Now that it’s officially November, it’s that time of the year that time of the year when I reevaluate what I’m doing with my work, both from a creative aspect as well as from as the promotional end of things. Part of that is how I represent my work here and in my website. Even though I understand the importance of having an up to date and informative website, I have to admit that I have not always been completely on top of mine.
I’ve decided that I must get on the stick with my website. To that end, I’ve started changing it. I’ve changed the way it functions, added an acoustic guitar backing loop and am adding portfolios that present a fuller retrospective of my work. For instance, I’ve added portfolios (with slideshows) that show fuller my Red Roof and Archaeology series. Before, you could only see current works and shows. I plan on adding more portfolios in the future to make this a much more informative and complete site. There are still other tweaks such as reformatting the resume and statements as the new site reads them differently but bear with me as I slowly make these changes.
This promotional end of this business is never a lot of fun and I think a lot of artists let it slide in favor of doing anything else. I know I have many times before. But artists are ultimately small business owners and have to take every aspect of their business seriously. I know that I am probably as cognizant of this as any artist but sometimes I lose sight of my personal responsibility for my own career. It takes these built in stops in the year to let me step back and measure and critique my performance from this end of the business. From there I can take steps to make necessary changes, such as the new look on the website. It probably won’t be the last change.
Time to get to it. Have a great day.
Redtree Times 
Some feedback on the new website… I’m on broadband, and it took some time to load – it popped up at about 60%, and then I had to sit and watch as the rest loaded. It wasn’t terribly long – maybe three seconds – but for folks with DSL, dialup, etc. it could be even longer. (Yep, dialup. Amazing how much of that still is around). I did a speed test on my blog a few months ago and began doing a few things to speed up the load time. I cut nearly two seconds off by reducing the size of images, etc. There were a lot of tips in the WordPress forums.
The second time I went back, yours loaded almost instantaneously. Cookies, no doubt.
And strictly in the realm of personal preference, I despise sites with music. I turn it off immediately, and if I can’t find the mute button at first glance, I click out of the website. Period. I don’t know why I find it so annoying, but I do. If I had come across your site just in the process of browsing, I never would have spent time there. Of course there’s a mute button, but the first time I was there I didn’t spot it quickly enough and clicked out.
Of course, there are as many people who think it’s a big plus, so there you are.
I’ve been thinking I need to do some housekeeping on my blog, as well. Your changes are a good motivator to get after it!
Actually, I am pretty much the same when it comes to music on sites. But I wnated to at least give this a test run. It probably will be gone after today. As far as the loading time, I waited quite a while before switching to a FLASH site just because there are still some dial-ups out there. I remember how frustrating it was when that was all that was available to me. But I decide that the majority of folks are on some sort of faster connection now and felt that now was the time to make the move.
Thanks for the feedback!
Change is good.
A couple of quick observations:
I may have missed it but I didn’t see any identification of the music’s artist/composer.
Black text on a gray/green background (as on the Guestbook page) is difficult to read.
There was no mention of the music as I was just test running this. It came from a royalty free music site and listed no composer or performer. Your points on the aesthetics of the font colors are well taken. I don’t any of say in these selections as this site is composed from templates provided to me. I tried to select one that fit my deired criteria most fully with the fewest drawbacks.
Thank you for taking the time to give me some feedback. It is appreciated.
I’ve always enjoyed viewing your work and reading the commentary. Keep it up! 🙂
Thanks, Lynette!