Koken CMS Updates

The Art of Photography: A Discussion on Website Platforms and Tools

These are different platforms you can use to create your online presence as an artist, photographer, or writer. There's Squarespace, which is known for its ease of use and hands-off approach, perfect for those who want a simple website without much fuss. You just pay a monthly fee, hook up your domain name, and fly. On the other hand, there's WordPress, which offers a wide range of customization options but requires more time and effort to set up and maintain.

If you're looking for a balance between ease of use and flexibility, you might want to consider Cen, a relatively new platform that's gained popularity among photographers and media-based site owners. Cen takes the best parts of Squarespace and WordPress, offering a solid content management system that's friendly for beginners while still allowing for advanced customization options.

Squarespace is still considered the gold standard in terms of ease of use, with its user-friendly interface and robust features that make it easy to create a professional-looking website without needing extensive technical knowledge. However, some users may find it restrictive, especially when it comes to customizing their site beyond what's offered by default.

WordPress, on the other hand, is a highly customizable platform that offers virtually unlimited possibilities for design and functionality. While this can be exciting for advanced users, it also means that you'll need to invest time and effort into learning how to use it effectively. For photographers and media-based site owners who are comfortable with coding or have experience with website development, WordPress can be a powerful tool.

In terms of cost, Squarespace is generally more expensive than Cen, especially for larger sites or those that require more advanced features. However, Cen's pricing model offers a great balance between affordability and feature set, making it an attractive option for those who want to establish a strong online presence without breaking the bank.

One of the standout features of Cen is its ease of setup with hosting providers like Bluehost. While setting up your own hosting can be done, using a reputable provider like Bluehost takes care of the technical aspects, allowing you to focus on creating content and growing your audience.

After speaking with the team from Cen, it's clear that they're committed to ongoing development and improvement, investing time and resources into ensuring their platform stays up-to-date and secure. This is reflected in their business model, which prioritizes affordability and ease of use while still offering premium features and services for those who need them.

The author of the podcast has experience with Cen's website, having used it on their own art photography site, and can attest to its effectiveness as a tool for photographers and media-based site owners. While there may be some teething issues or areas for improvement, the overall package offers a great balance between ease of use, customization options, and affordability.

In conclusion, when it comes to website platforms and tools, Cen is definitely worth considering for those in the photography and media industries. With its solid content management system, user-friendly interface, and affordable pricing model, it's an attractive option for anyone looking to establish a strong online presence without sacrificing quality or professionalism.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody welcome back to another episode of The Art of Photography my name is Ted Forbes and today we are filming uh our episode in lovely Baltimore Maryland from the hotel room and I've been here on a conference trip this week and if you have seen me on Twitter and Facebook and stuff I apologize we have not had time to do a Meetup mainly because I'm here on business I would love to come back to Baltimore it's an amazing City this is my first trip here and it's been a lot of fun um a little little known fact about me uh if you don't already know I'm a huge baseball nerd and uh my hotel room overlooks the Orioles Park which is the Beautiful Camden Yards and I will show you what that looks like um it's been fun I actually got to go to a game and just a random tidbit I'm a complete baseball geek so this has been a lot of fun saw him play the Red Socks um and it was amazing game it was fun so Baltimore I will be back um but so you're just going to have to watch an episode from a hotel room just because I'm dedicated to getting these out but anyway today I want to talk a little bit about something called cooken and we've discussed Cen on the show before it's been probably a month or two um Cen is a Content management system that is designed mainly for photographers uh for any site that is Media driven I don't want to repeat a lot of the information that I did in the previous show on this so if you haven't seen it I'll link it up in the show notes we actually did two videos on coke and there's a you know kind of how to if you want to install it and get it going and then there's some other basic stuff over the top I will give you a general overview and Cen is amazing it is free uh and it is a Content management system so it's it kind of Falls somewhere with their model and design between something like Squarespace that's a self-hosted platform and then over on the other side where you have WordPress so much like WordPress it is free but it's not an open-source development uh at the core it's done by a company called Domin design I'll talk about this in a second um and they have just done a beautiful job on this um we're going to look at the interface um I'm on their mailing list and you should be too because I think they're really an interesting space to watch and they I got some emails last week and they were talking about a lot of the new features they're pushing out and so their business model is that