Portfolio Websites — Build or Buy? - a podcast by This Week in Photo

In this episode, I chat with web designer Alex Vita. We talk about web design and website galleries -  as they apply to photographers.







Connect with Alex: http://www.foregroundweb.comThis Week in Photo: http://www.thisweekinphoto.comFree Elementor Course: Building a Portfolio Website







Transcript:







Hey, welcome back to another episode. This is Frederick Van Johnson. Today. We're going to be talking with Alex Vita about galleries, in particular, and websites for photographers. And what are some best-practices for displaying work online and just having everything Bulletproof?







Should you go with a roll your own solution, like WordPress and install, awesome plugins into it, or should you just, pay a subscription fee to a Squarespace or someone like that and have it all managed by third-parties in the cloud here to demystify all that is Alex Vita.







©Alex Vita







Alex is a Romania-based web designer who knows pretty much everything there is to know about web design and photography, as it applies to websites and galleries. And we're going to pick his brain today.







Alex, welcome to the show, man. How are you doing?







Alex: Hi. Frederick nice to meet you. Happy to be here.







Frederick: Nice to meet you too. Are you ready for this? I got a ton of questions for you.







Alex: I'm ready. Go ahead. I'm an open book.







Frederick: Cool. All right, let's start with chapter one of that open book. who is Alex Vita? How did you get started in all this? And how did you start building your niche in web design and gallery design for photographers?







Alex: I started as an amateur photographer myself. I had a photo studio, I shot a few weddings, a few portraits sold some stock images. So that's how I got introduced to the field of photography. But I have a degree in computer science and I started building websites for a few photographers and that grew over time. And now I'm doing only that I have web design services exclusively for photographers, and I'm enjoying every minute of it and having to do work only with photographers. Over time, I started learning the nuances of the industry. It's a bit different than building generic websites, I think.







Frederick: One of the big questions that come up for a lot of photographers is should I invest my time and effort in learning WordPress and putting it, finding a great premium theme and putting it on there and, owning it all.







Or is it better to go to a Squarespace solution? As a web designer, where do you fall on that? Is it budget based? Is it skillset based or something else?







Alex: I'll try to avoid "it depends". And try to offer some pointers here - it's all a game of compromises. I like WordPress, I think it's the big elephant in the industry, right? It powers a third of the Internet for good reason. And there are dedicated photography platforms out there, which photographers have been using for a long time, the big players, SmugMug, PhotoShelter, and the other ones.







And I feel they are all sensing the heat from WordPress. There's a good level of competition now because WordPress is so powerful. You get a great theme, some plugins and you have good functionality, a great looking, mobile-friendly portfolio. So the decision then comes down to a few factors, right?

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