WordPress as Art Portfolio

Wow, that is VERY nice! I personally think it’s pretty busy, but that’s because I prefer simplicity.

Would you mind sharing how you accomplished the thumbnail grid in particular? I’m a photographer currently building my site on WP, and the biggest hurdle at the moment is how to achieve a thumbnail grid of images for my gallery. I want a grid where each thumbnail links to the respective image’s page, as the idea is that each post or page is a photograph.

Nicely designed site. Keep it up!

@minz – thank you!!

@danf89
thank you as well!! Yeah, I’d have to agree, it is a little bit on the busy side. I just couldn’t fit everything in there that I wanted! Perhaps in the next go around I can simplify things. I’m also learning how to use whitespace to my advantage…it can really help make things look less cluttered.

As for the thumbnail grid, sure I can share that! I pretty much just used Yet Another Photoblog plugin. That does exactly what you’re wanting. It turns each post into a photograph. Which is nice because then people can comment, leave trackbacks, etc, on that one particular image.

The plugin lets you do a “mosaic” page, which just lists out your post/images/photos. You can set it up to be grid-style or anything you want. It does take a little bit of coding but it’s easy. I copied code straight from the forums for it.

If you end up using the plugin and need help feel free to contact me!

very nice! but i noticed some of the images are NOT watermarked, you might want to fix that before you start seeing them everywhere

btw, your code doesn’t validate whatsoever. both css and xhtml throw errors. something you should fix before posting those checkmarks in your footer.

@rodgers
All of the large images are watermarked even if you can’t see it (and I can’t really on some of the pictures). I should definitely make it more conspicuous. None of the thumbnails are watermarked though – would you recommend watermarking them as well?

@jcross
Eek, you’re right. Need to fix that…

Good stuff! Are you the only artist on the site? It seems like a number of the images are of different styles.

Also – I would offer up NextGen Gallery as an alternative if anyone finds YAP to not be what they’re looking for. I use it for my own site. That’s not a knock on YAP – I just present it as an alternative in case…

Anyway – for constructive criticism onisemus, I do enjoy the site, but I would have to agree with DanF89 on the whole ‘busy’ thing. I know that you’re trying to make money on advertizing, but perhaps concentrating it in one area would help with this? Not sure really sure if/how well that would work (and I’ve never managed to do anything like that myself, so take this with a grain of salt). I just think that the ads are so ‘flashy’ that they detract from your focus on the art.

We should compare notes sometime as we have a similar focus for our sites.

I ended up customizing WP specifically for my application. The biggest advantage in doing so is that I don’t/won’t have to deal with plugin incompatibilities when WP is updated. I tried NextGEN, but I was unable to dynamically integrate Paypal into the popup effects. So for now it’s going to be a straight up WP install with a custom built and highly customized theme.

@mrlich
Yep I’m the only artist on the site. Over time (and depending on mood), by style can be quite different, but if you look closely enough, you’ll notice they all are kinda similar. Realism with a touch of comic book in it.

NextGen Gallery is another good plugin. I actually have that on my gallery page. I use it to show a bunch of related images, since for those images I don’t care if they have an individual page or not.

Good point about the ads though. I’ll think about getting rid of those – I hardly make any money on them anyways. I took out the “foldup” corner ad already – perhaps i’ll just take the rest too, we’ll see.

But we should compare notes! I can’t a way to message you or see your site through WordPress…but when get a minute, head over to my site on the contact page and send me a message!

@danf89
Awesome, good work. The only downside though to customizing WP is when WP is updated, it’s not the plugin developers who need to update their code, it’s you. Which is great if you have the time.

Mine’s a bit of an amalgam like yours. I’m using WP, YAPB, and a highly customized theme to get the look I want.