they're going to offer the core um cocen for free there's free templates free themes uh some free plugins and then they have some premium stuff that you can buy too so it's not that expensive but that is what supports their development and their business model on this and I'm really excited about that because um and I've talked to some of the guys after we did the last episode a bunch of nice guys put this together they're Ace developers who know exactly what they're doing and they have a product that's really amazing and this is important to you as a photographer because you know the most obvious use case on something like this would be your personal portfolio if you need some kind of content management system that interfaces or integrates with Lightroom and is really easy to control and drag and drop and you know present your work um you know but any media driven website this works really well for maybe you do video production or maybe you've got a collaboration project you're doing with some other people so let's um go over to the computer I want to look at C and I want to look under the hood and and talk a little bit about what makes or what I believe makes cooken so amazing so anyway come on over and let's have a look okay so we're going to take a look at Cen here and I have covered this as I mentioned uh in another actually two episodes so I'll put links to those in the show notes I don't want to repeat everything but at the same time if you've never seen Cen um just to give you an idea of where this sits and I I really love what they're doing with this because I think it's the right decision I think it's the right move and it's something that I think in the space of content Management systems for media based sites and photography it's perfect um and I really like what they're doing with that so you know basically you have a front end and if you want to go look at a coconut install um I'm revamping my own website using Cen and that URL is focus. nuu that's Focus focus. Inu little Corky domain there that I've got but anyway basically um you know you've got your front end that you know everybody sees when they come visit your website and then you have this backend which is actually sorry this is a different install this is a local install of this and what I really like about it one is how media driven this is so you know you have a a layout for the content management system that looks a lot like Lightroom or even Bridge um you know the Adobe product so if you're used to using those you know as a photographer as a media producer already um then it's a really natural flow and fit into just extension of your workflow now so it works in very much the same way um you can edit images you can you know edit the titles captions you know data surrounding those one thing that would be nice to see on this that you know they could probably add in future versions is you know if you're really going to do digital Asset Management on this which may be a website that's overkill for but to give you a little more Fields than just title and caption you know um having dates um except data from the camera um even you know photographer information CU you know I think one of the most obvious uses for something like cooken is doing a personal portfolio website and I think that that's probably what it's getting used as is the most but you know really what I think kooken excels at here is it you know it it's just for anything that's a media driven website so this could have a lot of uses for you know a business that's has media assets they create or if you have shoot even an online magazine or something like that or it would also be neat to see collaborative projects you know between photographers and something like this it doesn't have to be just a portfolio website and that's what I like about it it's just you know excels it what it does best is is just a media driven website so you know that being said I want to get under the hood a little bit um in the other videos I show you how to actually install it um just to give you an idea of where this fits on the Continuum you know if you have a paid service something like a Squarespace that's an all-in-one um you know you're paying for a lot of convenience on something like that and then on the other end of the spectrum you have you know things like Drupal or even WordPress uh which are very popular to use too and the biggest difference is with something like that you're going to have to set up your own hosting and if you're interested in that I can put links in the show notes as well to hosting services that you know I recommend for shared hosting accounts and stuff like that um but anyway you're going to have to bring your own hosting you know pay for that and then just set up the website so you're going to be responsible for running it um and a lot of people prefer that because actually they have a little more control over it uh sometimes the legalities around things are a little more simple when you're running your own website on your own server um and Cen sit somewhere in the middle so you know WordPress is free to download as is Drupal but they're also open- Source projects so they're contributed to uh updated in the same way and that works really well for for I believe those platforms but it's really hard to start a new platform which is what Ken is doing here because what they're giving you is something that's really media driven and the way it works is Domin design is the group that is working on this and so it's kind of closed off but it's privately developed on the core side from from Domin and they kind of take what they're doing and I'm going to tell you I'm show you their business model in a second and then you can also contribute to that so developers can contribute themes uh they can write plugins stuff like that so you know I'm in the interface here for the backend which is just you know whatever your website is.com whatever admin and then you