Do I Really Need a Website?

The answer depends on your audience and your long-term artistic goals. For some, social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud) offer a ready-made showcase at little-to-no cost. Social media works well for artists that benefit exclusively from frequent interaction with an existing audience.

For example, a modern wind trio can drive traffic by offering ‘exclusive’ deals to their Facebook followers by announcing special events and offering web-only discounts. The primary advantage of social media is that the audience is ‘built-in’, but considering the incredible number of competing interests on these sites, turning social engagement into a healthy growing audience is extremely challenging.

Most often, social media is an effective part of a broader web strategy. For artists who expect to be searched and discovered via search engines like Google, an effective website is the foundation for everything else.

Can I Build My Own Website?

Yes, of course you can! Services like wordpress.com, squarespace, and wix exist for this very purpose. However, building an effective website with these services can be technically challenging and extremely time consuming.

While the price of these services is tempting, consider that they come with a step learning curve and often produce sites that are slow, difficult for people to find on search engines, and are forever locked into the vendor’s proprietary technology.

For most professional and aspiring artists, hiring a web professional is well worth the extra cost.

How Should I Approach Web Professionals?

When selecting and interviewing technology firms and/or consultants, consider the following:

• Have they demonstrated a reasonable understanding of artistic showcases?
• Do they offer service after the site launch? (e.g. hosting, maintenance)
• What do past clients have to say about their experience?
• Can they provide SEO and traffic monitoring once your site is launched?

While smaller firms may not always appear flashy, they tend to have the bandwidth to provide personal attention and often produce equal (or better!) results. As with many things in life, more expensive doesn’t always mean better!

If the budget for your artist website is in the four-figure range, expect to supply your own photos, copy, logo, and marketing materials. Hiring an experienced and knowledgeable technology consultant can result in a wonderful website, but the message and marketing materials will most likely need to come from you.

Top 3 Considerations When Building Your Artist Website

Just because you hire technology experts to help build your website doesn’t mean you should leave all the decisions up to them. Here are the three most important things to consider when creating (or refreshing) your artist website…

Consideration #1: Who Are Your Website Visitors?

Even though you know quite a bit about your audience, it’s always an eye-opening experience to build a couple of visitor profiles:

• How old are your website visitors? Will they have trouble reading small text?
• What’s their average income? Will they be viewing your site on a modern smartphone?
• How much time are they likely to spend searching for your art portfolio?

It’s critical to keep your design within accessibility standards. Remember that things like fancy script and small screens can make your website unreadable for some people.

Consideration #2: Your Website Must Serve Your Audience

Think very carefully about what your visitors need and how they’ll likely feel once they’re on your new website.

If you’re a composer hoping promote your music to active performing ensembles, visitors will likely arrive at your website looking to sample your catalog. If it takes three clicks to start listening to music for their particular ensemble, they’ll leave your site and you’ll lose that opportunity.

Make your artist showcase instantly available on the front page and keep it easy to navigate. After all, the primary goal of your website is to showcase your work as quickly and clearly as possible.

Consideration #3: How Will Your Audience Find You?

For your artist website to be effective, people must be able to find it easily. Be sure your website is designed to amplify your content for search engines. Good SEO starts with quality content but nothing can replace referrals from trusted sources.

We’ve written extensively about SEO — if this is new territory for you, I’d suggest starting here.

Recently, Google released a document called the Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines. Essentially, it’s Google’s detailed guide to assessing the quality of websites. Human experts use the guide to analyze the quality of a group of websites and Google uses that data to judge how their algorithms are doing.

Usually this would just be dismissed as bedtime reading for nerds like us, but this document is different. It provides an unprecedented look at how Google thinks of website quality. It’s a road map for how to get on Google’s good side — something all artist websites need to do.

