I bought a dot com....

Pete Delaney

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I took the plunge yesterday and bought a domain name ending in .com:thumbsup: So here I am feeling all pleased that I came up with a good name but what about the way ahead?

I would love to hear your thoughts as I am pondering the future of my website and how it will evolve.

I would like to be able to sell my work and hopefully make a few pounds to pay for the site. I would like to discuss photography and what I'm up to... so blogging will be important. I need to market my site in a very, very big way. Most of all I want to set foundations now for more dedicated photography in the future. We all have jobs (hopefully) and I have mine with photography being my hobby and certainly something that sits on the back-burner. But I need to slowly start turning up the heat... in not too many years from now I want it to take front stage, and so I'm planning that strategy now.

What kind of website will work best in your opinion? There are so many hosts out there that offer what seem reasonable services in the £100 to £150 bracket. I don't think I need to spend more at the moment, as I'm not going for a sprint finish here...I want a slow and gradual build up with a manageable learning curve. I hope to eventually run a business with my wife taking part, as I know so much marketing and administration will be involved. Eventually I would look to go into portrait work...private and or corporate as well as sticking to my love of simply taking pictures.

Zenfolio offer a business service that will allow me to use my own .com and at £100 per year that is my benchmark. But I really don't know??

Please guys... thoughts... what do you think? Remember this is a slow process I'm looking at, but I would love to get a website running soon. I have tried cheaper options in the past and that hasn't worked too well. I realise the best site in the world is nothing without daily marketing. But I also need a truly elegant site for everyone to enjoy whether it's just to read and take part, or just a visit of curiosity.

Pete:thumbsup:
 
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The biggest piece of advice I can give you is ... quit now.
Only joking :D

It's market your photos/services to none photographers.
I don't sell my stuff or blog, but I've found out that photographers don't click on other photographers links, well they don't click mine.
So I'd market yourself to the FaceBook generation, the type that holds their phone's at arms length and take photos of themselves.
They'll think you are a God :smashin:

I host my photos on Zenfolio (Unlimited package), you only need to use the Premium package if you want to sell you photos etc, if you just want to ability to use a domain name, you can use the Unlimited package.

The problems I have with Zenfolio, is S.E.O. is crap and it's slow at times.
The customer support is great though. Plus, Zenfolio is the best looking site I've seen.

If you look on my main page, you'll see a 10% discount code.
You can use it if you like to save money, I'm not sure if I earn "commission/discounts" off the code any more, I did when I had the Prem. package, I'm not sure now.

Good luck :)
 
Thanks Mark.... I may go with Zenfolio. I bought from 123 reg..so I may self build with them too. Anyways...I agree with your comments regarding marketing. It must be Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc that needs targeting. Without marketing I'll never have a hope of doing anything remotely commercial.

Everybody with a camera thinks they are a photographer these days... but it's experience that counts and us keen togs appreciate that.:smashin:

A tog at my work had a 6 figure yearly turnover when he worked for himself. But putting in 100hrs a week was a bit much for him and he had staff too. The advice I was given was that 90% has to be marketing, the rest is admin with the last tiny bit being using the camera! It's a good job I'll be doing this very gradually!!

Pete.:)
 
When it is for business I would seriously consider your branding, you site design should fit and compliment it. Online marketing requires search engine optimisation etc.

However your questions are very wide open. As you can see in my signature I host my own, optimise the traffic have full images blah blah can easily have private areas. I mean how long is a piece of string. What is your business plan?

I do hosting myself. I've got, well my company, dedicated servers in separate data enters. There are so many things to think about when you do this professionally. Like backups, ease of restoring them. Where it is hosted, bandwidth, security, legal stuff etc.

However if you want to start small and grow, I'd begin with a wordpress based site using a premium theme.
 
When it is for business I would seriously consider your branding, you site design should fit and compliment it. Online marketing requires search engine optimisation etc.

However your questions are very wide open. As you can see in my signature I host my own, optimise the traffic have full images blah blah can easily have private areas. I mean how long is a piece of string. What is your business plan?

I do hosting myself. I've got, well my company, dedicated servers in separate data enters. There are so many things to think about when you do this professionally. Like backups, ease of restoring them. Where it is hosted, bandwidth, security, legal stuff etc.

However if you want to start small and grow, I'd begin with a wordpress based site using a premium theme.