log in and go from there and so for instance if I go over to the store it's telling me there's some updates so so a couple things I really like and this is what they're doing is they're offering um almost kind of like the inapp purchase model for mobile phones it's very popular is that you know the core software is free and it's free for everybody you can just download it and install it just pay for your own hosting and that's really all you're out and and it's very affordable to St have a website what they offer as kind of this paid service are two things they offer you know premium themes so if you want to for the convenience of not having to create your own theme you can buy one on here they do have some free ones and then the paid versions are a little nicer and they have a few more features to them um you know $60 is kind of what these are running right now which honestly I think is very affordable and quite a good deal um you know for themes if I go to plugins this is the other thing they're offering is they have some paid plugins now and this is where I really think we're starting to see C mature and they're doing some really cool stuff here so if you need to be able to do for instance something very useful would be image watermarks for people who want to copyright their stuff and so they actually have a plugin it's a premium plugin so it's $35 and you're done um you don't have to write any code or do anything so everything's kind of an add-on stuff so you can just customize it what you need if you need anything at all and I think it's a really really cool way to run this um they also have video import from Vimeo um you can do an Instagram import it's just a $10 plugin from that which is very useful if you're running a blog or something and you just want to import all your Instagram images into your photo library some people have a lot of that you know so it's a very very you know cool thing to have if you're worried about copying and sharing they've got a plugin to protect images presumably using JavaScript I haven't actually used it um there's time stamps to a regular format um the other thing that's cool this is awesome too um one of the things I talked about last time is you know a lot of these cms's it's like you know you're not doing a black blog platform so there's no commenting system built into cocen necessarily but what's really cool is you can actually add discus or add discuss or however they pronounce it uh which is a free plugin there's pulse transition pack pulse playback timer HTML injector if you need to customize code you just want to send simple way to do that font loaders Google analytics Spotify embeds and radio embeds so there's a lot you can do with this and I really think this is cool because what it is is it's for mediad driven websites um I love the interface with the content management system as I mentioned earlier it really works in much the same way that bridge or Lightroom does and then when you have updates like you know I haven't upd this is my local install so I haven't updated it since the last video we did um you just go in here you say update all and look how beautiful this is it just downloads the updates in the background and installs them and puts them in place and so you really just you know don't have to mess with anything um and even you know as you can see in the other video that I did to the install of this is so elegant and easy it's literally you upload one file to your website give it the credentials for the database and all that and boom it handles everything else and it's just really clean you can tell this is well coded well thought out and these guys from domy really know what they're doing with this and you know I really want to support them and that's why I'm kind of talking about them on the show because obviously you know it's a photography based podcast and most of you guys have websites of your own or maybe you have other projects you're working on or collaborative stuff and you know I think it's important to look at Cen as a viable content management system that is you know just it there's a new place for it it's it's not WordPress although it has some of those elements um and it's really not Squarespace either it's somewhere in the middle and I just I think they do a fantastic job and these guys know what they're doing and you know once again I I'm just experimenting around and I really haven't cleaned up the whole thing yet but um you know my personal website I'm I'm working on working with cookon on and uh it's been a lot of fun I it's you know I've just got free themes on here right now I'm trying to figure it out but uh I really like what these guys are doing if you want to learn more and and you need the web address on here um if you go to coken ken. me.me and the website has tons of information on if you want to you know just an overview of what I've given you about how this works what happens um another thing that I forgot to mention in the last episode that is really cool is they do have a Lightroom plugin so so if you really want to make this easy and be able to upload photos directly from Lightroom uh into your website I mean my gosh how much easier is it that to create content you know it it just it's Flawless so it sys with Lightroom uh and it's free and that's the amazing thing now again like I said earlier what is the cost of free actually well you do need to have a hosting service to do this um if you just want to download it and play with it on your computer I it's totally free but if you want to actually have this as a website you're on your own with hosting um but hosting is very inexpensive for shared accounts you somebody like Blu host or media Temple and again I'll have links to those in the show notes as well um anyway all the stuff on here that you need if you are a designer or a coder and you want to learn how to customize it and uh work with plugins and stuff um you know there is the documentation