Not sure you want to read all 160 pages of the Search Quality Rater’s Guidelines? Don’t worry! We’ve read it for you. Here’s what Google thinks makes for wicked good web content:

• Expertise / Authoritativeness / Trustworthiness
• Supplementary Content
• Focused Page Design
• Security

OK, so let’s take each of these individually…

Expertise / Authoritativeness / Trustworthiness

In short, this means that effective websites provide solid expertise and contain content from trustworthy sources. Sounds obvious, right? Well, it’s worth asking yourself if you website sends strong signals of your domain expertise and trustworthiness.

Punkt’s website expertise and trustworthiness checklist:

• Are your credentials or artistic history readily available?
• Do you offer information that might be helpful to your other artists? (This blog is a good example of this.)
• Is your artwork categorized, described and easily searchable?
• Do you demonstrate expertise across social media?

Supplementary Content

Offering site visitors supporting content in a sidebar or footer is critical to providing a rich web experience. Something similar to the ‘if you enjoy this, perhaps you’d be interested in this‘ approach. If your artwork doesn’t naturally generate web-friendly content, consider linking to external well-established (trusted) content sources.

Focused Page Design

Once again it sounds obvious, but take another look at your home/landing page with a critical eye for clutter. It’s crucial that your primary call-to-action is sitting front and center, above the fold. Sliders and an abundance of photos can be a distraction that lessens the impact of your work.

• Are ads clamoring for your site visitor’s attention?
• Is your site footer stuffed with badges, associations, and awards?

If so, consider moving this stuff to an internal page.

Security

If your website accepts potentially sensitive data (through forms and/or a web store) security is critical. Web users now expect to see the familiar green security padlock when sharing private information online — especially when their credit card is involved. As important, web browser will soon be warning users by default when they are visiting sites that are not secure. If you haven’t already, consider getting and maintaining an SSL certificate through your web host.

Baby Steps

If your artist website is suffering in these areas, don’t despair! The web is a constantly evolving medium. Consider each guideline separately and take action in tiny increments. Small adjustments like these can make a huge difference to Google’s search engine algorithms!

While getting the visitor to your site in the first place is half the battle, their experience once they click a link to visit your website is easily the other 90% (thanks, Yogi Berra!). User experience is a huge topic, but today I want to share a few simple things that can improve your home page and, of course, increase meaningful engagement with your audience. After you read this, go take a look at your website’s front page and see if you can apply any of these ideas to your site!

#1: Keep it Simple

This should be your mantra when thinking about your website, both from a content and a user experience perspective. When a visitor hits your homepage, they should know instantly what your site is about. If they didn’t already have a completely clear idea of what they want to do on your site, you should tell them with a simple, clear call to action.

Check out this home page for Kissmetrics, a website analytics company:

If you’ve gotten to this page, you’re probably already interested in using your website for marketing, right? Which means you probably have a website. Which means you can enter it, log in with Google Analytics, and start experiencing the wonders of their product right away.

This is simple and clear both from a user experience perspective (“If you don’t know for sure what you’d like to do, fill out this quick form!”) and from a branding perspective (“We’re so confident in our product that we’ll let you start using it in 5 seconds flat.”)

#2: Speak to your Goals

This is a corollary to #1, but it’s so important that it deserves its own list item. It’s one thing to be simple and clear, but if the ideas you express don’t work directly to achieve your artistic goals, your site will never be effective. Before you think about design, content, or anything else, you should define your goals for your website very specifically.

If you sell your artwork online, your goal is probably to sell more of your artwork to a broader audience. If you’re a performing ensemble, your goal might be to get a booking. If you run a non-profit, your goal might be donations or membership. Whatever that goal, it should be the driving force behind every decision you make on the home page of your website.

Beware the temptation to have 12 goals — remember that too many choices can be overwhelming! If you have a wide variety of artistic goals, that’s great, but be sure your website homepage speaks to the most important one or two goals.

Take a look at charity: water’s current home page design:

I don’t know anything about their business model, but I know exactly what their current goal is: to get people to create a fundraising campaign. This couldn’t be a better call to action — it’s concise, clear, and enticing. (And if you click the image above, you’ll see that the image behind their call to action is actually a fantastic video loop — ooh la la!)

