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I've landed on the same approach for my photography portfolio. Benefit of jumping ship from development to photography is that I don't have to rely on Squarespa

I've landed on the same approach for my photography portfolio. Benefit of jumping ship from development to photography is that I don't have to rely on Squarespace like most other photographers! After trying a few server-based options like Ghost, Statamic and self-built ones with Phoenix or Vapor (I've covered some ground as a dev) and the usual SSG options I ended up just writing everything as straight HTML without any templates and upload to a Hetzner server using rsync. The lack of templating for shared UI like navigation is a touch irritating, but with some RegEx magic I haven't found a change I want to make that takes more than a few minutes. I got caught out early on with some greedy RegEx that nuked some content, but git to the rescue. Image generation with all the sizes and format variants is laborious, but it prompts me to try new layouts rather than relying on cookie-cutter ones like Ghost. Plus I've noticed a slight improvement in image quality generating my web variants out of my RAW editor (Capture One) vs using the libraries and CLI tools used in most SSGs. It's slower, but my thinking is that it's more akin to putting together a photo book. It take more effort up front, but once it's done, it's done for good, and won't need mangling in and out of various CMS over the next 20 years!

grilledchickenw 3y ago
I've been meaning to do this and move away from Smugmug. Would you be okay to share your portfolio and/or source?
- natpalmer1776 3y ago
  On their profile they have their website linked (https://jamiedumont.com/ https://jamiedumont.com/)
- jamiedumont 3y ago
  Someone beat me to the punch and added the URL (thanks!). The site is what's left over after trying a few different options, most notably Ghost and later Zola. Most of the current layout mimics what can be created within Ghost's editor. I then migrated to Zola which shares the bulk of the layout. Currently most of my images are coming from Zola's "/processed_images" directory. You can view the Zola codebase here[1] if you like. The layouts I'm currently working on (not yet published) are heavily influenced by Andrew Clarke's work [2] and his book "Art Direction for the Web" [3] which I highly recommend if you want to explore less generic layouts online. I hope that on day my site can be example that web design can be as varied and interesting as print! 1: https://github.com/jamiedumont/zola_jamiedumont.com https://github.com/jamiedumont/zola_jamiedumont.com 2: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/andy-clarke/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/andy-clarke/ 3: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/03/art-direction-release https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/03/art-direction-relea...
  - grilledchickenw 3y ago
    The detailed response is much appreciated!
projektfu 3y ago
You could use server-side includes to get the basic prev-next navigation and consistent menus, headers and footers.
- jamiedumont 3y ago
  It's something I've considered with both nginx and caddy because I've got the server so I may as well use it! I prefer a server over services like Netlify because I can deploy with rsync rather than git (or the web-based UI). Plus it lets me log the many 404s I get after so many site migrations, and then create 301s. Most services like Cloudflare and Netlify just swallow details like that unless you pay for upgraded analytics. I keep it as vanilla HTML though because I like the fact that I can open any page as a standalone file with no server and almost any browser can render it. I'm not saying this won't change, but for now I'm happy without SSI. Plus, I'm using Nova for some Panic-based nostalgia (Coda was big when I started), so I like having the code and rendered HTML side by side in Nova's preview.
- XCSme 3y ago
  PHP!
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  I moved from static HTML to 11ty (https://11ty.dev https://11ty.dev) for the same reason and I'm pretty happy with how simple it allows you to keep things. Plus, it helps me avoid yak shaving instead of writing content! I think for a site like this I'd go with 11ty, just a clean project without a template or custom config, one collection to pull the photos from Flickr inline the styles. (just sharing my personal approach, nothing wrong with Jamie's approach, ofc)
  - projektfu 3y ago
    Thanks for the link.
michaelteter 3y ago
How was your experience with Vapor?... Also, you might find some value in an approach that I used recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36592641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36592641). Using a Google Sheet as the data driver was easy, but it could have just as well been a filesystem of photos.
- jamiedumont 3y ago
  I really want to like Vapor because it's just a simple stripped back server-side framework; but I always get frustrated building with it. I've loved learning SwiftUI, but Vapor - even with Leaf swapped out for Plot - just isn't as ergonomic. Plus I have the lingering memory of working with Elixir and Phoenix LiveView which is kind of the gold standard for web frameworks at the moment in my opinion.
kthartic 3y ago
For my personal photography website I use - Svelte + TailwindCSS (Basically just a couple html files, plus the power of templating) - Flickr API (To pull my photos from an album that I use just for this website) - Netlify (To host the site - all have to do is `git push` and the site auto deploys!) Total cost (incl hosting): $0 With Flickr I can manage the photos from my phone via the Flickr app. With Netlify I don't have to tinker with an actual server box, plus it's free. I love it <3