on here if you go into the help section and I was looking into it earlier just to see how mature it is and it's really cool they've got an API in here if you're a Cod you know what that is and so it makes it really easy to custom code your own plugins and content so if you are a developer as well um this does give you a a great starting point and a great system to work within because it's it's mature enough to handle a lot of those things and it really is getting better um you know the the update just came out recently and so there's a lot of stuff with the quote unquote store that they've got and the other cool thing and I don't know if I made this really obvious earlier but you know if you go to store. COK and.me obviously there's a website for the store but you don't have to go download and install from here you can do it all from the from the um from the back end of the content management system which is what I'm showing you here um so I'm actually viewing the store inside my back end my web you know content management system here and it's totally cool like I said and uh I just think they're doing a wonderful job so go check it out and once again the URL is ken. that's K ken. and uh anyway I just they're doing wonderful stuff and uh if you're considering either your own personal website your own personal portfolio or even like I said earlier I think it'd be really neat to start seeing other collaborative things built on this platform cuz I I don't think it should be just limited to portfolios I think there's enough use um requirements and needs for just mediad driven websites and I think that's where cooken is really going to shine is being able to be versatile within that world and so anyway go check it out and see what you think for yourself and again I'll put show notes on the website uh which is the art of photography. TV the art of photography. TV um go there and I'll link back to the first episode I did in the install video so if you want to learn more you can you can get a more out of it there so anyway once again that is Cen so I'm really pretty excited about Cen and some of the stuff that they've introduced in the last couple weeks and that they've been emailing out about um I think that they have a wonderful future ahead of them and I think that they offer something that there's a legitimate need for in the space of photography I think that you know with all these things and I think this is where you want to look at this objectively um if you are in the midst of either uh redesigning or even putting up your website for the first time you know we've talked about a lot of solutions to this on the show and being a former developer that's a subject that is interesting to me and so that's why I covered a lot uh but you know like I said on this Continuum you kind of have Cen sitting in the middle and you have something like square space over on one side and you have WordPress on the other and you could even use Drupal there's other content Management Systems as well um and I think they all have merits I don't think there's one that's better than the others um I think that when you're making the decision of what you want to do and maybe you have a project you're working on like I said I'd love to see people collaborate on something like this and you know maybe do more of a magazine format and so anyway these are different platforms you can use make that simple and easy um I think that if you really want a complete hands-off approach where you just pay a monthly fee and go Squarespace really still are the kings in this area and they offer a wonderful product and it is no M no fuss I mean literally you subscribe to the service you hook up your domain name and fly you know um and then on the other end of the spectrum is WordPress and WordPress is wonderful but you have to kind of be okay with tinkering a lot with it um I run the art photography website off of WordPress I've used WordPress a lot over the years and it does require a lot of dedication and time and a lot of figuring things out and especially when you want to start customizing it you the better you get it that the quicker it goes I'm pretty comfortable with that but I don't think it's a better service than Squarespace I don't think any of these are I think they're all viable options depending on what it is that you want to use now cocen is kind of in the middle of all these um it is going to be a lot less headache than Squarespace or excuse me than than WordPress in terms of having to learn how to use it unless you want to develop themes or plugins that's what Cen has done well they've taken a little bit of that Squarespace model of just a really solid content management system that's very friendly for photographers and that is wonderful um the the the relation to something like WordPress though is it does require your own hosting that's not a difficult thing to do or anything but you do need to host it on server and you need to update it make sure that it's maintained um not that that requires a lot of work but and if you're interested in trying cocon and you want just a basic Hosting account that's going to cover your traffic and you know do what you need it to do um I recommend Blu host for people and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well uh blue host is wonderful it's just a server so you're going to go set up your account and then what you'll do is if you go look at the installation video for Coke and you'll upload the install file and it does the rest and it's that easy to set up but you do have to go deal with that um the cost is a lot cheaper than something like Squarespace is all you're doing is paying for the server and then any add-ons you want from cooken so anyway these are kind of three viable options that we've talked about over you know the course of several years of doing this podcast cen's the new one and I'm really excited about it and I think that it's it's just you know for