#3: Provide an Enticing Experience

Should your homepage be visually attractive? Yes. Should it have great copy that successfully communicates your message? Yes. What often gets lost, though, is making the site enjoyable to use. If a user is having a good time on your website, they’re less likely to get distracted by that shiny “Facebook” tab next to your site in their web browser.

Take, for example, the fantastic website for the Snowbird ski resort in Utah. When you load up their site’s front page, a couple of things happen:

1. You’re greeted by a great seasonal image of the mountain.
2. You start thinking about the weather on the mountain, which is both very utilitarian and also an allure to start thinking about the skiing ritual. (“Oh, man, the base is getting pretty thick…can’t wait!”)
3. There are subtle, fun, and appropriate animations that give you a sense of interaction with the site and brand.

Warning: you’ve got to be careful with this one. It’s really easy to overload a visitor with overwhelming animations that don’t serve a purpose, or slow the site down to a crawl. This tip is best accomplished with the help of your friendly neighborhood web professional!

#4: Make It Bite-Sized

Your homepage is not the place for you to go into detail about where you went to school or the realization of your life-long artistic vision — you’ve got interior pages for that! On your homepage, your copy should be written to entice, not to inform.

Font sizes and weights (in a clear, readable typeface, of course!) can go a long way toward directing a reader’s eye to the most important content.

If your visitors wants to read the smaller words, they can, but if you force a visitor to read paragraphs in order to figure out what you’re talking about, they’ll probably head elsewhere (remember that Facebook is staring at them from just one tab over!).

Making use of a workhorse typeface on your homepage can be especially important if you have a lot of information you want to share. Take, for example, the homepage of the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts. Like any university, their website is a monster — it serves a lot of different types of people, and they all need something from the homepage.

Instead of paragraphs of text, though, the designers of this site did a lot of smart things:

• They broke the text up with lots of fantastic pictures, especially of people (see #5!).
• They used lots of different sizes and shapes of blocks to contain information of a particular type into one area.
• They made great use of two great fonts — look at all the different sizes, weights, and styles of two classic arty fonts (which, of course, speaks to their brand as an art school).

In combination, these three things really help to break up the page into bite-sized chunks that aren’t overwhelming and make the page fun, attractive and informative.

#5: Use Pictures of People!

Ever wonder why so many sites have pictures of people smiling happily on their homepage? It’s because the research is in — pictures of people engage other people. This is not to say that you should fill up your website with stock photos; people can tell the difference between stock photos of actors pretending to enjoy a magazine while sipping a coffee and real people engaging with real artistic events.

You don’t necessarily have to hire a professional photographer to create and hone the perfect photo for your homepage. The digital revolution means that you can take hundreds of photos yourself with an inexpensive camera and choose one that works. If you have a nice, high-end smartphone, you can even get away with using your phone to capture images of people engaging with your art. The important thing is capturing the spirit of you and your work in a high-resolution image that works with your homepage design.

For a supreme example of a website that uses each and every one of the ideas above, take a look at the Netflix homepage:

1. Keep it Simple: It’s hard to imagine a more simple homepage design. Picture, title, subtitle, button!
2. Speak to your Goals: What’s Netflix’s goal? Sign-ups! If you come to the site and you’re not signed in, it’s pretty clear what to do.
3. Provide an Enticing Experience: Click on the Netflix screenshot above, and you’ll see that the homepage provides a warm, relaxing, inviting experience by subtly zooming and panning across photos. This subtle, relaxing experience is designed to speak to their brand. (“Curl up on the couch and relax with us!”)
4. Make it Bite-Sized: The Netflix homepage takes bite-sized information very seriously. At a glance, you’ve read and understand all of the “above the fold” copy on their home page. If you do scroll down, you get three tiny bits of information about how Netflix works, but really, they do their selling through the above-the-fold experience.
5. Use Pictures of People: Pictures of people are key to this homepage design. These aren’t just any people — they’re you. They’re your family. If you stay on the page long enough, you’ll see a couple of young singles appear, just in case that appeals to you more, but the very clear idea is that you can relate to people enjoying each other’s company on the couch watching some TV.

