How am I going to complete my new website - Photos of Santorini?
I did a list of things to do a couple of months ago, but had to put the new website back until September.
And here is September 2018.
So a refresh of that post is in order.
I thought I would start off with a list of things to do – it has been a while after all.
The end point here is a brand-new website, Photos of Santorini. I am delighted that I have waited until now, as before I did not have a purpose for the photos I took in Santorini – and now I do. A website just for my photos of
And as I write this there is a late change in strategy following me thinking about this. I have decided that the content will be this.
- My best 20 pictures of Santorini in 20 blog posts.
- 10 posts about Santorini and my experiences of the island.
- A few static pages.
- And a gallery showing all the edited images.
And I am just going to get on with it. In fact I wrote 2 posts yesterday which are on the website now. I am going to try to get this done in the first two weeks of September - lets see how I get on.
Back to that original post. This is what I was going to do.
Go through the photos in Lightroom
"I am going to go through the images in my Lightroom Catalogue and see if there are any images that I did not select for the edit – I am now looking at these images with a different end in mind after all, so always good to have a quick look.
I took 2442 images, which equate to 763 images once bracketed images have been put together. I selected 108 images to edit last year – lets see what I come up with this time."
As far as I am concerned that is now down. I need to extract out the best 20 photos to write about.
I am liking my new plan!
Calibrate my monitor
Yes, I still need to do this – I keep closing the reminders when I fire up my PC in the morning, but I will behave and start with a freshly calibrated monitor.
When I edit the images that is.
Edit the images
"When I say edit the images I mean edit the images. Get all the images that I want to use fully edited. I started doing this over a year ago, but thankfully I can pick up where I left off just fine. To date I have edited 52 images. I will have circa 100 - 120 on the website, with the top 20 images being included in individual blog posts.
And I have to say that I am rather excited to be getting on with the editing – I have upgraded the RAM in my PC, and Lightroom has received significant updates from Adobe since I last worked on these images, so image editing will be a more pleasurable experience."
I am still excited to be doing this, although there is a time issue now as I have another two sets of images that I want to do even more with.
Rate the edited images
I need to assign a rating to the images in Lightroom – 4 stars. I am saying this as I often forget.
Add metadata to the images.
Very important. I need to make sure that I have added data to the following fields in Lightroom
- Filename
- Title
- Caption
- Keywords
I need to make sure that the metadata is correct, and to do this there is another job that I need to do. There is general metadata and very specific meta data - I expect I will do this for the top 20 images as I write the individual blog posts, and do the rest at the end.
At the moment I am syncing images from Lightroom to my Wordpress website using an App - I need to review this as great as it is I am not sure about file sizes.
Research the metadata
This is a big job on its own – not only do I need to research the metadata, but also research the content that is going to be added to my new website, Photos of Santorini. I need to do this before I start to construct the layout of my new website – this is all about getting the job done thoroughly, and once.
Once the images have all the metadata they are ready for upload – I need to make sure that the upload method puts the correct data in the correct fields on my WordPress website.
I have started on this and the outcome of the research will drive the titles of the blog posts. Again, rather than writing about it I have just got stuck into it.
But this is the biggest, and possibly most important job to be done.
Create a new collection in Lightroom
This is something that I do so I have the images with me wherever I go, on Lightroom Mobile. I must remember however that that images on Lightroom Mobile rather infuriatingly do not have the keywords attached to them, so I have to do all the uploading and posting from my desktop.
Thats the work on the images - now for the website
The website is live now on the internet with 53 images synced from a Lightroom collection, the pages added and four blog posts.
Things that I have done to the website are
- Change the URL to https.
- Tell Google Search Console about the website.
- Buy a theme. I have returned the theme so need to sort this again.
I need to go back and see if there is anything else that I need to. I know that this is boring back of house stuff, but it is very important for a successful website. And still very important.
Other things that I need to consider with the website are these
- Layout - how the website is laid out is rather critical
- Theme - I tried a paid theme but hated it so back to square one on this
- Page content - I think that is pretty much sorted
- Number of images - see above
- Blog - sorted
- Ecommerce or not? Not - I need to focus on getting the website done and building traffic
- SEO strategy - this is really all about the content - this is one of the main things I will spend time on.
- Yoast and other plug-ins. Done. I have just done the Yoast SEO set up which was a very simple job.
- Image upload – file sizes - to be determined but I need high quality images but file sizes that load quickly.
- Target audience and market. Hmmmm. One for a separate post.
- Google strategy - I think that is covered elsewhere.
- Analytics - sorted
- Videos - will be added to each blog post
Blog posts
I have decided that I will be producing 20-30 blog posts/ pages on the website. For the posts talking about the photos I have taken I have come up with some headings.
- Location
- Intent
- Image capture process
- Gear
- Settings
- Image processing
- Do I like the image?
- Did it achieve what I set out to achieve
- Do you want to buy this image?
I have also thought of a few pages about Santorini – these could be static web pages or blog posts. Possible things are
- About Santorini
- How to get there
- About the caldera
- Best photo spots in Santorini (done yesterday)
- When you get there
- Timing/ seasons
- Costs/ Currency
The website will then also be a useful resource about Santorini, and not just about my photos. I want a website that is of interest to people, and also helpful – this is not just about me trying to flog advertising and images.
But not a definitive guide to Santorini. Oh no that is a different thing altogether.
Summary
The plan has eveolved and changed. I am now just going to get on with it. I can always add/ delete stuff later if I need to.
I have spent too long talking about this and just need to get on with it.
The photos are just a time thing. That I have sorted so I can just get on with it. The hard work here is still the website itself – the technical stuff and the pages and content on each page.
Once the website is done my plan is this – leave it. I will of course keep far too close an eye on the analytics, but to start with I am going to leave it for 6 months and see what happens. I will provide a monthly update on progress (or lack of progress).
I have scheduled a blog post for the middle of October (was September) titled “How I built a WordPress website” which will be a useful guide for anyone else wanting to do what I am about to embark on. Obviously, the title might change but you get the idea.
