Primarily for the ladies, but gents welcome to chime in

I am looking for some recommendations / referrals for website design companies that are experienced in this field. My budget is highly flexible- I want a simple site, but one that is elegantly designed and customized to my needs.  

Gents- any website tips? Is there anything you find that is often overlooked, but important to you? I'd be more than grateful for any advice or tips regarding what information you like to see, or design aspects you appreciate!  

Also, I would love to hear recommendations for photographers! Most of the highly recommended ones here seem to cater to the Aldo Antonio-esque, and I prefer a more natural style. I'm currently based in North Carolina, but am willing to travel or wait for a touring photographer if it's someone who fits my style.  

Thanks in advance!!

I absolutely love website design and find it can say a lot about a provider... as a provider.  

Designers & What Not to Do

1. Black Ash Consulting - this is actually ran by a provider so she gets it. The thing I liked about working with Black Ash is she uses Squarespace so she taught me how to use it as we went along. Now, I manage my own website and do not rely on a web designer to do everything. I find Squarespace to have simple but absolutely beautiful templates.  

2. Paramour Designs - they are really great and my first website was through them. However, they are based in Australia and sometimes there is a major delay in updates.  

3. No fancy scripts of flash. it'll slow down your site. Loading pages should be fast. And for the love of all that is discretion, no auto start audio or video. While creativity is wonderful, sometimes a piece of programming can be too complicated for the task at hand. If you want an example, PM me. I'll give you the password to my old site through Paramour.  

4. Yourself. Yes you can design an amazing website all by yourself using Squarespace, Wix, or even Word Press. Again, i recommend Squarespace. You can buy your domain through them and everything!

 
Photogs

1. Research the photographer. If you don't feel the vibe or don't see yourself in their portfolio it may not be a great shoot. Or you can take chances like I did and go for it anyway. My best shoots have been with photographers that didn't have someone like me in their portfolio. I think it's because we are open to just experimenting which allows for a lot of choices.  

2. If you're not wanting to wait sometimes the best photographer isn't an industry one. You'd be surprised at how many boudoir photogs are open to shooting with providers. My first two shoots were with boudoir photogs and they were both extremely understanding. In fact, there are quite a few providers that now shoot with them in our area.  

3. I adore Black Lotus and Hello Miss. Black Lotus is based in Montreal but tours the states regularly. She is now my go-to lady because our time together was fun. I would ask to be added to her mailing list as some providers also fly to her when she is in the states. Also, Hello Miss was amazing to work with and focuses on really natural photos with natural light. He is based in Australia but will be back later this year, hopefully.  

 
If you ever want to chop it up over website design, I'd love to. It's literally one of my favorite things to talk about! I hope some of this helped. Good Luck, Darling!

LJ, xox

Oh wow, thank you so much for such an in depth and helpful response! I am headed to bed but if you don't mind I would love to contact you tomorrow! Your site is amazingly well done, it's seriously an inspiration. So reccs and advice you've given are exactly like what I was looking for!  

Thanks again- greatly appreciated

Feel free to reach out via email and I'll respond as soon as I can tomorrow afternoon. And thank you for your kind words about my site.  

Have a good evening!

LJ

I say this all the time: This ain't Disney. This ain't Toys-R-Us. This ain't yahoo news.  

We must be discrete and protect our privacy and avoid malware, etc.

NO FLASH!
NO SCRIPTS!  
NO Password protected galleries.
No auto-play audio or video (there are people around us!)!
etc. etc. etc.

I also always recommend that if you want to get fancy, offer the following from your home page or landing page:  

Welcome to my website.
Click [here] for the safe, simple but fully functional vanilla HTML version.
Click [here] for the super deluxe, all the bells and whistles version.
Click [here] for the mobile version.

HAVE YOUR WEBMASTER CHECK THE WEBSITE USING TOR.

So telling someone to make it TOR friendly isn't really going to help, especially when someone is just learning the basics of creating a website for themselves.

You can totally have a password protected gallery. However, if you're going to have a password protected gallery (some create these for their most loyal clients or there is a paid membership "VIP area") ensure you have a public gallery as well.  

Also Squarespace will optimize your site for desktop, tablet, and mobile from the jump.

What great advice London! Thank you.

Take a look at Veda Designs and Orchid Designs. I have friends who've been with these design sites for years. Veda  has a referral area on her site. Check the photographer section. Good luck.

Be sure it is easy to read the type.   Use a decent size type, and a simple font.  Black type on white works best.

Also be sure to list exactly what city and state you are from.  You'd be amazed how many gals' websites leave off that important statistic.

 Proof read the hell out of it.  Some guys are really turned off my bad grammar and poor usage.

Finally, spend to get some great professional pics.  I think they do make a difference.

The bar is very, very low for provider websites, and a really great way to get an edge.

My go-to has been squarespace. You can have someone else design it and have you maintain it, so you can swap info/pictures whenever. It's all pretty simple.

Also, the pages are hosted in really fast CDN's, so it loads more or less instantly.

TOR is free software for safe, anonymous browsing.

Using TOR, my computer is protected from surfing trails: it doesn't keep cookies, it doesn't store anything salvageable in memory, it doesn't mess me up with a lot of unwanted stuff. TOR blocks a lot of crap designed to invade my privacy or with security defects that can compromise my privacy.  Eg., TOR blocks flash.  
 
TOR hides my ID from my ISP.  With the new changes, that is very important. The ISP can't do anything with what it doesn't have ... other than that I am using TOR.  
 
There a MANY legitimate reasons to use TOR, not just hobbying.  And the new ISP reporting rule change probably add even more!  
 
One GREAT thing about TER, that I have not praised before, is that it is TOR compliant. TER uses simple code and protocols. They do not force bells and whistles down our browsers' throats. I rarely have trouble with security related (TOR non-compliant) problems with TER.
 
Every Provider should check her ads and websites for TOR compatibility or have her webmaster or hosting company do the same.  
 
TOR is simple, free and easy to download and use, whether for full time use or just for testing web pages. You should always get it from the official website, and not the copy-cat download sites, to avoid the possibility of hackers trying to provide a fake (compromised) TOR bundle.

I love it when a girl creates a video and has that on her website.  

Erin Black is a marketing genius (not to mention an all-around kickass lady).

I, Lyndsey, am and can create websites as well.  Please check out mine (link below).  There you will find another website that I also created.  I use Wix, which is very easy to use and am happy to show you how to use it after all is said and done.

There are photographers all over...The closest to you is probably Aldo and he is a great photographer and very reasonable.  I am not sure your budget but their are photographers that I would also recommend:

Megan Love
Black Lotus
The Mermaid Photography (Tampa based)
Carlos Mendez (Tampa based)

Out of these I have shot with Aldo and Mermaid but not the others.  However, I love their work!

I have also created websites for Makenzie Rae #143954.

If I can help, let me know.
[email protected]

Lyndsey