I hope this gives you a few things to think about next time you take a look at your own homepage. Remember — if you implement one or more of these changes, be sure to keep track of how your site’s performance tracks so you can tell if it’s working. Which reminds me — we’ll be back soon with a post about why analytics are important and how you can use some simple tools to measure the efficacy of your website.

Content Associations

If written properly, the content on your website should naturally express strong associations to things in the real world. For example, as Toyota describes products on their website, the keyword “Toyota” will become associated with cars and trucks. This should be a natural outcome of good website copy and requires that the text features related mentions of “Toyota” and “cars”.

As more web content relating to your artist career is created, these keyword associations will become stronger and stronger. If Toyota were to suddenly start selling chainsaws, it would take quite a bit of work before search engines associated “Toyota” with “chainsaw” and served results accordingly.

Keyword Intent

In addition to detecting keyword associations across the accessible web, search engines are now able to determine the intent behind content wording. For example, “Where can I buy a Toyota chainsaw?” is understood to have a different intent when compared to “How do I buy a Toyota chainsaw?” and “What is the safest way to use a Toyota chainsaw?”.

A site providing information about cold-weather camping may be relevant to searches involving winter tent camping, Canadian backpacking, and camping in the White Mountains of New England. Alternatively, a site providing information about places to camp in the White Mountains may be less likely to produce relevant search results for queries about how to camp in cold weather.

What This Means To You…

A common issue we see often at Punkt Digital is the use of the keyword “new music”. For a composer or performing ensemble specializing in commissions this would seem an appropriate keyword, however, to most of the web “new music” refers to the latest YouTube video from Justin Bieber. Adding context to “new music” with phrases like “commission”, “string quartet”, and “premiere” will help search engines understand what you really mean when you say “new music”.

Craft layers of context around each of your keywords to attract the intended audience to your artist website.

So as you create copy across the web (including on social media), be sure the keyword associations you choose are designed to attract the right kind of visitor to your arts website. Look for opportunities to reinforce the context around your chosen keywords and proof web copy to ensure your keywords are consistently aligned with your intent.

SEO Keywords should reflect what people are likely to type into Google when looking for an artist or performing ensemble like yours.

Keywords help search engines place your website high in the results ranking, but not all keywords are created equal. Many common keywords are in such high demand that getting a search engine to rank your site highly with them can be nearly impossible.

To make search engine keywords effective, you’ll need to choose them carefully.

How To Choose Effective Keywords

“Chamber trio” is a good example of a difficult keyword phrase — just think about how many websites are using that keyword across the web! When faced with highly competitive keywords, consider adding your unique location or specialty. So, our “chamber trio” keyword phrase might become “new music chamber trio” or “San Francisco chamber trio”.

While location can be a strong addition to your keyword phrase, it’s also important that your keywords attract the right kind of visitors to your site. For example, if your ensemble performs and commissions music, be sure to include keywords that separate you from the rest of the pack.

How To Use Keywords Effectively

Once you’ve decided on a number of effective keywords for your website, it’s time to put them to use. First and foremost, it’s critical that you write language for your website that includes these keyword combinations, especially in the first few sentences of any page or post.

Websites built on WordPress can take advantage of plugins that add machine-readable “meta” information to your web pages. These alert search engines to the presence of your keywords without making them visible directly your website visitors. When possible, place your most important keywords in the page title tag, article title, and meta description.

Did you notice the URL of this post? (https://punktdigital.com/understanding-search-engine-keywords) Descriptive URLs are not only easier for you and me to read, they also add important descriptions for search engines. Whenever possible, try to include your keywords in your page titles and website URLs.

And finally, be sure to tag your photos (and other media) on with suggestive keywords. As before, WordPress makes it very easy to add Title and Alt tags to images as you add them to your site.

