I am pretty useless with computers really, but I need to set up a website to do several things -

1- it must look professional and display a variety of work so that people will commission me to take photos of them and horses etc
2 - an area/page that I can upload batches of photos to, so that either the clients have a password to view eg wedding.....or is open to view eg a ball
3 - following on from 2....a way of people choosing and ordering and paying for a photo in whatever size they require.....and preferably that order going off to the printer so they can send direct to my customer
4- there needs to be enough capacity for lots of photos as they are high res.

Alternatively, I could just do a basic website and link to something like www.photoboxgallery.com to display current images for people to view and order etc

Am I being unrealistic? based on my limited knowledge......I don't have much money to pay an expert

Many thanks, Amanda

You haven't asked anything (I don't think) that you can't do with CC Software.
As far as the web site itself, you can start with Visual Site Designer.
Your store would be CC's Shopping Cart Creator - someone else will help you in your decision here.
Web Access Manager for the password sensitive stuff.
And you might try CC's Pix Converter to prep your photos for the web.
There are working free trials of these, so you can try them all, and buy only the ones you need/want.
What's nice about the free trials, is they are fully working, when you purchase the license nothing changes the software's ability or you're test work.
AND, always free, is the use of the CC forums, unlike myself there are many great people on this site everyday all day long - and into the evening (no life outside of CC )
Hope this helps a bit, good luck.

Hiya Amanda,

Although I do agree with rodgw on most points, I would disagree with the Shopping Cart Creator/Designer software being any assistance here. I believe it would be an extreme amount of work to do this for something involving photography since it would be a constantly updating thing which you'd have to have multiple (many multiple) shops for (one for each customer) in order to keep them private to each customer etc. Although it would probably be easier than the following, I think it would end up pretty confusing since most photographers I know keep their photo galleries up for their clients for quite a while so you could end up with hundreds of separate little shops out there and accidentally updating the wrong one etc.

I do think using VSD or the HTML Editor (VSD sounds like your best bet since you say you are not computer savvy) would be a good start. Then I would suggest using the Website Access Manage same as rodgw does, but I would suggest you upload all the pics to a specific folder for each customer and then protect each of those folders with specific unique ID/PW combos for each one.

Then I would suggest you use the CoffeeCup Photo Gallery to arrange each of the folder's images so that your clients can look at them at a reasonable setup (do watermark them so they are not as easily copied as they would otherwise be). With the WAM program protecting the site from outsiders, you have control over all accounts and can send that information to your client via email quite easily.

From here it's just a matter of an email to you on which photos they want in what sizes. This could be done pretty nicely using the Form Builder software should you want it to be nicely setup. It would be a bit of work as you'd have to either put a checkbox for each photo number they want to order, or you can just put a text box for them to put a list of the numbers they want to order etc.

The person that did the photography for my son's wedding a couple years ago setup the entire gallery similar to what I mention above, and then we just sent an email with a list of all the photo numbers (each photo had a unique number assigned with a prefix of the event name). Then she would bill each person that ordered by using PayPal. She may have had other payment options also, that I'm not sure about since she gave me mind free so I didn't see the payment page, just know she used PayPal for sure.

It will be a bit of work no matter how you do it, but..... One thing that's nice that you can do with VSD is you can create your main site setup, create the base for each of the client site pages and then use that same base page for each client so you don't have to constantly redo it all for each client, just replace the photos and change the specifics for the names and occasions. Keep it simple as much as you can, as a site like this is going to require a lot of maintenance no matter how you do it.

As far as the photos being available to purchase I would recommend Piwigo I have this setup on several sites to share photos and I just started setting up this site to sell photos that I get of the other teams that my sons play against in soccer. It has a cart plugin and the uploader can put the protection text across the pics. It also has the ability to have password and usernames for login.

You can pay monthly for an on line cart or buy your own. I have installed this photo cart for a friend. It works well and you can customize the look using built-in CSS fields to change colors. And above all, it looks professional..

http://picturespro.com/i/photo_cart/

I have looked at a lot of ways of having photos for sale online. We chose pictures pro photo cart and are very happy with it. I had nothing to do with the installation of that part of our site at work. A totally inexperienced (web wise) photographer did 95% of the work himself with only the occasional bit of help. We don't use cc products for our business site ( not my choice) but I would have no problem recommending cc products for the rest of the site.

You guys are brilliant! Just checked in with my computer.....Thank you all so much for your advice and opinions.......will have to make some decisions after research of your suggestions after the weekend as I am out tonight and need it sooner rather than later. Awesome community, really appreciate your time. Amanda

this i made for a friend using cc VSD , cc flash firestarter, cc webformbuilder, cc photogallery

http://www.sarahphotographer.co.uk/

it might give you some idea of what is possible

With the site you made for your friend, sarahphotographer.co.uk, can she then take over and upload her client's photos herself -- i.e., can she manage the photography content herself? If so, how did you do this? I am creating a website for a photographer and am trying to figure out the best way to go about it because she is going to have to be able to upload client photos and give them the ability to see their photos and order. Some of them are going to want their photo albums password protected.

You cant see any clients photo's on Sarah's site they are all samples and examples.

When Sarah uploads a clients photos they are uploaded as though they are a separate website, ie sarahphotographer.co.uk/client1

sarahphotographer.co.uk/client2

or sarahphotographer.co.uk/clientsname

each site is protected with CC WAM (web access manager) so they are password protected

And there is a separate page on Sarah's site only clients have access to with the links to each website.

So clients can give their personal password to their personal friends and family so they also can view their pictures.

Main reason i did it that way was for speed of uploading, and preventing risck of over writing