© Jeff Sandquist (Flickr) WordPress logo next to a burger waiting for a flight home to seattle
© Jeff Sandquist (Flickr)
Wordpress is a free and open source content management platform that has been used for years to power blogs and content websites.
Installing Wordpress is easy, and most hosting providers will offer you one click installation tools such as Fantastico on your website hosting control panel. Once installed, you will be able to add, edit and delete content from your site by accessing the control panel from anywhere with an Internet connection.
Photo gallery themes
The default Wordpress theme is quite plain and it’s not specially geared towards photographers, but more for bloggers. If you want to make your website into a photography portfolio you will need to find, download and install a suitable theme. Wordpress themes often come in two fashions: Either they are free, but require you to link back to websites selected by the author or you need to pay to use them. There are benefits and advantages to both options, and if you are a web designer you can opt for creating your own Wordpress theme.
How to find Wordpress themes
There are thousands of free and premium templates on the Internet, and more are being released each day. You can use your favourite search engine to find both lists and themes. There are also many websites listing Wordpress themes for photographers, both free and premium. If you are acquainted with web design and Wordpress theming you can use them as starting points to make your own theme.
Photography plugins
You can extend the functionality of any Wordpress theme by using plugins. Of those there are many specially good for managing collections of pictures. You can even implement an ecommerce site to be able to sell your pictures to interested customers, but you may need professional help for that kind of project and a bespoke Wordpress template coded for you.
