My newly customized Smugmug website!

On the recommendation of Eric Cheng and others here at Wetpixel, I recently established a website with Smugmug.com to house my best uw photos. Although their standard setup looked a lot more professional than my old website, I decided to use the services of a guy in Michigan who customizes Smugmug websites, and for a VERY reasonable price, he (with my input) established a new "look" for my website, with a nifty slide- show on the home page and some other cool features: http://www.underwaterreflections.com/

One reason I chose Smugmug was that several people have asked how they could purchase prints of my photos, and Smugmug allows online photo sales (I'm donating all proceeds to charity) if you upgrade to their "Pro" program, which costs $150/year.

If you are interested in establishing a photo website of your own with Smugmug, go to www.smugmug.com and check out the cool options they have available! If you decide to sign up, you can enter my referral code (1C8m55WBF6RMo) or Eric's if you prefer (iKbVLA6djb4uE) in the "Referred by" space and you'll save $5 on your subscription.

After you get your site up and running, if you want help customizing it, I highly recommend the fellow I used: Jerry Roek ( jerryroek@comcast.net). He was extremely reasonably priced (he typically only charges $200-$400 to set up a custom Smugmug site), is easy to work with (we did it all by e-mail and a couple of phone calls!), and he did (IMHO) an outstanding job!

I would welcome any feedback or suggestions regarding the site!

the web site is easy to navigate. I love the pictures, esp. the mating mandarins which looks like the one I entered in the pow! A dead ringer, different location. I'm interested in getting a web site, unfortunately my computer skills, other then photoshop are poor at best. Do they walk you through it? thanks

...I'm interested in getting a web site, unfortunately my computer skills, other then photoshop are poor at best. Do they walk you through it?  thanks

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I'm not a computer guy, either, and that's why I hired a guy to help me. OTOH, I was able to easily set up the basic site by myself -- it really IS easy to do!

Pretty nice site Bruce, but one comment. The slideshow images seem to cycle rather quickly, only staying on the page around two seconds before cycling. Do you think you could have the images remain longer (4 secs?) before cycling to the next one?

Pretty nice site Bruce, but one comment.  The slideshow images seem to cycle rather quickly, only staying on the page around two seconds before cycling.  Do you think you could have the images remain longer (4 secs?) before cycling to the next one?

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Ken,

That's good input. FWIW, when I go to websites with "slow" opening slide shows (4-5 seconds per photo), I always find myself wishing they'd speed up (just my personal preference). So I purposely asked that the slide show on the opening page cycle pretty rapidly.

The reason is that I just want it to be a "teaser" to provide an idea of what's on the site, and I want even a casual visitor to see a variety of images -- that makes them want to look at the galleries. In the actual galleries, it's easy to view LOTS of thumbnails and look more closely at photos (in higher resolution) of interest, so I didn't think the opening slide show needed to be very long. But perhaps I do need to stretch them out just a little...

Hey Bruce,

I understand what you're saying. I wouldn't want the slideshow to be painfully long, but I'd at least like a second or two to appreciate an image before the next one pops up. It just feels rushed to me, but since its your site, its your choice.

- Ken

Hi Bruce,

Nice site. Does SM provide the software support for the on-line ordering? Also, I noticed on your "popular" page (page 2 of the popular page) when I click on the middle pic of the sharks top row it takes me back to page 1 instead of allowing me to view that pic.

Again, beautiful work.

Joe

Hi Bruce,

Nice site.  Does SM provide the software support for the on-line ordering? Also, I noticed on your "popular" page (page 2 of the popular page) when I click on the middle pic of the sharks top row it takes me back to page 1 instead of allowing me to view that pic.

 

Again, beautiful work.

 

Joe

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Joe,

Yes, Smugmug handles all of the online print ordering via secure connection with a regular "shopping cart" like any other online purchase, and you can set your own pricing for any or all items (however, note: online sales are only available with their "Pro" membership, which costs $149.99/year).

As for the "Popular" page, I'll see if I can find out why it's doing that. You can always go into the actual gallery to see the larger version, but it should do that in "Popular" too! Thanks for letting me know!