One of the most important issues that artists have to deal with is how to show their work and how to get paying jobs. There are convenient sites on the internet that solve the issue of how to show their work such as Deviant Art and Flickr, but these sites can only take you so far. These sites are great tools for entering contests and getting noticed if you don't want to pursue a professional career, and they can help you get feedback from other knowledgeable artists. By the way, I have profiles on DeviantArt and Flickr where I actively post my work. Mostly my unedited shots go up on Flickr and my edited shots go on DeviantArt.
I'm at the point where I need something a bit more professional so I can get side jobs in the future, and having my own website is the way to go. The problems I face are very few but somewhat overwhelming. I, like most other photographers, am really cheap. Not so much cheap as I am frugal, which is a concept my friends don't ever get about me. They look at my over sized nose and go straight to cheap. So, I am looking to build and design my own website but there are a ridiculous amount of options these days for making a website. Before, you used to have to go down to the bookstore and pick up a book on HTML and Javascript and hope you don't get bored after 10 minutes. These days, there are about 15 different ways to make a site. The most plausible options I have seem to be either Flash or Wordpress.
Wordpress is a content management system that is basically a template that is very simple to add new content with very little to no change to the site other than the new content. It has several add-ons used for automating and simplifying the entire process so there is less to learn and less to do which is very easy for a person with little knowledge of how to run a website. There are several different addons to facilitate showing off my images, but it seems to be a bit too much for what I am looking for.
My other option is to design my site using Adobe Flash. Flash is a design system with an incorporated programming language called Actionscript. The hardest part about going this route is that I have to do every part of the process myself as opposed to wordpress where all the functions are done and ready to go and the design needs to be changed.
On Part 2, I will be going over the actual process of planning and what factors to think about when devising a concept for your site.
