How to Get Your Own Website (An Artist’s Guide)
February 11th, 2010
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Posts Tagged ‘Name Domain’
Last week, I showed you some artists that have great homes on the web. As an artist, it’s important to have a web presence because it is often the most effective way to connect with potential clients and fans.
No one cares how good you are if they don’t know who you are. For this post, I collaborated with my colleague and friend (oh, and brother), Teague Hopkins, MBA student at Babson’s Graduate School of Business to show creative-minded people how to get their own website.
Address
1905 by rustman
On the web, unlike in real life, your address is not tied to the physical place where you (or your files) reside. A domain name is your address on the web. My domain name is www.devonhopkins.com. You can purchase a domain name from a domain name registrar, like GoDaddy or NetFirms. Domain names are unique, like addresses. Only one person can own a given domain. A domain should cost around $7/year. If you are creating a personal website, like an online portfolio of your work, I recommend purchasing the domain of your full name.
To explore what domain names are available, I recommend DomainTyper, where you can see whether a domain name is available as you type it in.
Plot of Land
Just like you need a plot of land to build a house on, the physical space where you store the files that make up your website is your web host. Some domain registrars also offer web hosting, and while the integration may be appealing, it can make it more difficult to switch if you should have problems with either in the future. Web hosts come in a variety of flavors, but most small sites just getting started will choose shared hosting. Shared hosting simply means the web host is using one server to host multiple sites. This makes it less expensive.
By Olof on Flickr
A couple of businesses that offer shared hosting are BlueHost and DreamHost. Shared hosting for either of these runs about $6/month, and may require a one- or two-year contract. While both of these companies offer unlimited bandwidth and storage space, you should check these two numbers if you choose to find a different host. Storage or hosting space is the equivalent of our square footage, and simply governs the amount of stuff that you can put on your web host.
Bandwidth doesn’t have a direct analog in our physical building analogy, but in talking about web hosts it is a measure of the amount of data transferred to and from your web host in a given month. A large number of people downloading large files from your website will use a lot of bandwidth.
Once you have both a host and a domain name, you can log into your registrar’s control panel to point your domain to your new host.
Building Architecture
Working late by Thomas Hawk
Now that you have an address and a plot of land, the next step is to build the house to hold your belongings. In web terms, the architecture that holds your information is usually a CMS (content management system). Just as different types of buildings are suitable for different kinds of businesses, different CMSs are better suited to different types of websites.
Many CMSs are open-source, which means they are free, both in the sense that you don’t pay for them, and in the sense that the way they are built is available publically. Your CMS is your blueprint of how your home on the internet is going to be built.
For most small sites and blogs, I recommend WordPress. Some web hosts can automatically install WordPress for you, and if not, it is still a fairly simple process to do in only a few minutes. In my opinion, WordPress is one of the easiest CMSs to use. There are numerous free plugins available to add additional functionality and free themes to change the appearance of your site. There are also themes that are specifically designed for artists that want to create an online portfolio. Doing a simple google search for “portfolio themes wordpress” will bring up hundreds.
There are commercial CMSs available too, but they are not necessarily better than the open-source options. There are several services online that will put together an online portfolio website for you. These services usually have a monthly and setup fee, but might be worth it if you are looking for something a little more complex than WordPress, like flash or e-commerce. Some examples are FolioSnap, ImpactFolios, Krop and Big Black Bag.
Merchandise
Once your building (CMS) is up and running, the last step is to move in. Add content to your site through your CMS and check out your new website! Tell all your friends. Add links to your website to your profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
There are limitless possibilites for what to do next, but this is the extent of this primer. If you have questions about anything you read here, please leave a comment and we’ll try to answer it or point you to some more comprehensive resources. I hope you found this introduction helpful and send me an email once you’re moved in!
February 11, 2010 | Filed Under Post, Uncategorized | 1 Comment