How to make an artist website?

[Sophie Lawson]

I would say Wordpress too … the Divi theme is so powerful, and honestly, very easy after a bit of playing.

I would say Wordpress, because you will have so much control moving forward.

[Adrian K]

I’ve been using Squarespace. They’ve got tons of templates that are designed for quality pictures.

[sigross]

@dgal If you use Wordpress make sure you keep all your plugin and CMS security code up to date. In February there was a major security flaw in the system that had gone unnoticed for 6 years. The vulnerability was discovered by security researchers at RIPS Technologies GmbH.

[Nathan]

In my job (digital marketer) I work with different CMS's all the time with my clients. My number 1 website builder I recommend is Wordpress. It's easy to use, highly flexible, and probably the best for SEO.

While I know many other artists use Squarespace, I would choose Wordpress over Squarespace. I avoid Wix and other CMS's altogether.

[dgal]

Thank you for all replies!!!

[dgal]

@Adrian-K
I was looking for your tutorials on youtube. Your art is amazing !

[Adrian K]

@dgal thank you. I currently don’t have any tutorials upload to YouTube yet. They are in process, but are currently a low priority.

[lenwen]

I use Wordpress for one year now and I love it so far. It didn't require any programming ability and it's pretty simple to manage.

[NelsonYiap]

Wordpress here as well. Although I have web dev experience I don't need to do more than a bit of customisation, plugin installs and using the free themes already available. Visual Portfolio plugin is the one I use to display images. Hope this helps (albeit a bit late)

[Carl Mattew]

Just use WordPress

[juliekitzes]

If you have a subscription to any Adobe creative cloud programs then Adobe Portfolio (portfolio.adobe.com) is a great free option. You can add a custom domain name if you purchase one elsewhere and I think they look/run really smooth since they're designed for artists. Very easy to use. Here's mine for example www.juliekitzes.com

[Dima Eichhorn]

@ShannonBiondi I have also used Wix and I am pleased with it.

[juliepeelart]

@dgal I have a Wix site which is good for most things, but not great for comics. The more research I do the best fit for comics is a wordpress site with a comic easel plug-in. That set up allow for all of the things people expect from a web-comic. I have not found a theme on Wix that can compare. The problem is that to install the plug-in it requires a more expensive subscription. My plan going forward will be to maintain one domain for a portfolio for art directors and a wordpress site for the comics. I haven't put it all together yet though!

[dgal]

This is a great idea to have two websites!
Thank you for reply!

[ArtofAleksey]

I used squarespace because their templates work better on mobile than wix. I spent a good 2 months back and for with wix about issues that were happening on my galleries on mobile devices. They didnt want to refund me my money either when I tried to ask for a refund because their sites had issues (I'm not the only person). I like squarespace also cause it lets you put in your instagram feed directly into a page. I was able to create a separate "personal projects" tab on it.

[Paul Burton]

I 'm a recovering web designer and developer. There is absolutely no reason not to use online solutions like Wix or Squarespace for your online portfolio. Avoid Wordpress at all costs—it's not worth the maintenance headaches.

I currently host my portfolio sites with Squarespace.

[Heather Boyd]

@NessIllustration

How much is domain and hosting and how would I go about getting it? I have no income coming in at the moment so I was planning just go free all the way till I figure things out for the future.

[NessIllustration]

@Heather-Boyd I host on SiteGround and if I remember correctly it's $3.95 per month or thereabouts. As for a domain you can get one on Namecheap or Google Domains at $15-20 for the entire YEAR. Then you need a theme, there are a ton of free ones. I use Blossom Fashion from Blossom Themes for my website, it's entirely free with an option to upgrade to premium for extra features which are absolutely not required.

When it comes to affordability, you can't beat Wordpress. Services like Squarespace really bleed you dry for the "no hassle" of not having to update your plugins once in a while.

For not having any knowledge in building a website, building my portfolio really was a total breeze. That being said, I'm currently building a second website for my business which will be a shop site, and for the first time I'm starting to see why some people might want to go to Squarespace or Shopify to save themselves the trouble. Wordpress can get quite a bit trickier than I thought when you're setting up some more complex stuff like carts and checkouts, client accounts, email opt-in pop-ups and memberships. It's giving me quite the headaches these days! But just for setting up a portfolio site (about, contact, some galleries and maybe some social links) it's really very simple.

[Paul Burton]

@NessIllustration @Heather-Boyd Squarespace doesn't "bleed you dry"—It's a one-time yearly subscription fee that covers everything you could possibly need in a web site. In fact, Wordpress jumped on the web-hosted site bandwagon too and their pricing is actually more expensive than Squarespace.

I've built enough custom Wordpress sites to know how awful that platform really is ... Especially if you are installing it on your own hosting account and managing the platform yourself using the "one-click install" option so common to hosting services. It's incredibly misleading. Without a basic knowledge of PHP and CSS, you are effectively trapped in a system you can't customize beyond adding plugins. And the more plugins you add to the system, the more likely you will run into problems down the road.

There is really no point in building and maintaining your own web site any longer with options like Wix, Squarespace, Big Commerce, Etsy, and Shopify (among many many others). If you have any knowledge of coding and styling pages, Squarespace allows a substantial amount of flexibility for customization.

Site maintenance is easy until it's not. The question you have to ask yourself is, "how much time do I want to allocate to maintaining my website?" I used to do this for a living and my answer is "as little as possible."

[NessIllustration]

@Paul-Burton I do agree SquareSpace's pricing is reasonable for what it is, with plans between $144 to $480 annually. For some people though, especially illustrators at the beginning of their career and just putting together their first portfolio website, this is not an expense they can afford. SquareSpace is pretty much a luxury service where you pay a bit more and don't have to do the maintenance yourself. For you it seems clear the expense is worth it because you don't want to deal with that. For anyone who can't afford that though, they can make a Wordpress site and pay around $50-60 annually for their hosting and domain.

It seems like you were dealing with much more advanced stuff as a developer, but to make a simple portfolio site you really don't need to know code or install a hundred plugins. On my site I literally just installed my theme, picked my colors and fonts from the theme's customization options (no css), put in my images and text, picked my sidebar widgets (from theme options) and I was done. Later I got a little fancy and decided to install a gallery plugin for my portfolio page to do a masonry style grid with my images. That's it, and when you think about it there's really no need for much else for a portfolio site.

We're talking about basic stuff, but so many people make it sound like a hassle so terrible that we artists could not possibly figure it out or maintain it so we have no choice but to spend a lot for a website-in-a-box service like SquareSpace. That's really not the case. I'm sure SquareSpace is an easier and more pleasant experience, but I want to reassure anyone who can't afford it that it is definitely POSSIBLE and even EASY to make a simple portfolio site on Wordpress.