grilledchickenw 3y ago

I've been meaning to do this and move away from Smugmug. Would you be okay to share your portfolio and/or source?

natpalmer1776 3y ago
On their profile they have their website linked (https://jamiedumont.com/ https://jamiedumont.com/)
jamiedumont 3y ago
Someone beat me to the punch and added the URL (thanks!). The site is what's left over after trying a few different options, most notably Ghost and later Zola. Most of the current layout mimics what can be created within Ghost's editor. I then migrated to Zola which shares the bulk of the layout. Currently most of my images are coming from Zola's "/processed_images" directory. You can view the Zola codebase here[1] if you like. The layouts I'm currently working on (not yet published) are heavily influenced by Andrew Clarke's work [2] and his book "Art Direction for the Web" [3] which I highly recommend if you want to explore less generic layouts online. I hope that on day my site can be example that web design can be as varied and interesting as print! 1: https://github.com/jamiedumont/zola_jamiedumont.com https://github.com/jamiedumont/zola_jamiedumont.com 2: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/andy-clarke/ https://www.smashingmagazine.com/author/andy-clarke/ 3: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/03/art-direction-release https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/03/art-direction-relea...
- grilledchickenw 3y ago
  The detailed response is much appreciated!

projektfu 3y ago

You could use server-side includes to get the basic prev-next navigation and consistent menus, headers and footers.

jamiedumont 3y ago
It's something I've considered with both nginx and caddy because I've got the server so I may as well use it! I prefer a server over services like Netlify because I can deploy with rsync rather than git (or the web-based UI). Plus it lets me log the many 404s I get after so many site migrations, and then create 301s. Most services like Cloudflare and Netlify just swallow details like that unless you pay for upgraded analytics. I keep it as vanilla HTML though because I like the fact that I can open any page as a standalone file with no server and almost any browser can render it. I'm not saying this won't change, but for now I'm happy without SSI. Plus, I'm using Nova for some Panic-based nostalgia (Coda was big when I started), so I like having the code and rendered HTML side by side in Nova's preview.
XCSme 3y ago
PHP!
rpastuszak 3y ago
I moved from static HTML to 11ty (https://11ty.dev https://11ty.dev) for the same reason and I'm pretty happy with how simple it allows you to keep things. Plus, it helps me avoid yak shaving instead of writing content! I think for a site like this I'd go with 11ty, just a clean project without a template or custom config, one collection to pull the photos from Flickr inline the styles. (just sharing my personal approach, nothing wrong with Jamie's approach, ofc)
- projektfu 3y ago
  Thanks for the link.

michaelteter 3y ago

How was your experience with Vapor?... Also, you might find some value in an approach that I used recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36592641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36592641). Using a Google Sheet as the data driver was easy, but it could have just as well been a filesystem of photos.

jamiedumont 3y ago
I really want to like Vapor because it's just a simple stripped back server-side framework; but I always get frustrated building with it. I've loved learning SwiftUI, but Vapor - even with Leaf swapped out for Plot - just isn't as ergonomic. Plus I have the lingering memory of working with Elixir and Phoenix LiveView which is kind of the gold standard for web frameworks at the moment in my opinion.

kthartic 3y ago

For my personal photography website I use - Svelte + TailwindCSS (Basically just a couple html files, plus the power of templating) - Flickr API (To pull my photos from an album that I use just for this website) - Netlify (To host the site - all have to do is `git push` and the site auto deploys!) Total cost (incl hosting): $0 With Flickr I can manage the photos from my phone via the Flickr app. With Netlify I don't have to tinker with an actual server box, plus it's free. I love it <3