website questions

[rockfordstone]

not sure if this is the right sub forum for this question but here goes.

i have been running a website off a a friends hosting service to get me started with websites. been doing it about 18 months now. i have been using flickr as a host for my images and then pulling them over for galleries, blogs etc rather than fill his host with my images. I also have a 3rd party selling page with picfair linked to it.

my friend is now looking to scale back and get rid of the hosting element. it also coincides i am coming to the the end of my first "pro" year with flickr and frankly i'm not seeing value for money with them anymore. they seem to have taken stuff away and the reliability on the page is bad.

as i see it i have 3 options.

1 - buy my own host space, transfer my website over and use that to host all my images on. it's wordpress based so there must be a way of selling images digitally through it?
2 - do away with my blog elements and go over to to somewhere purely to host and display my images. I have heard smugmug are good for this, but after my opinons on flickr, is this the right move over?
3 - i use a service like squarespace which will allow me to build a site, host my images, carry on my blog and have a selling service all in one place.

I appreciate all will cost me, but i am trying to work out which is the best option.

i am guessing there are a number of people here who use either one of these 3 options, so i am looking to get an idea of your thoughts, success stories and bad experiences etc.

to give you an idea, this is what my set up is now http://rs7photography.co.uk. i don't have to make a decision right now, but any suggestions would be great. cheers

[JohnH]

Hi

Have a look at Zenfolio. There are a number of levels with various costs per year. You can use their templates to design your own website to your liking and from level 2 upwards there is no limit to the number of photos you can upload. I have used them for a number of years and have no hassle with them. I use their second option which is £50 a year. It's a very simple and easy to use website.

If you want to have a look my web address is on the bottom of this post.

[Hatstand]

For the hosting option, take a look at tsohost.com.

I use their cloud web hosting - 10GB space, plenty of monthly bandwidth allowance.
The have off-the-shelf software for blogging (eg. Wordpress), photo galleries, shopfronts, etc.
I don't think they charge for adding those to your site? But best to check.
I'm paying £6 per month.

I can't help with the software packages though - I don't use any of them myself.

(My web pages are just static html and JPG's. No script/code/data that can be hacked or stolen. Nothing that isn't already publically accessible. If tsohost got hacked, and my website got deleted or defaced... I could literally just re-upload everything and the site would be exactly as it was - there's nothing for me to re-setup or re-configure)

The few times I've used their support, they have been prompt, helpful, friendly, and knowledgable.

[tankbuster]

WIX is really easy to set up for free and has the potential to go way beyond my simple free offering. You can test free performance and then grow it and pay if you are happy. Mine is incredibly basic and free but there really are no limits https://trevorc28a.wixsite.com/trevspics