Do you want to create a website for your photography portfolio or sell photography online? You can choose any one of the many platforms online. However, you can build a photography website with WordPress very easily. If you want to avoid the hassle of buying domain, hosting, theme, plugin separately, you can use Squarespace or Wix. Recently WordPress is a super-easy way to make your own website. No need to hire any web developer and don’t require coding knowledge. Today I’ll explain with you How to Make a Photography Website in WordPress. Please, stay with us and enjoy the episode.
Steps to create a photography website
After reading this article you will be able to build your own photography website. You can reduce the cost to create a photography website with WordPress. And you can buy more photography gear with the saved money, such as a Camera, Lens, Light setup, etc, and increase your business instantly.
To create your photography website in WordPress, simply follow the step-by-step guide.
- Setting Up Your Domain and Hosting
- Install WordPress
- Choosing the Best Photography Theme
- Add Nasser Pages and some Posts
- Setup Photo Gallery
- Install other essential plugins
- Sell Your Photography on Your Website
Step 1. Setting Up Your Domain and Hosting
After deciding to create a photography website with WordPress, first of all, you need to set up your domain and hosting.
You should find out a perfect domain name because it is an identity on the internet of your website or branding. For example, facebook.com is Facebook’s domain name. However, photography domain names can be different from other company domains. If you are a famous photographer and want to create your own website for portfolio or selling photos, you can choose your name as a domain name.
Web hosting is a server computer that you have to buy to upload your website, photos, and other files. So you have to buy web hosting to host your own website.
To get good service, we recommend using HostGatorfor a domain name and hosting plans. If you want to check out the other options, try Hostingeror Namecheap.
Enjoy your discount from Hostgator
Why We Recommend HostGator?
Simply, it saves you a lot of money and provides a good service with the highest uptime.
Normally, most of the hosting providers there service from $10 to $100 dollars depending on your plan. Though, they offer a good discount for the first-year plan. Since you are starting a new website, you don’t need additional resources and avoid spending more money when buying the plan.
Buy Domain & Hosting Now
The HostGator offers an exclusive 65% discount. To get the special discount simply click the link to go to Hostgator.
Then it’ll offer you the three shared hosting packages. Select your suitable plan.
That action will redirect you to a new page and will see the page below.
There you have to type your domain name to register. If the name is unavailable choose the good one from the HostGator suggested name. Obviously, you should select a .com domain. On the other hand, if you already have a domain name, just click the “I already own this domain name” button.
Complete the domain selection process and here you can change your hosting plan. For one website select the hosting plan. The Hatchling Plan is good enough for a new site. Depending on your possibility to build more websites, you may choose the “Baby Plan”.
Make sure you select a 3-year plan to get the full discount. But, now you can start with a 12-month hosting plan. When your website becomes popular and gets thousands of visitors a day, then you can upgrade to a larger plan.
Initially, No additional services are required for you. So, uncheck all. However, If you want to start photography selling business with your website. You should add “SiteLock Essentials” and “Backup” services.
Once you have done your domain and hosting selecting process, go ahead to the next step and finalize the purchase.
Step 2. Install WordPress
When you complete the purchase process, a confirmation mail will be sent to your mail from the HostGator account with your access credentials.
Simply, login to your cPanel section using username and password.
Finally, you’ll see the cPanel dashboard like the image below and scroll down to find the QuickInstall option. Click auto-installer to install WordPress. You may see the installation potion in the “Popular Links” section too. Now click and open it.
Inside the QuickInstall section, select the WordPress installation menu from the top menu bar.
Now click the Install WordPress button for the next step of the installation process.
At this point, you will see an important section, which will look like the picture below. In the dialog box, you need to enter some information about your photography website, including your Website title, email, admin username, password, etc. However, if you want without username all information you’ll be able to change later.
Once you have done everything, simply hit the Install WordPress button. It may take 1 or 2 minutes to install WordPress into your server. Then will open a new dialog box with your login details. Also, a congratulation mail will be sent to your admin email too.
Now login to your WordPress dashboard area using login details, which you entered when installing WordPress.
Step 3. Choosing the Best Photography Theme
The best WordPress theme is one of the very important factors for a website. It may affect the Google Ranking factor too. Because a well-customized website will help you decries user bounce rate. Easy customization system, pre template features is amazing for a new WordPress user. Also, you need the best showcase for your photography.
WordPress has thousands of premium and free theme options. Luckily, WordPress comes with thousands of free and paid theme options. Eight things you should consider to choose the best WordPress theme, such as Simplicity, Responsive, Supported Plugins, Browser Compatibility, Page Builders, SEO Friendly, Customer support, and User reviews.
Don’t worry, if you have no time to research for a suitable theme, we can recommend you the best one. Because we analyze everything to build a website for all platforms.
Some Best Photography Website Themes
Here are some popular WordPress themes for you. You can select your favorite one.
- WPAstra
- Ultra Theme
- Photography WordPress theme
- Novo – Photography
Otherwise, you can select your previous favorite theme. I think now you have a good theme in your hand to install on your WordPress site. So, get ready to install it.
How to install
Login to your website admin area/ dashboard and go to Appearance> Theme section.
Then click on the Add New Button and you’ll see a new page. We have to install our premium theme, so now click on the upload button. Simply select the theme file from your computer and upload it.
However, If you want to use a free theme for the initial period, simply search the photography theme in your dashboard theme section. Install a theme which one you like best.
After installation the theme active it to complete the process. Now you can see your website live with the new theme.
Step 4. Add Essential Pages and Some Posts
Before going to the next step, you should navigate your page’s feast. So, now you have to add some pages and posts.
