Would you use WordPress for a graphic intensive static site?

[lindastacy]

I'm helping a friend set up a website to represent her brick and mortar custom painted furniture studio/shop. The goal is to set up a basic, static site now, but be able to expand on it in the future to include ecommerce.

Right now she needs to be able to present samples of their work, announce sales, announce craft shows they're participating in, feature new designs, and the like. We will be using a lot of graphics (we can do clickable thumbnails for the images).

Because she has no experience in web design or maintenance, no budget to buy an editor, and wants to be able to update the home page and graphics easily herself, I'm thinking WordPress is a good option.

Can it handle a graphic heavy site? Will it easily grow into include a shopping cart later on? Would you recommend something else?

Thanks in advance.

[retta719]

I think it would work, and it will definitely make it easy for her to maintain things. I've seen a lot of WP themes that are designed to show of photography, photo-blogging as opposed to word blogging.

Could something like that maybe help her to showcase her work in a nice way? For handmade type items I love to see bright well presented photos when I'm shopping around, so that's just my brain saying "give me eye candy" ...

I think Revolution themes had one or two.... and there are a few others out there as well. I'm sure some of our resident theme addicts know what I'm talking about ;)

[Getagrip]

Wordpress works fine, as long as she is able to insert graphics ok - its really easy to use. You could always put together a Wordpress site and see how she likes it, and go a different route if it doesn't look the way she wants it to.

[LisaWood]

Yes, it would work fine. I also use a plugin on some of my clients' sites for a flash photo gallery. It's pretty easy to set up and looks nice. See an example here (http://colecontractingvt.com/gallery)

[StephenT]

Very nice, Lisa!

[LisaWood]

Thank you Stephen. :)

[melissa evans]

I use Wordpress for any client site that requires a cms if I can (content management system --- ability for average person to make updates)

There are good plug ins such as the Featured Content Gallery and for advanced slideshows I really like SlidePress (http://slidepress.net/) which allows you to use a nice flash slideshow program inside of wordpress.

Note: Slideshow pro is $39 but well worth it imho. http://slideshowpro.net/

PS - these links are not my affiliate links ... they probably should be ... I'll have to look into that!

Melissa

[lindastacy]

Thanks for all the help. We're going to go with WordPress because of the ease of updating for my friend and I'm working on a sample now, Getagrip.

Loretta, I hadn't thought of that... I've seen a couple photo blogs too. I'll definitely look into those types of themes.

Lisa, the example site is absolutely gorgeous! But makes me realize how much of an amateur I am. But that's okay... it's inspiration.. something to strive for. :)

And thanks for the slideshow plugin in suggestions, Melissa. I will be needing one.

[retta719]

Definitely let us know how it turns out!

[LisaWood]

Thanks scarpet1. :)

[quantikev]

Personally I would install MODx (http://modxcms.com/) with the gallery (http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/MaxiGallery) plugin. Once you have it set up it's pretty simple. It's main advantage is tremendous flexibility - you can make it look any way you want.

Kevin
Reliable Website Maintenance (http://www.reliablewebsitemaintenance.com)