I always tell artists that are thinking about setting up a site that they just have to dive in and do it. If they can afford to throw money at it and hire a pro to help them all the better. If you wait until all of your photographs are perfect or until you have a chunk of time to focus on it, well you will never get it done.
5 Things to keep in mind when starting your very first website:
• Your first site is going to suck compared to the site you create 5 years from now, get over it.
• If you do it yourself there will be a learning curve, just be patient.
• Websites are like hair-dos, we hope you are not still wearing your same hair from high school. Sites are meant to change over time.
• You might try using the templates and tools available through sites like
wordpress.com and
template monster.
•
Avoid Comic Sans!!!! Don't believe me ... see my first site design below.... ugh.
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| Jan. 2000 |
I started Art Paw in 1998, my first site happened in 1999, and this screen shot, taken from the
internet archive is from Jan. 2000. How many things did I do here that I now hate ...hmmmm well to start with comics sans font and dark text on dark color. The sweet boy shown on the page was not a mistake ... that is my Atticus.
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| June 2000 |
Looks like I gave my self a face-lift in the summer of 2000, lightened things up, but still had Comic Sans and no real logo. Sometimes images don't display right with the
archive tool so that is what the blank spots are about.
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| December 2000 |
By December of 2000 things were starting to take shape and I ditched the Comic Sans, designed a logo and got my main menu over to the left which was becoming the standard placement in web design. Wow, 2 major design changes in one year. I did like playing with web design back then.
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| March 2007 |
The screen shot above is from 07, and I had a reworked logo that I am still using today, a green striped background that I used for many years, and you can not tell from this shot as it did not display properly but the menu to the left was actually a groovy fly-out menu that looked better than the text links you see. I added a search feature at the top right, got my toll-free number up there and a sitemap. I used this design for many years.
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| Nov. 2010 |
This is from November 2010, and other than the snowflake bling in the left menu this is pretty much my site today. Probably time for a design change again, but I really do not know when I will find the time, oh yea I said no excuses. Yea, well..............
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