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Art, Artists, and the Web:Part: 2--First Steps in Building an Artist's Website

What you should do and know if you are an artist and you have decided to have a website.

1) Look at "Web Sites That Suck."

If you are an artist and have never had a website, the concept of a website can seem unnerving. The first thing to do is look at a web site called "Websites that Suck", www. websitesthatsuck.com by Vincent Flanders. This is a website that is so funny, and so enlightening and it is very hard to stop looking at it. You will also learn a great deal as an artist about the Web and feel much more at ease after that experience.

2) Get a domain name.

A domain name is "www. name.com" of your web site. Artists need to have their own name as part of their domain name, "www. yourname.com" or "www. yourname artist.com". It is not a good idea to have the gallery that may represents you as part of your domain name. Web visitors are looking for the artist, the artists art work, not the gallery. But, by having the website in your name, you also help the gallery, because you can promote the gallery on your website.

3) Find a person to design the website.

People like to design for artists; this is one of the "perks" of being an artist. There are a lot of great people involved with the Web who do not have huge overheads who can design a very good website for you. The cost can be for as little as $500 or less.

4) Find a Hosting Company.

There are many places that will host your website for $100 or less a year. Your web designer should be able to help you with this.

5) Web browsers come in different sizes.

Web browsers come in all different shapes and sizes, from very small to very large. It will be impossible to make your wesite look perfect for every size web browser. This means that you as an artist will need to make some compromises. This is a good thing to know while you are thinking about your website design.

There are websites that let you look and see how your website looks in different sizes and on different web browsers for free. After your web design is completed, lookup "web browser size test tool" on a search engine to find one.

6) Copyright information.

It is impossible to completely protect your images on the Web. People simple do not pay attention to copyright information. Your best protection is to keep the images small, so if a visitor enlarges the image, it will look blurry. Also put "your name © the year" under the image of your art work. All the fancy things that are suggested for protection do not work. You can put copyright information all over your art work, I've seen it done, but it defeats the purpose of your website and web visitors will not return.

Mary Baker is a contemporary realist painter, whose studio is in Newburyport, Massachusetts. This New England city, north of Boston, has been the inspiration for the artist's realistic oil paintings. Mary Baker is a professional artist and has shown in New York art galleries.

You can visit Mary at her website, Mary Baker Art, at http://www.marybakerart.com, see her beautiful paintings and read her articles on a variety of subjects including, Art, Artists and Money, Tips on Breaking the Creative Block , Art,Women and Creativity and the four part series on Art, Artists and the Web.

A list of articles can be found on her Site Map and Mary's paintings can be seen on every page of Mary Baker Art.

MORE RESOURCES:

Yahoo! News Search Results for website design
Yahoo! News Search Results for website design

• Website sells Shariah-approved sex aids to Muslims
The El Asira home page is a discreet design with two simple links for men and women. The only clue to its content are the small blue and pink hearts at the top of the page.
• New Web Design For Miller's Buggy Line Tours
Digital Hill announces the launch of a new web design for Miller's Buggy Line Tours of Shipshewana, Indiana. This new website for the Shipshewana area business includes a photo gallery, and a CMS editor allowing for easy content editing and creation of both main and sub categories. The new web design gives Miller's Buggy Line Tours the website control they need to easily manage their website and ...
• Website Provides New Access to Denville?s North Jersey Design Center for Impl...
Cosmetic Dentists Daniel Orellana, DDS and William Johnson, DDS have provided North Jersey residents new access to their state of the art offices with the launch of their new website designed by Roadside Multimedia.
• Avery Graphics Design 66 Challenge Contest Winners Announced
Painesville, OH Three designs have crossed the finish line and are in the winners circle of the Avery Graphics Design 66 Challenge. Salute the Soldiers by Daniel Wayne Logue was selected as the winning design, chosen by NASCAR Nationwide Series driver Steve Wallace, the Rusty Wallace Racing team and sponsor 5-Hour Energy. More than 120 entries from across the United States and Canada were ...
• Tampa Web Development Firm Bayshore Solutions Launches the Flatwoods Consulti...
Bayshore Solutions is proud to announce the launch of the Flatwoods Consulting Group Inc. (Flatwoods) website. The Tampa Web design for the ecology and environmental consulting firm website is based on natural photo images and colors portraying a modern look and consistent branding message.

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