Keywords Are Just the Beginning

Whether you’re looking to optimize your existing site content or start a new marketing campaign, targeting the right keywords can make all the difference, but they’re really just the beginning. Next month, we’ll take a deep dive into how keywords are evolving through associations with broader site context.

This is a difficult thing to accomplish, but over the next several months, we’ll be lifting the veil on the mysterious inner workings of popular search engines, sharing with you some practical ways to improve your website’s performance.

How Website Ranking Works

Modern search engine technology is extremely sophisticated. Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have invested billions in algorithms that can read and understand the content in your website. Over time, these same search algorithms learn how people interact with your business and develop associations with your brand.

These algorithms attempt to build context around your website content to understand how relevant it might be to search results. To do this, the algorithms look at things like:

• What is the intent of your content? (Do you sell scores, or promote concert events?)
• Is your website content associated with other sites I already know and trust?
• Are there authoritative and trusted people associated with your website?
• Is there active interest in your website content across social media?
• How often is your website updated?

SEO is a Process

Over the next several months, we’ll be examining specific strategies you can use to help search engine algorithms answer these questions. Keep in mind that there’s no magic “sliver bullet” when it comes to successful SEO.

Implementing a successful website ranking strategy takes time, so if you’re in it for the long game, Punkt Digital is ready to help you build yours.

To distract yourself from the challenges awaiting you onstage, you consider the event from the perspective of an audience member.

• How far have they traveled to attend this performance?
• Do they regularly attend fine arts events?
• Are the seats comfortable? How’s the leg room?
• Will there be enough light to read the program once the show starts?

Just then, the lights dim. A couple who couldn’t find close parking dash in and are quickly shown to their seats.

And then it happens.

You appear — dressed in flip-flops, a horribly stained t-shirt, and gym shorts. And to many in the now darkened room, it seems you haven’t bathed or washed your hair in days.

Will your appearance have an effect on your performance? Maybe. Will your audience see through the food stains and clickity-clack of your flip-flops to focus on your artistry? Perhaps.

What will they tell others about the experience? Will those conversations be about your sublime performance, or will they begin with, “I can’t believe she wore that onstage!”

Well, here’s the thing…

your artist website is a stage.

It’s a stage where the show can start at anytime and be anywhere — a small laptop in the kitchen, a large 60” screen running Internet Explorer, or an older-model cell phone.

Your web portfolio is a global stage where your artistry must always be dressed to impress.

SO, WHAT ARE YOU WEARING RIGHT NOW?

• Are visitors immediately directed to the work you want them to see?
• Is it clear how a visitor would contact you or purchase your work?
• How does your artist website function on your cell phone?
• How does your artist website function on your parent’s cell phone?
• Do all videos play properly? How about your audio clips?
• Is it possible at a glance to know when and where you’ll be performing next?
• Is it possible for a visitor to sign up to your mailing list without dozens of pinches and zooms?

GETTING TO THE TRUTH

• Ask your friend to send you an email from your site.
• Ask them to find out where you went to school.
• Ask them to sign up for your newsletter.
• Ask them to find out where you’ll be performing next.
• Ask them to browse your portfolio and find your newest work.

If you see them struggling to complete these simple tasks, you’ll know something’s wrong. And if they repeatedly stop and ask you questions, you may well be walking out on stage wearing flip-flops, workout shorts, and a sweat-stained t-shirt.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help. We’ve helped dozens of successful artists launch effective web-based portfolio sites this year alone. Check out some of our recent work and if looks like a fit, give us a shout.

We’ll get you looking your best in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

In his response, Robinson Meyer (@yayitsrob) casts Deresciewicz as a bit of curmudgeon, pointing out the benefits of technology networks as a democratizing distribution platform. After all, who doesn’t want to live in a world where everyone “can explore the breadth of human expression?”

