# I want to display and sell photos from my existing site



## Sam6644 (Mar 1, 2010)

I am currently building my personal site. I have my layout together and everything but I'm hung up deciding how I want to display photos. I've been putting websites together for a long time, and I could easily just throw together some basic albums just to show the photos but I want to take it a few steps further than that. 

Since it's a photography driven site, it will have a lot of photos on it. Lots of albums with lots of photos in them so something automated would be pretty handy. Some way of having the albums put together by automation and including metadata would be a great feature. 

I'd also like the have the ability to sell photos directly from the site with the ability to accept credit card payment and whatnot. 

I've investigated photoshelter and like it a lot, but it's sort of (not really) expensive. I'm a college kid with no money so I want to investigate other options before diving photoshelter. 

I design my sites all on my own, so I'd like it if the whole commerce and gallery section fit right into my page instead of taking you into a seperate page. 

I know this is kind of a tired subject so I appreciate all the info I can get.

Thanks folks


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## jbylake (Mar 1, 2010)

Sam6644 said:


> I am currently building my personal site. I have my layout together and everything but I'm hung up deciding how I want to display photos. I've been putting websites together for a long time, and I could easily just throw together some basic albums just to show the photos but I want to take it a few steps further than that.
> 
> Since it's a photography driven site, it will have a lot of photos on it. Lots of albums with lots of photos in them so something automated would be pretty handy. Some way of having the albums put together by automation and including metadata would be a great feature.
> 
> ...


Since you already posess the technical skills, I'd suggest visiting as many other like sites for inspiration.  I operate two commercial sites, non-photography related, it's sort of hard to come up with something distinctive, since there are so many related sites out there.  But I look at numerous outstanding sites, and don't copy, but get a feel for where things are going.  I'm sure you know that technology, and web design are changing, almost monthly now..good luck!

J.:thumbup:


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## HikinMike (Mar 1, 2010)

I wanted something different, so....I designed my website and I had a friend that knows PHP/MySQL so he helped me set up a database for my gallery. I'm using Paypal to sell my prints online. Works like a charm.


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## Big Mike (Mar 1, 2010)

Check out Photocart.


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## cirekoy (Mar 4, 2010)

There are lots of "premade" shopping carts out there that you can modify to suit your needs. As for credit cards, Paypal is the easiest. If you'd like to accept cards directly you'll need a merchant account (specific type of bank account) and a payment gateway, both of which tend to have monthly fees, in addition to per transaction percentage fees.  

Some banks like to see business information that proves you are a legitimate business as well (such as a DBA/business license, etc. and a polished website with clearly stated terms). 

After it is all set up it's just a matter of the API through your payment gateway, which is usually pretty easy, and is included in most pre-built carts. 

If you sell a lot, you'll want to look for a printer with an API...an API allows you to transmit orders directly to your printer. This eliminates the step of taking your orders and then entering them into your printer's system. Makes life easy


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