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.





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