While Deresciewicz and Meyer deal with the effects the internet is having on the way artists create, we’d like to focus on the idea of what it means to build an artist website — after all, that’s how we spend our own non-art-making time.

In the original article, Deresciewicz rattles off a list of activities the web makes possible (to paraphrase: hawking CDs, raising money on Kickstarter, testing distribution models, etc.), but he isn’t he missing the point?

In our view, the “Web” allows the artist to interact with their audience in a gatekeeper-free zone. For the price of an entree at Olive Garden, any artist (or creator or maker or craftsperson or artisan or whatever) can present themselves to the world as they see fit.

Deresciewicz dismissively calls the fundamental relationship between an artist and the world “creator-to-customer,” but we see it as a democratized relationship between the…

• composer and commissioner
• ensemble and funder
• performer and collaborator
• band and listener
• artist and gallery
• author and critic

In short, the web empowers “creator-to-audience” relationships.

Is that a change from the world Wordsworth and Coleridge lived in? You bet. Isn’t it an improvement for the artist to have the power to participate in these conversations worldwide? We certainly think so. Is building an artist website going to cause artists to focus less on their art? We doubt it.

In Meyer’s words, “websites aren’t all about personal branding. They make artistic output available to people who never would have had the chance to see them. They expand access.” We couldn’t agree more.

In fact, expanding access to your artistic output can be as simple as dragging some audio files into a browser window — Soundcloud will turn it into a list of works that’s accessible by a single link on any internet-enabled device known to humankind.

That’s a great start, but there’s so much more potential.

To connect creator to audience effectively on the internet, you can either a) spend loads of time learning how to build a fantastic artist website and exercise complete control over your aesthetic presence online, or b) work with someone awesome to help make it happen. (We happen to know some folks…)

No matter how you build it, a great artist website does exactly that: it connects the artist to their audience in a personal, meaningful way. If you want to call that branding, fine — we think of it more as dressing for success.

A WordPress theme is like the façade of a building — it plays the largest role in determining how your site will look and feel to visitors. While the other stuff is all about functionality, the theme is what people really see and notice. This is where you get to make aesthetic choices about your online portfolio … and knowing about potential pitfalls before committing to a particular theme can prevent frustration and save tons of time in the future.

As with choosing the right host, finding the right theme for your site can be daunting. There are loads of designers and developers out there trying to make a living selling WordPress themes, and the quality of their work varies drastically. Although we develop our own themes in-house, we’ve always been impressed with the setup at ThemeForest to help in your search for a premium WordPress theme. (That link will take you directly to the WordPress themes and templates sorted by highest rating on ThemeForest.)

What to Look for When Picking a Premium WordPress Theme

Tip 1: You Get What You Pay For

It’s often worth the $30-$75 it costs to buy a premium theme instead of going with a free theme. This has to do not only with the quality of the theme itself (lots of free themes are actually really well-built, although there are plenty that aren’t), but also with the ability to get support from the theme developer if something doesn’t work as advertised.

Tip 2: Looks Can Be Deceiving

Look beyond the pretty pictures in the demo at the underlying design and layout of the theme. It’s easy to think a theme looks great, but what truly useful features are lurking behind the awesome pictures they loaded up in the demo?

Unless you’re a photographer or you have loads and loads of professional photos that work well together, you may have a hard time achieving the cohesive look of a photo-heavy theme. Look at the other elements: buttons, fonts, colors, etc. Is there plenty of visual interest there *without* the photos?

Tip 3: To Customize or Not To Customize

Decide at the start whether you want a theme that offers lots of customization or one that you plan to use out-of-the-box. These are two very different approaches to theme-building, and they both offer distinct advantages, but if you intend to heavily customize a theme that’s not built for it, you’re probably going to be in for a rude awakening.

Read through the theme documentation carefully, and ask the developer questions about your intended use for the theme before you buy. (Be sure you tell them that you’re considering buying their theme — theme developers are naturally wary of providing support to people who obtained their themes illegally.)

Tip 4: Listen to Other Customers.

