I have a confession: I am about to become a woman without a website.
My current site, which I created through Other People’s Pixels and chose not to renew, is about to blink out of existence any day now, and then the only way to see my work online will be through my Vimeo channel, which is woefully sparse. How did I get myself into this pickle? A fatal combination of fear, laziness, and complacency. This is my cautionary tale- because in the immortal words of Joey Comeau, “If you can’t be a good example, you have the obligation to be a horrible warning.”
My first website…
was a Frankenstein monster spawned by Dreamweaver and created to showcase my (in hindsight) rather hilarious undergraduate portfolio. It took months to build (a semester of web design for artists 101, in fact) and was STILL pretty lame. And I don’t even want to TALK about how long and unintelligible the URL was! This was about five years ago, too, when Facebook was still just for college kids and Twitter hadn’t fundamentally changed the way people communicate.
When the time came for me to put together my “official” artist site, I was about to present my MFA thesis, and the idea of putting in the work to build ANOTHER site was as daunting as the idea of paying someone to do it for me. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but grad school is expensive! I saw companies like the aforementioned OPP as a happy medium- I’d be able to control content and some design elements, but the heavy lifting would be left to the experts, at a fraction of the cost. At the time, it seemed like my best option.
Times Change
Problem was, between 2006-2011 my work had fundamentally changed, and so had the world. For a newly-minted time-based artist such as I, prices for sites like OPP jumped significantly. By the time I figured out how to format and Flash-encode my videos for uploading to my site, I realized that the quality of said videos was sub-par, and that there were no analytics to determine if people were actually watching them. But I had paid for the full year up-front, and I wasn’t about to let that money go to waste. I resolved to do the best with what I had, and make the most of the customizations I was afforded.
In making my decision regarding whether or not to renew the site, I thought about downgrading to an image-based site and just linking to Vimeo-hosted works from within it. But media quality wasn’t my only problem with my online face- the frame designs and layouts offered by OPP were just not fit for the content I wanted to add! There is no way to upload art writings I wanted people to see, or list links to other artist sites, without annoying scrollbars built in to the frames. I’ve experimented with the interface so much that I might as well have built the silly thing from scratch in the first place. I didn’t like the blog/news format at all, either. I couldn’t add installation shots of shows I was in, for example, and people couldn’t leave public comments, so dialogue was impossible.
Artist Website Templates Don’t Work
Meanwhile, I began reading more and more about the perils of “stock design” sites, how they fail to set artists apart due to their telltale template formatting, and how they aren’t set up for the kind of social media integration that’s so de rigeur these days. You can link to a Facebook page, but there’s no “like” button embedding, no “retweet this” options, and no way to build a feed into the home page. When I met Cory and started reading this blog, the WordPress option became more and more attractive, especially since I have used the WordPress format a lot in work for other clients. I’ve shied away before, citing time constraints, but I am officially out of excuses. It’s time to make the site my work deserves!
In the following weeks, I’ll be taking Cory’s WordPress for Artists course as part of The Abundant Artist Community and sharing my journey with you. Maybe my experience will convince some of you that the perfect site really IS within your grasp. If I can do it, after all, anyone can.
“If you can’t be a good example, you have the obligation to be a horrible warning.”
Love this quote. LOVE IT.
joey comeau is a genius!
http://www.asofterworld.com
It’s good to know that I’m not the only artist without a website! I’m looking forward to the updates on yours, Hannah.
I’ve been considering “WordPress for Artists”. Now that it’s a part of the community, I’m unclear how this all works. If you join the community, do you get instant access to the WordPress lessons or are they opened over time? Does your access differ if you’re paying monthly instead of paying the one-time fee?
Reese, that’s exactly it. As each lesson is published, you get access to them. If you want the whole thing at once, you can sign up for the lifetime membership.
Hi there I had a dreamweaver site my daughter made up for me and she said it was laborious and if I wanted her to update bits it took ages and then there was wickes and then I saw OPP. Which sounded great but I cant link my blog and also some have said my site crashe
For a non techy it is still gobbldygook!
I do have a wordpress blog and Ican sort of handle it! It will be ineresting to seeyour results
Susan
susanmwallis.co.uk
Thanks for the post! Incidentally, if you’re looking for another catchy URL noticed that http://www.burnsnotice.com hasn’t been registered…
(kidding… possibly)
LOVE it! Thanks for the heads-up! I’ll probably keep hannahpiperburns.com, since it is the most intuitive (people on the internet like things that are intuitive, I’ve noticed), but maybe I’l snap that one up, too! You never know…
Thanks for your report, Hannah, – I’ll be watching your progress (and hope it’s true that if you can do it, I can do it!)
Cory, this all sounds great, but am I correct in understanding that “The Abundant Artist” “WordPress for Artists” and “Selling Artwork Online” are just the various names for what would be available to me for the $150 lifetime fee?
Best wishes, Annie
Yes, Anna, that is essentially correct. They are both names of lessons you get in the lifetime package in the Abundant Artist Community
Corey,
Is there still a way simply to get the WordPress for Artists tutorial? It used to be its own entity to purchase, right?
I have to say that having spent several days trying unsuccessfully to create a portfolio page on wordpress.com, I had all but decided to go with an “artspan” website and be done with it! What would be your top 5 reasons not to do that?
Thanks!
Sukie
Hi Sukie,
I rolled the WP for Artists tutorial into the Community, so they’re the same thing now. The WP for artists course was $150 by itself before, but now it includes access to everything. Buy the Community lifetime membership and you get all of it.
I’m not familiar with Artspan, but a self-hosted version of WordPress is vastly different from WordPress.com. You can do anything that you want on your site, you just have to know how, where with WordPress.com, you are limited to what they will let you do with widgets. Check out Why Aren’t More Artists Using WordPress?
Hi Hannah,
I am a video artist myself and also have an OPP site. I was really excited to log into my control panel this weekend and read that you can now embed YouTube and Vimeo videos into your site for the price of a Standard Plan. I have a Multimedia Plan but am considering switching to Standard to save money (the difference is $100 a year) now that I’ll be embedding everything.
Not sure if this helps but chiming in for good measure! Much good luck!
Hi there! That’s good to know, but it doesn’t change my mind one bit, and I’ll tell you why:
1. I want to integrate a more multimedia blogging function
2. I want to be able to show my Facebook and Twitter feeds embedded right on the front page
3. I want to integrate my varied creative activities, from my gelatin experiments to my microcinema volunteerism, all in once place.
I’m glad OPP finally caught up with the times, though! Let me know how the vimeo embedding works for you.
Hi I do have three films on my site that work well