My Own Website

No it has to be a free standing hosted site based usually on Wordpress .org

not Wordpress.com

It is a B____ to do.
Perhaps the French say Batard?

Dave

I am trying to figure out what you did? Is your site hosted by FAA? The AW??
Or where? And what website builder? It looks like a poorly laid out AW.

http://bridburg.com

Dave

I did it, I have my own webserver with http://mediatemple.net/
I know some web development...

Is Mediatemple a WP .org or a WP .com site?

then you have your answer.

Dave

Wordpress! Internet does not belong to WP.

I am more like "Do it yourself from scratch".
from scratch means from a blank page.

MEDIA TEMPLE WORDPRESS HOSTING
Fast, reliable, easy-to-manage hosting for all your WordPress sites.

This is what is on your link. You did not do a hell of a lot of actual coding.
It takes massive amounts of time and effort coding to do it from scratch.

I think, still I am guessing, the site is a WP .com. I will let you research it
on your link.

Dave

http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/wordpress/

It looks more and more like WP.com. WP.com is much easier than WP.org

WP.org is free. The above are the monthly cost options for mediatemple. Kind of a rip off.

I pay $3.49 per month for hosting and use WP.org for free.

You can currently ask Bluehost for their $2.95/month deal. I bought in around Christmas time, $3.49.
Three years paid in advance. About $43 per year.

Dave

Yes I gonna check. But for now I think if you use WP you cannot get such a result (not mine): http://therealsamkirk.com/

You get a standard result which I do not want.

Vincent,

There is plenty of variety in the results. But the format is all basically the same. The basic
format is tailored to fold up for mobile devices. If you brake that format, which I found out
the first time I made a half arsed attempt at building my own site, then cell phones and iPads
etc wont work properly with the results.

You asked can you sponsor keywords here on FAA? Probably not. You need WP.org. The .com version is not
free standing hosting wise.

I get two to one more desktop traffic than cellphone traffic. But people are coming back on many occasions
to their desktops to see the work after first seeing it on a cellphone.

Since optimizing my site for small devices my viewership among the 25 to 35 age group shot through the roof. From
zero to sixty over night. As digital artists we are more dependent on that age category. To that age category sampling
from prior art is the norm. Other age groups are not as enthusiastic.

It has been stated elsewhere that 80% of the web traffic here is small devices first. I hazard desktops later if they are interested.

I am not fully sure of that 80% figure, but clearly a majority of the traffic is small devices.

Dave

You can sponsor keywords on Wordpress self hosted or hosted

You cannot on dynamic themes on blogger
Wix
Iframed sites
Social media

Abbie,

I thought WP.com fell into the Wix, Squarespace, Weebly category.

Dave

Let me focus on the website itself.

Regardless of any specific use that you might want to put it to, the website simply is horribly designed for a first-time viewer. It is not even a website really - it is a webpage that NEEDS a website format.

When a viewer arrives at a WEBSITE, the viewer IMMEDIATELY expects to see navigation buttons. Your "website" does NOT have any. Where is the "Home" button, the "About" button, the "Galleries" or "Images" or "Art" button? I have no clue where to start looking to seek answers to BASIC questions.

Read up on basic website design. Whether you code it yourself or not, you still have to have some basic features that allow (i.e., invite) people to progress through it..

... just being honest here.

... dynamic themes? I don't even know what that is, but I do know that the "website" presented here appears to need attention at a far more basic level than the advanced level of dynamic themes (whatever that is - guess I'll go look it up now).

Come one, I tried http://www.elizanet.com on a Samsung Galaxy SIII phone and it's working fine.
You can zoom on the page.

If you put your mobile phone on horizontal



, it's fine and readable without having to zoom.

What people need? Readable and working.

Again, NO navigation menu, ... NO clear place for a FIRST-TIME viewer who does not know you from grapefruit to start to explore who you are. How would somebody arrive at this page? Where would they look first, once they got there? Why would they look there? What common, standard convention would guide them?

A navigation menu is so basic. This BASIC element has to be there to read. Readability of just anything you want first is not enough. YOU know what YOU want to read. The readability of what YOU want to read, however, is not the same as a person who is a TOTAL stranger to you and anything that you are about.

The page is naked without a navigation menu at top.

Here:

http://terrymorris.net/bestpractices/

❏ Main navigation links are clearly and consistently labeled
❏ Navigation is easy to use for target audience
❏ If main navigation uses images, clear text links are in the footer section of the page
❏ If main navigation uses Flash, clear text links are in the footer section of the page
❏ Navigation is structured in an unordered list
❏ Navigation aids, such as site map, skip navigation link, or breadcrumbs are used
❏ All navigation hyperlinks "work" — are not broken

When you write a book, for example, there are some expected conventions that allow a reader to even want to pick it up and start to read it. The book has a story. It has a beginning, a middle, an end. Sentences have a noun, a verb, and an object, or some form of these.

These are the very basics of understanding the language or the very idea of a book.

A website is similar. There is an expected basic-level structure upon which creativity then is based. But without the basics, no amount of creativity can make it functional to the people who understand what a website is and is defined to be.

Okay, what I see now is better. Looks like you added a navigation menu. Now this is looking like a "website".

For somebody arriving at JUST this page, however, it still is a little unclear what Fine Art America has to do with it. Is the website supposed to be a stand-alone representation of YOU?

Why haven't you just bought a domain name and simply aimed it at your Fine Art America premium artist website? A domain name is pretty cheap. You just buy it, go into your account wherever you buy it, create a couple of records to aim it at your FAA website, and everything is in place to represent you with far less hassle than if you tried to do it all yourself.

The "Home Page" should be the page you first arrive at, NOT another separate page, as you have it now. If you had a domain name, then you would simply aim it at your FAA premium website, where you have indicated a default landing page as either the images or the galleries.

Your "Some Images In A Cube" slide show up top now, while a neat bell and whistle, really serves no additional useful function. I believe in website best practices that it is NOT recommended that you begin a website with a slideshow.

rgkernodle.com

The above website is an FAA website already done by FAA, which I just tweaked a bit for color choices, and aimed my domain name at it from the account where I bought the domain name, "rgkernodle.com".

... no coding, no layout angst, ... just tweaking and aiming.

Great advice Robert, thank you

Here is my AW. I like a cleaner look. The AW is very flexible.

http://davidbridburg.com/

Dave