photographers and people who are doing media based sites um I really think that that's the shining star to look at right now I think they're doing a lot of things just really well um you know there's always room for improvement and I I feel at least when I did the first show on Cen I was a little afraid because they offered such a great product but at the same time I didn't want just you know when you have a one group of designers that are working on something things come up and maybe money's an issue and maybe time's an issue and I was concerned that maybe Coke and the development on it would not stay to where it needed to be but now that I see what they're doing and that was explained to me by the way after I did that first video the guys from Cen contacted me but um now that you see what they're doing with this U they're going to be in it for the long haul and they do have a model where they can put money and time into it and you know being able to have that store and offer certain premium things for download I think is is a wonderful solution to that so anyway it's an interesting business model it's an interesting product that they've got and I think it's very useful for for photographers and I'm using it on my focus. Inu website um and I'm still sorting that out it's not presentation ready at this point but um you can certainly go look at it I'm not hiding it from anybody it's just not you know where I want it to be but anyway I'm I'm using Cen for that specifically because I really wanted to get familiar with it and use it and see if it's the right tool for the job and so far it had has not disappointed so anyway guys once again this has been another episode of The Art of Photography thanks for watching I'll see see you guys next week laterhey everybody welcome back to another episode of The Art of Photography my name is Ted Forbes and today we are filming uh our episode in lovely Baltimore Maryland from the hotel room and I've been here on a conference trip this week and if you have seen me on Twitter and Facebook and stuff I apologize we have not had time to do a Meetup mainly because I'm here on business I would love to come back to Baltimore it's an amazing City this is my first trip here and it's been a lot of fun um a little little known fact about me uh if you don't already know I'm a huge baseball nerd and uh my hotel room overlooks the Orioles Park which is the Beautiful Camden Yards and I will show you what that looks like um it's been fun I actually got to go to a game and just a random tidbit I'm a complete baseball geek so this has been a lot of fun saw him play the Red Socks um and it was amazing game it was fun so Baltimore I will be back um but so you're just going to have to watch an episode from a hotel room just because I'm dedicated to getting these out but anyway today I want to talk a little bit about something called cooken and we've discussed Cen on the show before it's been probably a month or two um Cen is a Content management system that is designed mainly for photographers uh for any site that is Media driven I don't want to repeat a lot of the information that I did in the previous show on this so if you haven't seen it I'll link it up in the show notes we actually did two videos on coke and there's a you know kind of how to if you want to install it and get it going and then there's some other basic stuff over the top I will give you a general overview and Cen is amazing it is free uh and it is a Content management system so it's it kind of Falls somewhere with their model and design between something like Squarespace that's a self-hosted platform and then over on the other side where you have WordPress so much like WordPress it is free but it's not an open-source development uh at the core it's done by a company called Domin design I'll talk about this in a second um and they have just done a beautiful job on this um we're going to look at the interface um I'm on their mailing list and you should be too because I think they're really an interesting space to watch and they I got some emails last week and they were talking about a lot of the new features they're pushing out and so their business model is that they're going to offer the core um cocen for free there's free templates free themes uh some free plugins and then they have some premium stuff that you can buy too so it's not that expensive but that is what supports their development and their business model on this and I'm really excited about that because um and I've talked to some of the guys after we did the last episode a bunch of nice guys put this together they're Ace developers who know exactly what they're doing and they have a product that's really amazing and this is important to you as a photographer because you know the most obvious use case on something like this would be your personal portfolio if you need some kind of content management system that interfaces or integrates with Lightroom and is really easy to control and drag and drop and you know present your work um you know but any media driven website this works really well for maybe you do video production or maybe you've got a collaboration project you're doing with some other people so let's um go over to the computer I want to look at C and I want to look under the hood and and talk a little bit about what makes or what I believe makes cooken so amazing so anyway come on over and let's have a look okay so we're going to take a look at Cen here and I have covered this as I mentioned uh in another actually two episodes so I'll put links to those in the show notes I don't want to repeat everything but at the same time if you've never seen Cen um just to give you an idea of where this sits and I I really love what they're doing with this because I think it's the right decision I think it's the right move and it's something that I think in the space of content Management systems for media based sites and photography it's perfect