[justinr]

Thanks for all the replies. I think I decided to just stick with my wordpress blog for now. I was hoping to find a great, easy to use template though and am having a hard time finding one and/or figuring out how to use one.

Anyone know of a good place to get templates. I do'nt mind spending a little money on one, as long as it's easy to use.

To be honest I looked at various template based software offerings and simply found it easier to learn to use a WSIWYG editor like MS Expression Web. If you can use a spreadsheet then using tables with a bit of CSS thrown in should come fairly naturally. Alas though you will be told that basing a site on tables is sooo yesterday, don't believe a word of it as such comments are usually based on self interest as they make website production available to anyone. For a glimpse of what is involved there is a free download called Seamonkey which is like a very crude version of Expression.

Having put a site together you will need a host with an easy to use control panel which loads the files on to the server for you. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) can be as quick, if not quicker at times but a good control panel is more forgiving than such programmes eg, Filezilla, because you need to load files and folders one by one and it's therefore easier to keep track of what's happening.

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Last edited by justinr; 04-13-2010 at 12:48 PM.

[saien]

Thanks for all the replies. I think I decided to just stick with my wordpress blog for now. I was hoping to find a great, easy to use template though and am having a hard time finding one and/or figuring out how to use one.

Anyone know of a good place to get templates. I do'nt mind spending a little money on one, as long as it's easy to use.

There are quite a lot of sites that offer premade templates, one of my favourites is Premium Wordpress Themes | Elegant Themes

[Allison]

I used BluDomain for my template. The templates are very easy to use and very customizable. You can add or remove as many galleries as you would like, a contact page, info page, etc. They have great templates for $50 and $100 and they also do the hosting for $100 a year. You can even purchase your domain through them, making it insanely easy to set up your website. Plus, even though the sites use flash, they have splash pages and search engine optimization so you will appear in google results... my google analytics reports lets me see exactly what people used in a search to end up on my site. you can see my webpage here.

PM me if you have any questions.

[ajtour]

Squarespace is wonderful. Super intuitive. The photo gallery options are plentiful and allow you to tinker quite a bit. Combine your website and blog into one neat, tidy site, then purchase a domain through GoDaddy and map it to Squarespace so that you'll have a personal .com address. If you need e-mail, GoDaddy offers that as well for a reasonable charge.

I use a Zenfolio site for proofing and backup storage, but Squarespace is the "public face" of my business.

Visit my Squarespace site to see a live example.

Fourteen day free trial with no credit card required.

The cost is usually around $12 per month for the plan which permits domain mapping.

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Last edited by ajtour; 04-27-2010 at 06:26 PM.

[mtroute]

Any web editor made by Microsoft is by definition terrible (from a code perspective) I use Dreamweaver my self with SlideShow Pro and Director. But things like iWeb (if your on a Mac) or Xara for windows make web design so simple a cave man can do it.

This site took all of 20 mins to put together: Troutetwins.com