Thank you very much.:thumbsup: It's to my advantage that I have lots of time because I intend to get going slowly. You're right that I have asked a very open question, I need advice... we all start somewhere and my empty canvas just shows I can't even put my foot on the second run of the ladder yet. I reckon I'm already on the first step as I have years of experience gained in taking pictures and I'm still learning every single day.

Finding out about running a photography business must start somewhere. I think your last bit of advice is where I'm going to begin. A wordpress site.

I hope to run that as a non profit site to begin with, so that I can link to it, without falling foul of advertising rules on forums like this. I would like to review gear too and run an interactive site with a diary of my weekly work.

Pete.:)
 
There area many hosting providers who provide build in scripts to get a wordpress site up and running. One of the services I've set up on my ISP service does it all automatically.

As you have your domain already getting started can be very easy. You can buy web and mail hosting services from nearly anywhere. Just be careful that especially at the cheap end of the market you get resellers who sell to resellers who sell to resellers. Further more the risk of getting a shared IP address that will be constantly under attack or even blacklisted because the other clients on that resold service are naughty can be high. But hey they are cheap.

The advantage of keeping your domain and DNS management separate from your hosting requirements is that you could point it yourself to another service very quickly if the ISP your with for hosting is a bit of a pain.

You could even have you domain names, your web hosting and your email all at different providers if you want that extra bit of contingency.

These days with smart phones et all I would sincerely suggest you go for a provider who supports push mail technology. It saves you your battery life and mail comes through instantly.

Having direct access to daily backups that are offsite to the servers is also useful. Or a provider who can do that quickly.

For running wordpress it is perfect when you have access to your own php.ini. Especially when you do photos and want to upload the high resolution versions, or even upload a premium wordpress theme, the default php upload file sizes just aren't enough.

For my oooia.com site you can see in the footer who I use for hosting. The theme comes from elegant themes and I slightly modified it. The full size images are actually stored on a bucket on amazon s3. That way for the full resolution my bandwidth doesn't get impacted and I don't need that much "local" storage.

Wordpress has got many options to personalise exactly how you want things.
 
I have been watching the wordpress videos from the 'bluehost' website. It does look quite straightforward and I like that.

I registered my domain with 123reg. That was easy but their website building trial doesn't appear to offer a blog unless you pay for e-commerce and it certainly doesn't look as clean as the wordpress functionality I saw from bluehost.

EDIT..... DOH.... I see we are on the same page...I think I'll sign up with them.:D
 
Have you got it up yet Pete :)

Well I've started.... but.... (I don't like the buts) I have to have my account verified and a transfer authorisation done first. Meant scanning my card with numbers blocked out to bluehost and requesting an unlock with 123reg. Looks like next week before I get my .com visible with my dedicated domain name.

However, I'm getting things organised and have tried some test pages/images that seem to work nicely. The Bluehost tutorials are very good.:)

So far, so good. And all those 'websize' pics I have done over the years will be very handy.

Pete.:)
 
Well I've started.... but.... (I don't like the buts) I have to have my account verified and a transfer authorisation done first. Meant scanning my card with numbers blocked out to bluehost and requesting an unlock with 123reg. Looks like next week before I get my .com visible with my dedicated domain name.

However, I'm getting things organised and have tried some test pages/images that seem to work nicely. The Bluehost tutorials are very good.:)

So far, so good. And all those 'websize' pics I have done over the years will be very handy.

Pete.:)

Sounds like you are transferring your domain over from 123. You could just leave it there and update the 123 DNS with the IP address of your blue host website.

Odd blue host requires verification. A .com normally doesn't need that. Or is it really a .xxx as that does have those kind of requirements. :devil:
 
Sounds like you are transferring your domain over from 123. You could just leave it there and update the 123 DNS with the IP address of your blue host website.

Oh...didn't know that...I'm lost with this stuff.... I'll try.

I have found 'webforwarding' in the 123reg control panel and I have put the IP/directory into the relevant box on the 123reg site... not sure if it's the way to do it or how long it takes...no changes yet though.
 
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Oh and first plugin you want to install in wordpress is wordfence. It provides protection and warns you of updates required.

Second is seo by yoast. Very good to help you define your content and meta data for search engines.
 
Hmm.. why does it show the IP address and not the URL? Something is not right there..