um and I really like what they're doing with that so you know basically you have a front end and if you want to go look at a coconut install um I'm revamping my own website using Cen and that URL is focus. nuu that's Focus focus. Inu little Corky domain there that I've got but anyway basically um you know you've got your front end that you know everybody sees when they come visit your website and then you have this backend which is actually sorry this is a different install this is a local install of this and what I really like about it one is how media driven this is so you know you have a a layout for the content management system that looks a lot like Lightroom or even Bridge um you know the Adobe product so if you're used to using those you know as a photographer as a media producer already um then it's a really natural flow and fit into just extension of your workflow now so it works in very much the same way um you can edit images you can you know edit the titles captions you know data surrounding those one thing that would be nice to see on this that you know they could probably add in future versions is you know if you're really going to do digital Asset Management on this which may be a website that's overkill for but to give you a little more Fields than just title and caption you know um having dates um except data from the camera um even you know photographer information CU you know I think one of the most obvious uses for something like cooken is doing a personal portfolio website and I think that that's probably what it's getting used as is the most but you know really what I think kooken excels at here is it you know it it's just for anything that's a media driven website so this could have a lot of uses for you know a business that's has media assets they create or if you have shoot even an online magazine or something like that or it would also be neat to see collaborative projects you know between photographers and something like this it doesn't have to be just a portfolio website and that's what I like about it it's just you know excels it what it does best is is just a media driven website so you know that being said I want to get under the hood a little bit um in the other videos I show you how to actually install it um just to give you an idea of where this fits on the Continuum you know if you have a paid service something like a Squarespace that's an all-in-one um you know you're paying for a lot of convenience on something like that and then on the other end of the spectrum you have you know things like Drupal or even WordPress uh which are very popular to use too and the biggest difference is with something like that you're going to have to set up your own hosting and if you're interested in that I can put links in the show notes as well to hosting services that you know I recommend for shared hosting accounts and stuff like that um but anyway you're going to have to bring your own hosting you know pay for that and then just set up the website so you're going to be responsible for running it um and a lot of people prefer that because actually they have a little more control over it uh sometimes the legalities around things are a little more simple when you're running your own website on your own server um and Cen sit somewhere in the middle so you know WordPress is free to download as is Drupal but they're also open- Source projects so they're contributed to uh updated in the same way and that works really well for for I believe those platforms but it's really hard to start a new platform which is what Ken is doing here because what they're giving you is something that's really media driven and the way it works is Domin design is the group that is working on this and so it's kind of closed off but it's privately developed on the core side from from Domin and they kind of take what they're doing and I'm going to tell you I'm show you their business model in a second and then you can also contribute to that so developers can contribute themes uh they can write plugins stuff like that so you know I'm in the interface here for the backend which is just you know whatever your website is.com whatever admin and then you log in and go from there and so for instance if I go over to the store it's telling me there's some updates so so a couple things I really like and this is what they're doing is they're offering um almost kind of like the inapp purchase model for mobile phones it's very popular is that you know the core software is free and it's free for everybody you can just download it and install it just pay for your own hosting and that's really all you're out and and it's very affordable to St have a website what they offer as kind of this paid service are two things they offer you know premium themes so if you want to for the convenience of not having to create your own theme you can buy one on here they do have some free ones and then the paid versions are a little nicer and they have a few more features to them um you know $60 is kind of what these are running right now which honestly I think is very affordable and quite a good deal um you know for themes if I go to plugins this is the other thing they're offering is they have some paid plugins now and this is where I really think we're starting to see C mature and they're doing some really cool stuff here so if you need to be able to do for instance something very useful would be image watermarks for people who want to copyright their stuff and so they actually have a plugin it's a premium plugin so it's $35 and you're done um you don't have to write any code or do anything so everything's kind of an add-on stuff so you can just customize it what you need if you need anything at all and I think it's a really really cool way to run this um they also have video import from Vimeo um you can do an Instagram import it's just a $10 plugin from that which is very useful if you're running a blog or something and