1) there are many themes designed specifically for portfolios, see if you find one you like
2) NGG is good for photos, but WP can handle photos just fine. Ultimately, the theme you pick determines the layout of everything
3) There are several commerce plugins (I use eshop) which allow you to display and sell your stuff through WP
4) wordpress.com is handled and managed for you. You don’t have to set much up. No real maintenance, etc. But they have restrictions. You can’t advertise I don’t think, etc. It’s also free (at least the basic).
5) wordpress.org is more powerful. But with great power comes great reponsibility. You install and host WP on a server. You have to maintain everything. But there are plugins and themes by the thousands to do anything you want. On WP.com you can’t install plugins or themes, they do have a lot of options, but if you want more than they offer, you are SOL. You can completely customize WP.org, you have full access to all code. WP.org costs money, for the domain name, and for the hosting.
So it all depends on your committment, how dirty you wanna get your hands, what you want to do, etc.
I couldn’t imagine doing anything other than wordpress.org
It wasn’t that long ago I knew nothing about websites and code. I just learned by doing, questioning, readin. It took a bit of time, but in the long run, so worth it!
Thank you so much, this really helped a lot!
So based on this information, wordpress.org sounds like the way I’d like to go. How would you suggest I start out with using wordpress on my site without messing everything that’s on there now up? You can take a peek at my existing site http://www.lionoptic.com
if you want to install in to learn the ins and outs, install it on your server in a subdomain/subdirectory
like site.com/wordpress
or
wordpress.site.com
If you love it and want it to be your main site, it’s not too hard to move it later
Cool, I did what you suggested…works like a charme thank you. Only thing that went wrong was the pluging I installed for the gallery requires a certain version of php. I have no idea where to go from here but thats prob a different topic;)
Well, you can check what version of php you have, by asking your host
See if it’s too out of date, see if they have plans to upgrade, etc.
Your host should be able to help. You don’t want your php version too out of date, or you may run into other problems down the road
I checked through my host’s control panel and upgraded to php5…works like a charm now. thanks!
Excellent, I was hoping that would be the case!
