP/LR Sync that works quite well.

    Also you might want to take a look at some of the gallery plugins available – NextGen is very popular and extensible.

    As for what theme to choose, well that is always a tricky question to answer! ??

    Personally I favor very simple themes that can easily be adapted for any purpose. For most of my projects I use the Responsive Theme – but not because it looks particularly great but because it’s really easy for me to adapt and customize.

    With that in mind I always suggest that you don’t pick a theme because it ‘looks’ how you want. Pick a theme that has a at least..

    1) Awesome support. You’ll more than likely need help from the theme developer and having access to good documentation and support forum is a must. Also, as WordPress updates so to should your theme. If the developer doesn’t update the theme in a timely manner this can cause you a lot of problems.

    2) Flexibility and Power – being able to create your own page layouts and designs can really help you speed up the development of your site. Themes that include pre-made layouts & page-builders are great if your not comfortable with code.

    3. Integrations – For example, if you were to use WooCommerce you’d need a theme that was woo-commerce compatible (so all of the pages created by that plugin fit in line with the theme styles). Without this it can be a real pain to get things working and looking properly.

    From what you’ve said I think maybe the closet theme to what you are looking for (at least within the WordPress repository) is the x2 theme.

    It comes with two color schemes (light and dark) and theme options that make customization quite simple. Included in the theme is FluxSlider which allows you to display image slideshows on posts and page or even portfolio style. There are several homepage layouts to choose from and it works very well with all of the major web browsers. It also supports WooCommerce for the shop functionality.

    There are of course many other themes to consider. There is a great list complied here by ColorLib that might be helpful for you.

    And one last suggestion – if you come across a website that looks simliar to what you are trying to achieve check out this useful tool :

    https://www.wpthemedetector.com/

    It will even tell you what plugins are installed! ??

    Anyways. I hope that helps a bit and good luck with your new site!

    Cheers,

    Luke the Daft Duke

    Thread Starter BAJParry

    (@bajparry)

    Hi Luke,

    Yours is literally the most helpful response I’ve had from anyone so far in weeks of doing this for hours every day! Thank you so much for taking the time to properly address my questions. ??

    1. I knew that about the hosting, no worries. ?? When you say third party, could we then, for example, use the following theme with wordpress with no issue (and given our other specifications)? https://themes.themegoods2.com/photography/demo2/home/home-15-animated-grid/

    2. I think we’re going to go for the chikophotography style as it is simpler, cleaner, and more manageable.

    His website was set up with SmugMug. I’ve tried doing it, and it is unbelievably hard for my tiny brain to use. I’ve found wordpress(.com) themes to be on my level of complexity. SmugMug is doing my head in; I am so frustrated with it.

    Are there any particular plug-ins that you know of, or people I should contact, that would give the same effect a chikophotography’s homepage? We just need a bit of additional stuff compared to him: password protected galleries, shop facility, and other photographer goodness, and dark/black skinned.

    It’s so frustrating to have something so clear in mind, know it isn’t that technically arduous, but not be able to do it because I don’t know coding.

    OTHER
    I’m going to keep your other advice and tips in mind. You have been seriously helpful. I will plod on until this gets done.

    Kindest possible regards with extra thanks on top,

    Bryan ??

    Thanks Bryan, your welcome.

    1. I’m hesitant to say ‘no-issues’ because I’m not familiar with the theme developer but if it’s a WordPress theme it’s ready to be installed on any www.remarpro.com site.

    2. I’m not aware of any plugins that will give you that affect straight of the box but you could definitely achieve that with a little bit of tweaking. I’m a big fan of Master Slider at the moment – it definitely capable of producing that effect.

    Don’t hesitate to ask for help on the forums when you get stuck…we’ve all been there at some point:-) . Everone’s quite willing to help you out with code snippets, advice, etc. should you need it.

    Good luck and post us a link when your up and running! ??

    Thread Starter BAJParry

    (@bajparry)

    Hi Luke,

    1. It says it is a WordPress theme. But the guy’s English is atrocious and he says it is physically impossible to make his grid smaller, e.g., 2×2 or 3×2, without all images becoming warped. That seems odd to me…

    2. I’ll check out Master Slider right away!

    I really appreciate your help and moral support! Having the website set up as we would like seems to be a distant fantasy right now. But if I can get through this, I would love to post a link and show what you have helped create.

    My thanks again.

    Kind regards,

    Bryan

    Hi Bryan,

    Yeah, that does seem a bit odd and ideally you want someone you can communicate with easily.

    I made a quick demo of what could be done with master slider.

    It’s pretty close to the effect on the Chiko site.

    Take a look here.

    Cheers,

    Luke

    Thread Starter BAJParry

    (@bajparry)

    Hi Luke,

    That’s great. Pretty close, I’ve got to say. How involved was the process of doing that? And how involved would it be for a code-dummy like me?

    Kind regards,

    Bryan

    Hi Bryan,

    It took me only 10 minutes and with step-by-step instructions I’m sure it wouldn’t take you much longer.

    After you set you slides up in Masterslider there are just a few lines of code to add to your page template.

    The actual steps though would depend on what theme your using.

    I hope that helps ??

    Cheers,

    Luke

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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