you just want to import all your Instagram images into your photo library some people have a lot of that you know so it's a very very you know cool thing to have if you're worried about copying and sharing they've got a plugin to protect images presumably using JavaScript I haven't actually used it um there's time stamps to a regular format um the other thing that's cool this is awesome too um one of the things I talked about last time is you know a lot of these cms's it's like you know you're not doing a black blog platform so there's no commenting system built into cocen necessarily but what's really cool is you can actually add discus or add discuss or however they pronounce it uh which is a free plugin there's pulse transition pack pulse playback timer HTML injector if you need to customize code you just want to send simple way to do that font loaders Google analytics Spotify embeds and radio embeds so there's a lot you can do with this and I really think this is cool because what it is is it's for mediad driven websites um I love the interface with the content management system as I mentioned earlier it really works in much the same way that bridge or Lightroom does and then when you have updates like you know I haven't upd this is my local install so I haven't updated it since the last video we did um you just go in here you say update all and look how beautiful this is it just downloads the updates in the background and installs them and puts them in place and so you really just you know don't have to mess with anything um and even you know as you can see in the other video that I did to the install of this is so elegant and easy it's literally you upload one file to your website give it the credentials for the database and all that and boom it handles everything else and it's just really clean you can tell this is well coded well thought out and these guys from domy really know what they're doing with this and you know I really want to support them and that's why I'm kind of talking about them on the show because obviously you know it's a photography based podcast and most of you guys have websites of your own or maybe you have other projects you're working on or collaborative stuff and you know I think it's important to look at Cen as a viable content management system that is you know just it there's a new place for it it's it's not WordPress although it has some of those elements um and it's really not Squarespace either it's somewhere in the middle and I just I think they do a fantastic job and these guys know what they're doing and you know once again I I'm just experimenting around and I really haven't cleaned up the whole thing yet but um you know my personal website I'm I'm working on working with cookon on and uh it's been a lot of fun I it's you know I've just got free themes on here right now I'm trying to figure it out but uh I really like what these guys are doing if you want to learn more and and you need the web address on here um if you go to coken ken. me.me and the website has tons of information on if you want to you know just an overview of what I've given you about how this works what happens um another thing that I forgot to mention in the last episode that is really cool is they do have a Lightroom plugin so so if you really want to make this easy and be able to upload photos directly from Lightroom uh into your website I mean my gosh how much easier is it that to create content you know it it just it's Flawless so it sys with Lightroom uh and it's free and that's the amazing thing now again like I said earlier what is the cost of free actually well you do need to have a hosting service to do this um if you just want to download it and play with it on your computer I it's totally free but if you want to actually have this as a website you're on your own with hosting um but hosting is very inexpensive for shared accounts you somebody like Blu host or media Temple and again I'll have links to those in the show notes as well um anyway all the stuff on here that you need if you are a designer or a coder and you want to learn how to customize it and uh work with plugins and stuff um you know there is the documentation on here if you go into the help section and I was looking into it earlier just to see how mature it is and it's really cool they've got an API in here if you're a Cod you know what that is and so it makes it really easy to custom code your own plugins and content so if you are a developer as well um this does give you a a great starting point and a great system to work within because it's it's mature enough to handle a lot of those things and it really is getting better um you know the the update just came out recently and so there's a lot of stuff with the quote unquote store that they've got and the other cool thing and I don't know if I made this really obvious earlier but you know if you go to store. COK and.me obviously there's a website for the store but you don't have to go download and install from here you can do it all from the from the um from the back end of the content management system which is what I'm showing you here um so I'm actually viewing the store inside my back end my web you know content management system here and it's totally cool like I said and uh I just think they're doing a wonderful job so go check it out and once again the URL is ken. that's K ken. and uh anyway I just they're doing wonderful stuff and uh if you're considering either your own personal website your own personal portfolio or even like I said earlier I think it'd be really neat to start seeing other collaborative things built on this platform cuz I I don't think it should be just limited to portfolios I think there's enough use um requirements and needs for just mediad driven websites and I think that's where cooken is really going to shine is being able to be versatile within that world and so anyway go check it out and see what you think for yourself