Go to Pages and click Add New button to add a page to your website. You can edit all pages letter. So, you can create demo pages. Some essential pages you should create first, including about us, contact us, Privacy policy, etc.
Also, make some demo posts at once with the same process, like to to “Post” section from the left sidebar, click add new, and publish the post. Once you have done creating pages and posts, create a menu bar. Simply go to Appearance » Menus and click Create new menu button.
Now type the name to create the menu and hit the Create Menu button.
Most of the time, we need two or more menus. Okay, now add the necessary pages to the menu and it’s removable anytime.
Use the drag and drop system to change the positions of menu elements. If you want to create a drop-down menu, simply hold on to an item and Move one step to the right.
Now set a location where you want to publish those menus from the managed location. First of all, we should set a Primary Men and hit the save changes button.
Now you can see the menu on your photography website homepage like the image below.
Step 5: Setup Photo Gallery
Now you have to create a photo gallery to showcase your photos. You can use a free Photo Gallery plugin from the WordPress plugin directory. Before you go ahead, upload some photos in your WordPress media library. Simply click media from the left menu and click add new button. Select your portfolio photos to upload and hit enter. Let’s go ahead.
To create a good photo gallery go for a premium plugin. I like the Photo Gallery by 10Web to create a photo gallery.
You can also use the free version of the plugin. Simply, going to Plugins » Add New from your WordPress dashboard and search for Photo Gallery. Now install it and activate it.
Now, go to the Photo Gallery plugin from the left menu bar or your website dashboard and create a new gallery. Click New Gallery> add photos according to your photo category. Now hit the save button.
So, you are successful to create your first image gallery. Now go to your Page>add new. You’ll see a photo gallery icon at the top of the content writing space. Click there to add your gallery to the page. Write details if you want to tell anything about your photos and publish the page. At this stage, after publishing the page, you add this as a dropdown menu of the gallery menu.
Step 7. Install other essential plugins
To run your website perfectly you need to install some other plaguing.
SEO Plaguing:
First of all, you have to install an SEO plugin. The most popular SEO plugins are Yoast, RankMath, All in one SEO, etc. Since you have just created a new website, the free version of the Yoast plugin is enough for you. Now install it from the plugin directory.
Elementor Website Builder
Now we need a page builder plugin. We want to create a website for our photography portfolio or sell photos online. Elementor
Page builder plugin can make your website good-looking and functional. It’s so responsible to add many functions to your website. Such as page design, adding pricing table, social sharing button, etc. Ultimately it can make your task much easier.
If you want to design your website easily, the website builder plugin is able to do it properly. It will help you to finish all the hard work. So, you should use a powerful website builder plugin like Elementor. To claim your discounts CLICK HERE.
To install the free version of Elementor, go to the Plugins section from your dashboard and click Add New button. Here search for the Elementor plugin. From the search result click the install button to install Elementer. Activate the plugin after the installation process is complete. Now you can use Elementor to create your pages. So go to your pages, click add new, or edit your previous page. Here you have to choose the Elementor editor system. If you use the premium version, you are able to use all features of Elementor.
It’s very easy to use, simply use a drag and drop system to customize your pages.
Smush it:
At last, you have to use an image compressor. Because, if your website has large image files, it may take a lot of time to load in the browser. The most popular image compressor plugin is EWWW Image Optimizer and Smush it.
Speeding Optimize Plugin
Well, once you complete everything you may face a problem, that’s speed optimization. To test your website speed, use Gtmetrix or Google developer. You can increase your website performance with the “W3 Total Case” plugin. Now, I think there is no need again to tell details about the installation process. Here I am just highlighting its important settings.
As a primary setting, go to Performance » General Settings. Now enable Page Cache and Browser Cache. Also, other settings are shown through the screenshot.
Step 8: Sell Your Photography on Your Website
Selling your photos independently is very profitable for the photographer and one of the perfect ways to sell photos online and make money. At this time, you are pretty ready to sell your work as a small business. This is the main benefit of a killer photography website.
Here are some of the benefits of selling photography from your own website.
- Copyright is reserved in your own hands.
- Third party does not have to pay commission to anyone.
- Prices can be set according to one’s own and customer’s convenience.
- Work can be done by talking directly to the customer.
Conclusion
We hope now you know how to create a photography website in WordPress. We have tried to describe the matter in detail here. Initially, if you can’t use paid plugins, be sure to get good hosting and theme. Because the performance of your website depends a lot on it.
FAQ
1. Is WordPress good for photography websites?
Actually, my answer is, yes. Because WordPress is highly flexible for design, easy customizable. Anyone can work with WordPress without knowing to programing. WordPress is open-source software. With an easily customizable, user-friendly dashboard, thousands of free plugins you can create your own website within a short time.
On the other hand, its thousands of free themes and plugins make any task easier. Having a website on your own hosting, you have complete control of the website. The most important advantage of WordPress is that it is very easy to do website SEO. No other platform has such an advantage.
2. How to create a website for photography for free?
If you want to build a photography website for free you may use anyone free photography portfolio builder website. The will allow you for limited space for the portfolio website. If you want to start a photo selling business, you have to buy their subscription plan.
3. Is WordPress free?
Yes, WordPress is free and open-source software. You can customize the software according to your needs. However, to build a website with WordPress you have to buy a domain and hosting. So, it’s the sector of cost.
Also if you make a website with free hosting and subdomain of WordPress, you will not get the opportunity of customization properly and you will not be able to remove the logo, footer of WordPress.
4. What are the essential plugins for photography WordPress?
Of the thousands of plugins in WordPress, 4/5 plugins are enough for a photography website. such as Photo Gallery, Smushit, Yeost SEO Plugin, Elementor, W3 Total Cash, etc.