Read, read, read before you buy. One of the things we love most about ThemeForest is having access to the user comments. You can see how quickly the theme developer responds to requests, what sorts of trouble people are having, etc. Try to read between the lines — if you’re trying to build your website around a cool filterable portfolio and you see lots of people having trouble with that feature of the theme, steer clear.

Over the last two weeks, we’ve tried to help you with some of the first-time hurdles you’re likely to face when creating an online art showcase on your own. But these topics are only the beginning.

Stay tuned to Artist Web School as we continue explore the larger challenges all artists face when displaying work online. And as always, send us your questions and thoughts about what you’d like to see discussed here at Artist Web School! #WordpressForArtists

The Big Picture

While WordPress is really simple to use in general, it’s got a ton of features and options that may seem a bit daunting at first. Here’s a basic rundown of what you need to know to get started…

WordPress has two sides: functionality and looks.

The “functionality” side is covered by the core WordPress software (which you should never touch unless you really know what you’re doing!) and/or by plugins, and the “looks” side is covered by your WordPress theme. More on both of those down the page a bit.

Front page layout is really important.

While some themes have very customized front page options, you generally have two options for your front page: a list of blog posts, or what’s called a static page with a set layout. If you go to Settings –> Reading in your dashboard, you’ll have the option to set which of these you want to display on your home page. Here’s some more info about that. Again, some themes will have special front page templates (which is probably one of the things that attracted you to a particular theme), so do check your theme documentation if you’re not sure how to set up your front page.

Menu items are how visitors will find their way around.

Think about your the different reasons people will have for visiting your site. Did they just hear about your work and want to explore further? Are they looking to find learn specifics regarding your past experience because they’re considering hiring you? Be sure your menu items help each of these visitors get what they need quickly. Also, don’t imagine that visitors will dig through your site to find your best work — be sure to there’s always a clear path to your showcase.

To adjust the menu in the WordPress, visit Appearance –> Menus to edit which pages/links you want to appear, and in what order. Again, your choice of theme can affect how this works, so be sure to check out your theme documentation if you can’t figure it out.

Dealing with media.

Media is obviously one of the most important concerns for an artist webiste. In WordPress, the Media library holds your images, audio, or video. Recent improvements to the image functionality in WordPress have made it really fantastic for working with images — you can now crop, resize, drag directly into your posts, etc. It actually handles audio and video really well too, but we don’t recommend that you host audio/video yourself.

YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, and others have millions invested in infrastructure for that — let them do it! Whenever possible, embed these third-party media players. Besides, hosting your media on these services is a great way to build a cloud-based artist portfolio!

Getting Your Hands Dirty With WordPress

I find that the best way to learn about this stuff is to dive in and get your hands dirty. Just go into the dashboard and start making posts and pages! Look at it this way: if you mess things up too badly, you can just reinstall WordPress and start over! (Of course, you don’t want to do this if you’ve gotten very far, but right at the beginning, it can be an attractive option.)

Google is your friend.

One of the biggest benefits to using a heavily-adopted system like WordPress is that there’s almost always someone out there who’s done what you want to do and written about it. If you have a question, Google (or Bing, or DuckDuckGo) it up! If you don’t find something right away, try rephrasing the question.

The WordPress Codex is your friend.

The Codex is the repository of all of the WordPress documentation, and if you really read through it and understand everything, you’ll be able to perform magic feats with WordPress. Fortunately, you probably won’t need to go that far, but it’s a great reference document. In fact, they’ve got a Where to Start document that’s a great extension of this tutorial.

Lists of tutorials are (sometimes) your friend.

A list like this one can be really helpful when you’re starting out — they can help show you what you don’t know you don’t know.

You’re on your way to developing your own WordPress-powered artist portfolio website! Next time in Part 4, we’ll be getting you acquainted with the power of WordPress themes.

Until then, feel free to send us your questions and thoughts about what you’d like to see discussed here at Artist Web School! #WordpressForArtists