Flash based websites are the standard portfolio piece for many creative professionals and photographers, in this article we will address the pros and cons of Flash based websites.

Many companies have sprung up in recent years allowing creative professionals easy ways to publish their work, none easier than Flash based sites. Most Flash sites have a gallery/portfolio, about page, services page, contact page, and then some other random text pages. Many include a music player and other features such as animation and text effects.

While these animations could only be done with Flash some years ago, now, any website can do the same effects without Flash. Flash based sites look really really cool, but that coolness hurts Google page rank even with SEO.

Lets start out by looking at the Pros and Cons of flash sites plus who should use them.

Pros

• Easy to update
• Cool effects and animations
• Can have music (which annoys many)
• Easily add multiple image galleries
• Look very clean and polished
• Prevent saving of images

Cons

• Many Flash sites look alike
• Require longer to load
• Require special software
• Usually hurt Google rankings and search results
• Too simplified to be a real site
• Sometimes less user friendly
• Costly to purchase

These are a few quick comparisons for and against Flash based websites for creative professionals. While they are definitely not a good choice for some people, they work fine for certain people.

If you are the following, a full Flash site will work:

• Famous photographer (example: ChaseJarvis.com)
• Photographers who don’t care about their Google page rank
• Photographers who need something really simple to update
• Photographers who need cheap thrills

A new trend is to pair a full Flash site with a blog. By paring a site with a blog it allows Google to “see” some of the content. In turn, many of these people are making their blog into the news section of the site and heavily filling it with keywords, helping their Google ranking.

Another bad habit of Flash sites are intro pages. When you visit the domain, first you must click to enter. Search engines don’t like intro pages,  plus they are annoying. Many people also try and pack their intro page full of keywords. While packing with keywords may work in the short term, search engines do penalize sites for these “black hat” practices. This screenshot shows how one photographer packed his intro page full of key words in white text on a white background. This is against Google regulations and his site may be penalized because of it.

Your site should have quality content that people actually want to read and use which in turn will help your search engine ranking.

So, after all this, you may still want to go with a Flash site…

Here are some of the big Flash site providers:

• http://www.livebooks.com – Live Books
• http://bludomain.com – Blu Domain
• http://www.photobiz.com -  Photo Biz
• http://www.ifp3.com – ifp3
• http://www.wix.com – Wix (free)

For certain creative professionals full Flash sites are the right choice, but for most photographers who want to be found easy, Flash is not the way to go. It provides many hurdles and creates a blackhole for your site. Instead of going with a full Flash site consider hiring a web designer for about the same price as some of the companies listed above or purchase a HTML/CSS template and customize yourself in Dreamweaver.