Quote from: djpadavona on March 05, 2013, 11:39

Quote from: fotomelange on March 05, 2013, 09:14

I know nothing about css and html.  I am thinking that i should just rent their product instead of buying the software.  may work out cheaper since i do not have to worry about fixing stuff and paying people to do so. 

In that case, why not go with Photoshelter instead? You can pay by the month, and you don't need to know web programming or mysql.

I second Photoshelter.  From what I know now, I would have saved money if I had gone this route.  Another advantage to Photoshelter is that they are searchable through Picturengine, unlike Ktools.

Quote from: asmai on February 22, 2013, 09:04

Thanks for your reply, guys. I had a look at photodeck, it looks pretty much similar to photoshelter, right?. Both provide you with hosting and you dont need any coding to set it up, except that photodeck dont charge the transaction fee. But i have heard that in term of SEO photoshelter is better? Please correct me if i am wrong.

@Pinocchio: How long did it take you to set it up (i mean setting up all the features, not counting the time uploading and keywording your port) and do you think i could do it myself without help if i dont know any programming language? And yes the zoom feature would be great. Does it update automaticcaly at photoshelter? or you have to do it manually? (i saw the nightmare of updating with Ktools and for me that is a big no no)

First of all, I recommend you keyword your images and add every scrap of metadata you need before you upload them anywhere; keep these as your master archive, and keep them in a safe place/s.

There are a number of steps to setting up a PS web site; this is from memory, and may not be complete or totally accurate.
1.  After signing up, you need to get a domain name.  PS will help with this a little, but mostly you'll work with the hosting company you choose.
2.  Choose a template - trivial, and I believe you can change your mind as often as you like, the new template can display images already uploaded, no need to upload again.
3.  You can set up a PS web site in a couple of hours, and do not need any programming skills of any kind.  The bulk of your time should be spent formulating a gallery and collection structure to organize your images into galleries/collections, and crafting the various page, gallery/collection and other descriptions.  This part of the preparation is probably best done on paper or a whiteboard before you do any uploading.  Setting up your web site is a matter of filling descriptive text into boxes - no technical skill required; you will need a) the descriptive text for pages, galleries, collections and so on, and b) the metadata in your images which PS will automatically extract and populate into the relevant text boxes for you to refine if necessary.  You can test drive your web site after every change, just keep filling in text until you are happy.  I assume you have looked at a number of photographer's web sites, and have a good idea of what will work for you.
4.  PS has an SEO grader which seems to be very good; it identifies any relevant input that you've left blank.
5.  However, getting the most out of your web site requires more than you've done to this point.  You need to feed the search engines (Google) by providing some additional information.  To do this, you will need some webmaster skills, and this is likely the most technical step in the whole process.  I've heard tell that PS will not/cannot help you with the Webmaster stuff, not sure if that's true, so you might ask.  You can use Google Webmaster Tools (free, just google it).  Based on what I've read in the PS forums, this step is very important; there are photographers who reported large changes in google rank before and after doing the webmaster bit.

Regards