Another Milestone

This past week I bit the bullet and took advantage of an offer through Go-Daddy to use one of their many hundreds of template styles to build my Website for the name domain I purchased last year. My son is a very good graphic designer and knows a lot about building websites however; he has been too busy to help put something together. I have had the name domain for almost a year and felt it was time to get something going that looked more professional for my art. After all, the link is available with several professional pastel society organizations and galleries, and did not look very good at all.

Building a website myself, now how hard could that be? I am not what you would call a techy or a computer geek. I have stayed active with computers since I retired and do know my way around a little. Just enough to get myself in trouble from time to time. Well Go-Daddy, show me what you've got! There are not idiot instructions for building a website, but there are enough drop dons on various pages that one can research a question and figure out how to use their product. I did run into several problems when I chose a ready made site, that one could change the printed words but changing the pictures was a lot more difficult.

I switched to a template style and color that I liked and started over. Fortunately it was fairly simple and I was able to make changes in the templates and upload photos and size them correctly to work on the various pages. My biggest challenge came when I decided to upload some of my art pictures. Getting the painting titles in and also the paintings was a huge issue and I ran into a few snags, and deleted it all deciding I would try that another day when I was fresh. The wait helped and I methodically worked out the way I wanted them to appear and managed with some setbacks to design the page the way I wanted. I would have liked to put borders around the pictures but that would take more knowledge than I have to know how to do that.

The template level that I chose only includes 5 pages for their $2.99 per month hosting charge for three years. If I was a more prosperous artist I would have elected to get a bigger package, but this is a good way to start out, and perhaps I can add to what I have started in the future. Yes, okay, I know I am cheap, but artist supplies are a more important concern right now. I also would have liked to change the name of one of the pages that says services, however the page names are locked in and not changeable  from what I can figure out. I really do not need a page by this title, I would rather have had another gallery page. The last page is a contact sheet that allows interested persons to email me. I tested this feature and was pleased to see that it does work.

Now that I am finished and have uploaded my Website, please feel free to visit and let me know what you think of my it. You can find the site at http://www.paulmharman.com