and again I'll put show notes on the website uh which is the art of photography. TV the art of photography. TV um go there and I'll link back to the first episode I did in the install video so if you want to learn more you can you can get a more out of it there so anyway once again that is Cen so I'm really pretty excited about Cen and some of the stuff that they've introduced in the last couple weeks and that they've been emailing out about um I think that they have a wonderful future ahead of them and I think that they offer something that there's a legitimate need for in the space of photography I think that you know with all these things and I think this is where you want to look at this objectively um if you are in the midst of either uh redesigning or even putting up your website for the first time you know we've talked about a lot of solutions to this on the show and being a former developer that's a subject that is interesting to me and so that's why I covered a lot uh but you know like I said on this Continuum you kind of have Cen sitting in the middle and you have something like square space over on one side and you have WordPress on the other and you could even use Drupal there's other content Management Systems as well um and I think they all have merits I don't think there's one that's better than the others um I think that when you're making the decision of what you want to do and maybe you have a project you're working on like I said I'd love to see people collaborate on something like this and you know maybe do more of a magazine format and so anyway these are different platforms you can use make that simple and easy um I think that if you really want a complete hands-off approach where you just pay a monthly fee and go Squarespace really still are the kings in this area and they offer a wonderful product and it is no M no fuss I mean literally you subscribe to the service you hook up your domain name and fly you know um and then on the other end of the spectrum is WordPress and WordPress is wonderful but you have to kind of be okay with tinkering a lot with it um I run the art photography website off of WordPress I've used WordPress a lot over the years and it does require a lot of dedication and time and a lot of figuring things out and especially when you want to start customizing it you the better you get it that the quicker it goes I'm pretty comfortable with that but I don't think it's a better service than Squarespace I don't think any of these are I think they're all viable options depending on what it is that you want to use now cocen is kind of in the middle of all these um it is going to be a lot less headache than Squarespace or excuse me than than WordPress in terms of having to learn how to use it unless you want to develop themes or plugins that's what Cen has done well they've taken a little bit of that Squarespace model of just a really solid content management system that's very friendly for photographers and that is wonderful um the the the relation to something like WordPress though is it does require your own hosting that's not a difficult thing to do or anything but you do need to host it on server and you need to update it make sure that it's maintained um not that that requires a lot of work but and if you're interested in trying cocon and you want just a basic Hosting account that's going to cover your traffic and you know do what you need it to do um I recommend Blu host for people and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well uh blue host is wonderful it's just a server so you're going to go set up your account and then what you'll do is if you go look at the installation video for Coke and you'll upload the install file and it does the rest and it's that easy to set up but you do have to go deal with that um the cost is a lot cheaper than something like Squarespace is all you're doing is paying for the server and then any add-ons you want from cooken so anyway these are kind of three viable options that we've talked about over you know the course of several years of doing this podcast cen's the new one and I'm really excited about it and I think that it's it's just you know for photographers and people who are doing media based sites um I really think that that's the shining star to look at right now I think they're doing a lot of things just really well um you know there's always room for improvement and I I feel at least when I did the first show on Cen I was a little afraid because they offered such a great product but at the same time I didn't want just you know when you have a one group of designers that are working on something things come up and maybe money's an issue and maybe time's an issue and I was concerned that maybe Coke and the development on it would not stay to where it needed to be but now that I see what they're doing and that was explained to me by the way after I did that first video the guys from Cen contacted me but um now that you see what they're doing with this U they're going to be in it for the long haul and they do have a model where they can put money and time into it and you know being able to have that store and offer certain premium things for download I think is is a wonderful solution to that so anyway it's an interesting business model it's an interesting product that they've got and I think it's very useful for for photographers and I'm using it on my focus. Inu website um and I'm still sorting that out it's not presentation ready at this point but um you can certainly go look at it I'm not hiding it from anybody it's just not you know where I want it to be but anyway I'm I'm using Cen for that specifically because I really wanted to get familiar with it and use it and see if it's the right tool for the job and so far it had has not disappointed so anyway guys once again this has been another episode of The Art of Photography thanks for watching I'll see see you guys next week later\n"