Hi all,
I am long overdue in updating my website. It is pretty old fashioned and not got the option to switch based on whether browsing on computer or phone.
I was wondering what packages people used if they had experience of doing it. I am fairly techy minded as previously wrote/tested software for displays in jets but not really had visibility of the development/tools used in construction of modern website. So a pointer in right direction would be much appreciated.
Hi John, I’m in the process of redeveloping my site as well. I’m going with wordpress, which has an impressive array of themes developed and supported by a large user community.
I purchased a suite of premium themes from Themify (https://themify.me/), so I could be reasonably assured that I was working with themes that were fully mobile-responsive, as well as ecommerce ready.
Even without needing to lay down money, there many free themes available that look great…
Leah (@LWaichulis) is the one to get in on this thread. She has done the vast majority of our website development since day one. Hopefully she can chime in with some valuable advice as well.
Hi John, I agree with Jeff. I would recommend using Wordpress and buying a theme that has good reviews and will work well on mobile devices. You will want to search for ‘Responsive’ themes. Many themes allow you to demo them first so you can test out how they will display on different devices.
I’ve had luck buying themes from here: https://themeforest.net/category/wordpress and here: http://shop.17thavenuedesigns.com/products/category/wordpress/.
Hi Leah,
I did my site a few years back with Faso and update every year with a new interface. Everything comes along with using them. They can be a bit leicy but you get traffic etc with all the icons and you don’t spend hours of your time worrying about social media, newsletter etc. they are 8.00 a month for basic and no newsletter, 200 for 75 images and newsletter, and 300 for the gold plan. You can enter the Bold Nrush contest free for using them with the silver, gold, and platinum plan. Have you heard of them? Thoughts on that between the Wordpress theme way or FASO?
Hi Nanci! I never heard of Faso. I’m going to look it up and see how it compares to using Wordpress. I really like the idea of not worrying about social media.
Hi Leah… Great skype this morning!!!
Fine Art Studio Online. It is very easy…24/7supoort and chat.
They have ssl, social media buttons, blog, email newsletter, contact page…everything included in. It took me only 2 days to put it together!!! Now they have a bold brush instagram contest thats free. Jeremy Lipking, My friend Mario Robinson, William Whitaker, Anna rose Bain ec are all using this now. You can get your hosting through them for 15.00!
They say wordpress is not the way to go anymore. Squarespace, Wix, and FASO. Square was too simple in design…wix better. FASO the best and more suited to artists. The guy Clint Watson was a gallery owner and is a collector fyi.
let me know what you think:)
Hi John,
Great Skype this morning. I use FASO. It is suited for artists and really easy saving allot of your valuable time. FASO…I just replied to Leah and she will check it out. Fine Art Studio Online has everything in the package you need and I set up in 2 days! Support excellent!!! You can update all you want…blog, email newsletter etc included in there! lmk what you think!
Thanks all,
As I already had a domain and webhosting I thought didn’t make sense to pay a monthly subscription for things I had, inpart, already. It was more just the dev tools. I have however reverted and used notepad++ text editor and coded it by hand.
Looks ok I think and certainly an improvement om my current live site ( I think neater). I have added payment buttons to pay via paypal for originals and get prints on demand via redbubble but for now I have left those button versions of the pages off as 5 of the pieces are entered into a competition so need to have the originals just in case. be a tad dodgy if someone clicked but and I said, um, can I just keep hold of them a while haha.
The reason I’ve avoided services like FASO, Wix, or others, is that it essentially locks me in to that particular service provider. If they ever make decisions that don’t make sense for me, or even worse, they go out of business, I’m in a bad place. From a business standpoint, my website is one of my biggest assets, and I’m just not comfortable with it being that dependent on one company.
I just wanted to chime in and suggest Squarespace. Since the mid 90’s I’ve built many websites on many different platforms, from big business to personal sites. Squarespace is the most editable platform that I’ve used since having to build them from scratch. Their main values are editable CSS and clean/responsive templates. If you don’t know anything about CSS and want to tweak your chosen template, there will be a learning curve, but you can essentially morph templates in anyway that you need, to a point of appearing custom made. They also have included options for e-commerce, blog, galleries, etc. …and no extra cost for templates, plugins or need for anything from third party programmers.
