Sunday, May 27, 2012

Writing a Blog vs. Hosting a Blog

I like WordPress (a self hosted blog service). I really do. I've worked on dozens of sites using the WP installation as the backbone for entertainers and software companies to non-profit organizations. At one time I also used the WP for my own personal website and portfolio. And that's where my love affair ended.

I know many great artists out there that have beautiful websites, but for the most part I think that a lot of people get caught up in the technical trappings of maintaining a WordPress self hosted site. Creative people who are not knowledgable to things like FTP, .htaccess files, PHP, CSS etc. find these foreign things are completely outside the realm of their understanding and often a major distraction from the art that they are trying to create.

For anyone that is self hosting a WordPress (or other CMS site), you have to ask yourself one simple question: is my site controlling me or am I controlling my site? If you are spending countless hours dealing with web hosting, fixing custom layouts and trouble shooting why an image won't load, your site is controlling you.

I remember one of my graphic design teachers telling the class, "You have mastered a program like Photoshop when you are using the tools to create something instead of letting the tools surprise you by creating something." For many creative artists, making the perfect site (i.e. a combination of graphic design and web coding) will never be something that they master. Often creative people try to make a site themselves and end up creating something that is not representative of their art and may even be a detractor for people who are interested in learning more about the artist.

In some instances, it is very important to have a website that represents you. Find someone you like to create your site for you or at least finding someone to guide you in how to piece together the "turn key" solutions that exist in parts across the internet (e.g. A singer: use a hosted blog solution with a SoundCloud account for playing back your tracks).

Like finding a contractor or a good mechanic, there is not fast easy way to make a personal website. It's a necessary things for many people, so take a moment to figure out what works best for you before you go down the rabbit hole of creating and hosting a website.





A New Beginning

Tagging from Paris, France
I have been been going back and forth on the idea of creating a blog for some time. Three years ago I started one as a professional portfolio. It served its purpose, but rapidly fell into disuse because a) I was too busy to keep on making updates, b) I was too concerned with constantly changing the appearance and c) self hosting a WordPress blog is great, but there is a lot of upkeep involved that was taking away from my creative process.

I actually started using Blogger back in 2000 around the time when it came out, but was turned off by it's appearance and also with the whole concept of blogging. Back then I was aware that I had nothing to say. To be more explicit: I had nothing worth sharing that other people could learn from. And now, to some degree, I feel that I have a few words that I feel others are interested in sharing as well as creating a forum for discussion.

Regarding the appearance, I like how the new Blogger allows you to keep the page bascially dynamic: the user gets to control the look and feel of the site as well as have a mobile option to read things.

Upon starting this blog, today, I am hoping that there will be a few interested readers along the way, but I'm more doing it to help me with my writing and to get some thoughts I've had out into the ether. Through this blog, I'm going to cover the intersecting subjects of technology, art and society. These three elements compose a cultural triangle in every community; each affects the other in a unique way.

Looking forward to writing.