Best platform for photo and text blogging advise please
June 15, 2016 6:28 AM Subscribe
Please try to answer this as if speaking to a 7 year old.
We are a small group of independent photojournalists and text journalists who wish to provide written content augmenting photojournalism in 3 languages and thus reach a wider international audience.
Please suggest how we should do this together with your reasoning.
Things to consider below the fold:
The photos in any story will always be the same it is just the text that will change, due to language.
I am presuming that every platform you suggest will have the ability to have the language button/tag you often see at the top right of pages who give content in several languages and thus lead to
the story in that language. Does this come down to Blogger vs Wordpress.
Should I be looking at more than one ``platform´´? eg photos on a photo-hoster (which?); Video/ slideshow on Youtube; the blog as such to hotlink to photo/video content.
Cost. Not necessarily the set up cost / annual subscription if required though free or near to it is always preferred. I believe (I could be wrong) that as this project ages and takes up more virtual space that it will cost more to host. My thinking is muddy on this.
As a major part of this is photography the definition of the photos must be good. Is this adding an extra problem?
Should there be multiple content provider access? or is it better to have one person as editor who inserts content as provided by the other native language speakers.
Comments will not be an option because of the very polarised society we are in. ( A well known leftist blogger had to leave the country for three months after physical menacing and threats in the street and in restaurants).
What have I overlooked?
Thank you in advance for trying to help here. Please assume that I am 7 years old and need my hand held through this process.
English is my native language but only one of my collaborators speaks it as a second language. I therefore have to fully understand what I am trying to do and why in order to explain this to them.
The photos in any story will always be the same it is just the text that will change, due to language.
I am presuming that every platform you suggest will have the ability to have the language button/tag you often see at the top right of pages who give content in several languages and thus lead to
the story in that language. Does this come down to Blogger vs Wordpress.
Should I be looking at more than one ``platform´´? eg photos on a photo-hoster (which?); Video/ slideshow on Youtube; the blog as such to hotlink to photo/video content.
Cost. Not necessarily the set up cost / annual subscription if required though free or near to it is always preferred. I believe (I could be wrong) that as this project ages and takes up more virtual space that it will cost more to host. My thinking is muddy on this.
As a major part of this is photography the definition of the photos must be good. Is this adding an extra problem?
Should there be multiple content provider access? or is it better to have one person as editor who inserts content as provided by the other native language speakers.
Comments will not be an option because of the very polarised society we are in. ( A well known leftist blogger had to leave the country for three months after physical menacing and threats in the street and in restaurants).
What have I overlooked?
Thank you in advance for trying to help here. Please assume that I am 7 years old and need my hand held through this process.
English is my native language but only one of my collaborators speaks it as a second language. I therefore have to fully understand what I am trying to do and why in order to explain this to them.
My go to suggestion for making things simple is Squarespace. It's inexpensive and simple, and you don't have to worry about image quality or size or bandwidth. You also don't have to update software. It has some limits around templating (how the site looks) and their multi-language solution is duplicate content, which isn't ideal. (Ideally, you would only duplicate the translated text, instead of having to do everything three times.)
There may be a better solution, but Squarespace is simple and inexpensive and will get the job done.
posted by cnc at 10:27 AM on June 15, 2016
There may be a better solution, but Squarespace is simple and inexpensive and will get the job done.
posted by cnc at 10:27 AM on June 15, 2016
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Consider hunting for/inventing a URL that is available in all the country domains and makes some kind of sense, so you'll have photozap.com, photozap.uk, photozap.cl all point to the same site. That will more naturally be indexed by localized search engines and naturally be directed (may take work) to the language version of the site.
If there's a possibility that you'll get very popular have a plan to either fund the bandwidth or get it shutdown or seriously reduced before a post goes viral. There are billing options that can be exorbitant if not planned in advance.
If you put hi-res images on a site, they will be appropriated, a high res image that goes viral linked from a zillion twitter, tumblr, pinterest accounts without a policy and plan one could have a high bandwidth bill and no one reads your words.
I think Wordpress is your most practical direction, there are free multianguage themes but going with a supported option will not be expensive initially and probably save in the long run.
There are free content hosting hacks all over, it all depends on where on the spectrum of hobby to professional you plan on being. URL's are $10-20 each a year. Disk space is steadily getting cheaper and one could make a site that just points urls to personal image repositories on dropbox/amazon/google/instagram but that seems like it would be dissatisfying from how you're discussing your project. Bandwidth could be the most costly if you've got images that will explode into a cause celeb. That either needs funding, a way to monitize clicks or a shutoff each month at a certain limit.
Good luck and do post on projects.
posted by sammyo at 9:03 AM on June 15, 2016 [1 favorite]