Having bought a domain name, I now want to create my own website. Has anyone got any tips, or advice? For example:

1)  There are free templates available on the web. Are they worthwhile? Can anyone point to any good ones?

2)  Or is it better to pay a designer and get a custom-made one?

3) Any guidelines on what designers ask to make a web site?

4) Any anything else you should watch out for in making a website?

All advice gratefully received. I'm a complete 'noob' in this area.

Thanks

There are lots of template sites, just do a search for web site template.  these can be purchased for $50-$100, which is a pretty good deal, as it would take probably at LEAST 20 - 100 hours for you to hack your way through it (if you are not a coder, or have a good deal of knowledge allready).  To go this route you shoudl know at least a bit about programming though, so that you can edit the files and geting things up and going.  I have used this route a few times.

There are also sites like rentacoder.com (i think that is the name of it) where you can tell the people on the site what you are wanting, and then coders bid on the job.  You can get some pretty good deals this way.

If you contacted a coder for the price to do a site, it would probably be pretty expensive.  I inqured about a really fancy flash website, and it would have cost 2000 euro.

- I assume your hoster has php and mysql.
- I have the impression people here confuse between a template and a CMS.
- I use Joomla as CMS now, and for 2-3 years, on several sites. IMHO, it's the best framework around, and it's free (Open Source).
- As a template, I use one of the free templates around for Joomla, no sweat.
- My galleries are hotlinked to my FeaturePics portfolio (where I get the highest price and they have all) so I save on bandwidth.
- This my current Joomla 1.0 site.

- This weekend I started a new site based on Joomla 1.5 with the Rhuk_Milkyway free theme. I just changed the site logo (obviously) an some minor CSS things. The result is here but just have a peak there for the look and feel, since it's far from finished: most content is still empty.
Check this article to see how you can let your site work for you: all photos with the article are linked to a FeaturePics sales page - but you can take any site.
- On the Joomla forums, you can post a request for a coder that can install your menus and articles  for you - but I suggest you learn it yourself. It's not that difficult.

- The main things is that you have a very clear idea about the site map first. If it's simple like HOME - PORTFOLIO - LICENSE - CONTACT - and you have the content ready, it's maximum 1 day, back-and-forth emailing included. If you can't find a Joomla guy for under 50$, just send me a PM.
- And if you don't have a hoster yet, I still rent out 2$/month slots on my Hostgator host.

I've created a lot of websites.  Sometimes I use Dreamweaver, but lately I tend to code the html in a text editor.  It gives me better control over the final look.

I think the bigger and better question here is, can you actually increase your sales through the creation of such a website?  How will you drive traffic to it?  I've tinkered with the idea of putting up a website to drive business toward my portfolios, but honestly I always pull back because I know how hard it is to get yourself a decent place in Google.

I think it's worth doing, especially if you do some writing as well. If all you do is create images, then maybe just promoting your gallery on a microstock site is enough. But a lot of people (such as yourself) do many other things, and a personal website would be a good place to bring all of those things together and pait a complete picture of what you do.

Templates are a good way to go for a quick website. However they still require some code knowledge to configure. You might be able to download a free template, but if you have limited website creation experience, you still might need to hire someone to get it all set up for you.

If I were you, I'd hire someone. If you are on a tight budget, you might find a young designer/college student/guy just starting out to do it on the cheap. If you use a template, you're cutting out any design required. So you would just need to pay them to set up the HTML/CSS bits. I would imagine you could find someone to do it for under $500.

One really good thing websites are good for in microstock is referrals. Most sites have referral programs now, and I've made some money off of those. Mostly at istock actually. Not a ton of money, but it covers my hosting costs each month. Sometimes a little more.

Thanx for the link Helix, maybe I will use that service..

Well I wasn't confused because I didn't know there was such a thing as a CMS. The way I've created websites is to used a template, mainly for the graphics (tabs, etc.) and then coded the front and backend myself. Since the Joomla demo is down, what exactly does it do for you?

As CMS, apart from Joomla, Drupal has been mentioned. There is WordPress too. For a photog, I think Joomla is better than WordPress (but Iofoto for instance uses WP).

What it did for me? Funnel random traffic from all over Google and Flickr/Yahoo to one place and then distribute it back all over my sales sites, with a preference for FeaturePics since they accept all and give me the highest yield. One big collector of traffic is Flickr.

Does it work? Yes... I have a payout again on FP and I noticed that 1/2 of my DT sales are without search terms, so they stem from visual search or direct portfolio entry.
I got about 70,000 matches now on Google, and I'm on rank 1,100,000 at Alexa. There are a lot of prospective buyers around, for instance blogs and small businesses that even don't know about stock. I'm the one that inspired FP to install the free bloggers license of 130px thumbs. Collect that long tail in the market and drive it to your portfolio.

It can make a (small) difference, but if you don't want to put in the effort, ShutterStock alone still gives the bulk of sales.

I plaid around with Coppermine gallery 2 years ago, even wrote mods for it as a contributor. It was a waste of time: you can't replicate one of the big stock sites just for yourself. Also forget direct sales unless your name is Yuri Arcurs.
For now, I see a personal site just like a funnel that funnels traffic in, and redistributes it over my RF agencies, nothing more. I got most of my ideas from Dan Heller's excellent writings about personal business strategy online for individual photogs.

The days of programming a site yourself in Notepad or Dreamweaver are long over. Use a CMS and concentrate on content instead of on form.

What a Content Management System like Joomla does it this. It gives you a front- and back-end for your site without hassles. You just have to (1) put in content (articles, images) and (2) tweak the design: layout, menus. No programming needed, not even HTML.
The look and feel is done by a template, and there are many templates around for free. You can even change template on the fly if you want to change looks: content and site map (menus, articles) stay the same.
I took the advice of Rinder and chose a very simple B&W design, to let the images speak.

This is what I'm currently working on, but it's largely unfinished. Click here (it's safe). It should be accessible since my host Hostgator is up 99.9% of the time.