photography ecommerce site

[mrwild]

hi i was wondering if it was possible to incorporate a thumbnail gallery system into an eccomerce component in order to create a photography print sales website?

thanks

[drmmr763]

I built a website for a photographer who is selling notecard prints, we're using a thumbnail viewer called highslide (its a mambot). We hacked virtuemart to get it to work, its an easy hack, and it works well for him. Take a look:

http://www.jerryacton.com

[mrwild]

top website............. very good
love the gallery format and the way the pics pop up................

what id like to do is to have the buy now buttons incorporated in that style of gallery system
or  preferably have a horizontal line of thumbnails that when clicked on produce and enlargement which then
has the buy now at the bottom of the pic

[drmmr763]

Haha, thankyou. It was actually one of my favorite 'baby' projects.

As to what you want to do, it sounds like you could pull it off just using paypal buttons and some tables and a lightbox module. You build out a page of content that has tables, you put an image with lightbox on one table cell, a paypal 'buy now' button corresponding beneath it. The user hits the button, the site jumps to paypal, they put in their paypal ID or a credit card number, along with name, address, and phone number. You get a email, they get an email, you mail the merchandise, and its money for you, product for them.

[mrwild]

thanks
great idea........... however id like a site cart as im going to have a large number of photos.

[drmmr763]

well...then I would strongly recommend virtue mart. You can do a mambot hack, there are directions on their site. You build a category, a product, etc...they add items to the cart, then jump to paypal, put in their info, and its a done deal.

[mrwild]

Im looking at it now actually............. ideally id like the a thumbnail system on virtuemart........ is this possible????........ or also that ligghtbox popup system you have on your site would look cool if added instead of the generic pop up.

[drmmr763]

VirtueMart has a pre-built thumb/large image system built in. For you to do something like me you'll need to install one of the MANY lightbox (sometimes referred to as slimbox) mambots out there. Now, mambots will not work on Virtuemart unless you hack a few files. Its easy to do and there are directions on Virtuemart's website. If you want the mambot that I am using-you can find it at:

http://www.joomlaprodigy.com/

Its one of his free extensions, and its called HighSlide. At the exact moment, (I just checked) he is rebuilding his site, so its currently unavailable for download. But there are several dozen of like lightbox features out there. Search in extensions.

[mrwild]

hi there
thanks for your reply......... and the tips are helpful. i will have a go.

[ronsfo]

I am also a photographer looking to develop a Joomla site ecommerce website. I'm a novice at this point, need a consultant that can point me to the right ecommerce, gallery display and PayPal link.

This is the type of site I'm looking for
http://www.jerryacton.com

My current site is
www.yuill.com

Thanks
[email protected]
415-336-8642

[bdavisx]

This is a great discussion, I just found it because I'm looking to move from my existing photo sales hosting account (ExposureManager.com) to one that I host. I haven't found anything I like that isn't incredibly expensive.

Did anyone that posted to this thread earlier ever find anything else that they liked?

JAlbum is supposed to be coming out with an update that will allow directly embedding albums in a webpage (there are ways to do it now, but they don't seem very seemless). Some JAlbum albums have sales capabilities. Still waiting for the update though.

My website is currently a Wordpress site (http://www.howardsend.com), I'd like to keep the website as Wordpress, but would certainly add Joomla as the e-commerce section if I find a suitable replacement.

[drmmr763]

Last time I posted here VirtueMart was a lot further behind and so my post isn't as relevant anymore.

I've built a new photography-sales site since the JerryActon site (which wasn't as big into sales), that is:

http://www.dandenneyphoto.net

Look under "prints for sale" to see a store with popup images (lightbox enabled on the detail product page).

Now one thing you need to decide before doing anything is are you selling prints (like the site I mention) or digital downloads? That's going to make a world of difference here. VirtueMart will actually help you in both models, though. VirtueMart supports digital download sales as well as traditional physical ones.

VirtueMart is often seen as a pretty code heavy / functionally full extension, which is true, but if if it does everything you need and nothing else does, I'd say it's the best choice.

If you're looking for a pure ecommerce solution you could consider doing something like Magento, but that isn't for the light of heart / inexperienced folk.

[NatanDotan]

hi

have u checked smugmug?