It's because I registered the domain at 123reg but I'm using Bluehost for my wordpress hosting. I have to wait 60 days to transfer the domain name to Bluehost. Until then I'm having to forward to the ip address whenever someone goes to SurroundingLIGHT

it'll be good soon... just have to wait (sadly).

Pete:)

I'm learning fast.... the website went up at the weekend and I've worked very hard to get some content up. Now I have got some things posted I will update weekly as I go out on my tog travels. I hope to nurture the sight...taking it from a seedling to hopefully a popular website.... I am determined to work hard to make it great, but I know I'm on a big learning curve.

Pete:eek:
 
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No need to transfer the domain. Did you on 123 just set up forwarding or did you actually put the IP address of blue host web service against you domain. Then also setup on 123 a cname for www.yourdomain.com and most likely an mx record for something like mail.yourdomain.com etc.

No need to transfer the domain name. In fact it is actually good practise to keep DNS services and hosting separately :)
 
No need to transfer the domain. Did you on 123 just set up forwarding or did you actually put the IP address of blue host web service against you domain. Then also setup on 123 a cname for www.yourdomain.com and most likely an mx record for something like mail.yourdomain.com etc.

No need to transfer the domain name. In fact it is actually good practise to keep DNS services and hosting separately :)

I think I just did forwarding... what should I have done??:rolleyes: Whatsmore do I need to do it at the 123reg end (where I bought the domain) or at the Bluhost end (where i signed up for wordpress hosting).... gawd 'elp me....:facepalm:
 
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I think I just did forwarding... what should I have done??:rolleyes: Whatsmore do I need to do it at the 123reg end (where I bought the domain) or at the Bluhost end (where i signed up for wordpress hosting).... gawd 'elp me....:facepalm:

It's hard not knowing the 123 control options exactly, nor how blue host has set it up...

You should have a panel somewhere on 123 where you can create your DNS records. And you probably want something like the first attachment for the domain in my signature, or which ever way you want it...

Having looked at your domain I can see:
Your mail is pointing at MX records that are with 123-reg
And your web domain is actually also pointing at 123-reg servers instead of the blue host ones...
SurroundingLIGHT | SurroundingLIGHT photography. | 94.136.40.82 | 86400
SurroundingLIGHT | SurroundingLIGHT photography. | 66.147.244.144 | 86400

So you'll need to find those settings, and update the IP address to the one from blue host.

Further more, and a bit silly of 123-reg imo, no SPF record seems to have been setup. This could mean that your mail is classed as spam by some clients. Once transferred to blue host they should be able to help you with that.

Free support finished now, you should have taken my offer :p:devil:
 

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It's hard not knowing the 123 control options exactly, nor how blue host has set it up...

You should have a panel somewhere on 123 where you can create your DNS records. And you probably want something like the first attachment for the domain in my signature, or which ever way you want it...

Having looked at your domain I can see:
Your mail is pointing at MX records that are with 123-reg
And your web domain is actually also pointing at 123-reg servers instead of the blue host ones...
SurroundingLIGHT | SurroundingLIGHT photography. | 94.136.40.82 | 86400
SurroundingLIGHT | SurroundingLIGHT photography. | 66.147.244.144 | 86400

So you'll need to find those settings, and update the IP address to the one from blue host.

Further more, and a bit silly of 123-reg imo, no SPF record seems to have been setup. This could mean that your mail is classed as spam by some clients. Once transferred to blue host they should be able to help you with that.

Free support finished now, you should have taken my offer :p:devil:

Thank you so much for taking sympathy with my plight. The trouble is, it's easy when you know and it's impossible when you don't. Clearly I am an ejit who falls into the latter camp. I've written to Bluehost so should get something sorted. I've also no idea if changes are instant or take a little time to become effective. I did change the 'A' type destination/targets in the 123reg control panel to point at the Bluehost ip for my website but that hasn't done anything, or at least nothing yet.

You are a super star for trying to help. Thank you.:thumbsup:
 
Been in touch with 123reg and told them to redirect name servers to ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com. Hopefully that will have a positive outcome by tomorrow.
 
Name Servers and email all working.

SurroundingLIGHT

Is up and running! Please help me put the word out through your social media etc. I'll be working very hard on this site from now on as I'm committed to make it work. Yes it's a darn steep curve, but I will make it a very fine site as I continue to learn and develop my posts, bringing in news/reviews/weekly activity blogs and more...

Pete.:)
 

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