His style is characterized by dynamic and vivid imagery.<\/p>\n
Photography Website Needs<\/h2>\n
Matt needed a website to showcase his personal and work photography and a platform on which to share his blog articles. Most photographers in his immediate network had website so he thought he would give it a go.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Matt set up his first website to showcase his skateboarding photos. The original site was very basic and made in Dreamweaver. There were 5 pages: About, Blog, Skateboarding, Gallery, Portrait Gallery, Contact. The blog was powered by WordPress.com.<\/p>\n
Tip 1: WordPress.com is a great starter kit<\/h2>\n
Matt migrated his\u00a0entire website to WordPress.com. It allowed him to create a photography website to promote and showcase his work without having to learn CSS and HTML The WordPress experience doesn\u2019t have to require a dedicated host, a domain name or any other time of investment. You can always get started with the WordPress experience via WordPress.com.<\/p>\n
Tip 2: Don\u2019t Limit Yourself<\/h2>\n\n
As Matt\u2019s photography work started to grow in the 360 virtual tours field, it became apparent that his original choice of platform wasn\u2019t going to be flexible enough. While he could upload the files online somewhere and give a link for customers to visit them, he wanted to go one step further. Embedding his work in his website became a need.\u00a0Using WordPress.com didn\u2019t allow for plugins or too much website customization.<\/p>\n
It was time to change for something else. As Matt looked to expand more and more on showcasing his work, he switched over to a self hosted WordPress site and never looked back!<\/p>\n
Tip 3: Determine What You Want & Need<\/h2>\n
For Matt, having a gallery was big\u00a0must\u00a0<\/strong>to promote his work. However, his website was also going to be a tool to develop his business as a photographer. It needed to be much more than an online gallery of his work.<\/p>\n My website is one of the most powerful selling tools I have!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These points ensured that Matt would be able to create his ideal website. He required a website that could showcase his photos and allow him to produce online content via a blog.\u00a0The idea for the site was to create a clean and simple user friendly site.<\/p>\n He also took the time to research what other photographers and media companies were doing online.<\/strong>\u00a0This allowed him to create a list of things he wanted and then to find a theme that matched his requirements. As Matt sees it, finding a theme that meets your own requirements is a vital part of creating a WordPress website:<\/p>\n A theme is what can make or break a website I believe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Find a theme that offers good customer service. The support will be key to helping you build the website you want.<\/p>\n Matt wanted to ensure that his website would offer the same feel and performance across all platforms. Tablet, desktop, mobile: Matt\u2019s website doesn\u2019t change. It adapts to the screen sizes and the various requirements of each type of device without losing its look and feel.<\/p>\n A lot more people tend to visit a website via a mobile device than 2 or 3 years ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s a trend for many websites across the web. Mobile traffic has drastically increased over the past 5 years in many countries. Make sure the theme you pick offers a responsive design.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a photographer, Matt recommends using various plugins to improve user experience and performance. Websites that rely on high quality images are often slow to load because of the sheer weight of the images.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a photographer like myself then a plugin I couldn\u2019t live without is Imagify.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now that\u2019s some great customer feedback! It\u2019s also the reason why we wanted to know more about Matt\u2019s website. We learned that the key element for him is that he is not always able to remember to optimize his images when he exports his files. As result, some pictures end up being a little big. It helps to compress them down without losing quality with a click of a button.<\/p>\n Refrain from installing every single plugin you come across as it will slow down your website. When choosing your plugins, make sure that they do not slow your website down! Read the guides or any type of documentation that is provided by the plugin makers to really understand how to get the most our of your plugins.<\/p>\n Free plugins are good but sometimes it\u2019s worth investing in paid plugins. Premium support and extended functionalities really do make a different.<\/p>\n Hope these tips have helped. If you\u2019d like to see\u00a0Matt\u2019s portfolio<\/a>, you can do so right here!<\/p>\n Do you have a photography website? If so, this article is for you! Matt is a UK photographer and he shared some great tips to help other photographers optimize their WordPress websites. Check them out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-image-optimization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45,"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/45"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The main reasons why WordPress was a solution for Matt were:<\/h3>\n
\n
Tip 4: Go Mobile Or Go Home!<\/h2>\n
Tip 4: WordPress Plugins For Photographers<\/h2>\n
Don\u2019t let plugins slow down your website<\/h3>\n
Premium plugins can be worth it<\/h3>\n
![\"Imagify,](\"https:\/\/imagify.io\/blog\/wp-content\/themes\/imagify\/assets\/img\/gwic-1.png\")
<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"