Blog Platforms for Artists Including Potters and Clay People

Warning:  really long!

My old blog, http://cmguajardo.blogspot.com has been cached by Blogger even though I deleted it a few days ago.  Be careful what you post – it could be there forever even if you don’t want it there anymore!

Back in March, I decided to make the move from Blogger to a paid self hosted Wordpress blog after testing out several different platforms including, Vox, Live Journal, Typepad, Movable Type, Sitekreator, Weebly, Wordpress.com (which is hosted free and not to be confused with wordpress.org) and a few others.

Why?

When I first decided to really give being a studio artist a real shot after dropping out of the graduate landscape architecture program at UCD in 2005, I didn’t know what blogging even was until I joined a virtual multi-disciplinary art group called Wet Canvas (WC for short) in January 2006 and didn’t really know how to navigate my way around all the different available technologies.  WC has a ton of information for artists and I immediately started reading the “internet strategies” thread since, intuitively, I knew that this is a huge part of being a 21st C artist.

Not being completely confident of my longterm blogging or independent studio artist future, I looked for a FREE blogging platform.  Time would be my only investment.

I initially signed up with MSN Live Spaces (bundled with Qwest – my ISP) and then later opened a blogger account because that seemed like the most popular platform at the time.  When I first started blogging, I really was new to internet technology even though I had been browsing the ‘net and reading my email for years prior.  Slowly, I became more proficient and as I visited more and more blogs, I would find applications I wanted to implement on my own blog and started recognizing those that worked well in both design and function.  Later, I became dissatisfied with the canned templates, and went in search of “skins” so that I could customize my blog which ultimately led me to taking some free online HTML courses to understand how it all worked together.

HTML

Of course, I then found out that HTML was really a blanket term for different types of mark up language/scripting and itself is just coding basics.  css, xhtml, xml, php, javascript, sql and more coding/browser and server scripting languages that I don’t really understand are more current and acceptable coding practices.  In fact, you can probably tell by visiting different web sites how someone built their site.  If it looks sort of archaic, then it was  probably basic HTML – otherwise a well designed site was constructed using a more current programming language.  Correct me here if I’m wrong for those of you reading this with a background in computer science.

But, by learning basic HTML, it taught me how to format links, add alt tags, make simple forms, tables, frames, add images, fonts, manipulate text, color, and more which helped me to see the bigger picture.  I’m one of those people that needs to know how stuff works and knowing the basics helps me get under the “hood” of my blog to tweak minor stuff whereas before and to a certain extent now, the code looked like gobbledy gook. Now, I do know enough about what not to mess with!  Don’t believe me?  Next time when you’re looking at a webpage, click on “view” from your toolbar (for PC users), then “page source” and all the code will appear before your eyes – it really does look like a foreign language.

WC3

One of my favorite resources is WC3 or the World Wide Web Consortium which is an international group of people that develops protocols and creates standards for optimal web experiences to ensure long term growth.  It’s also vendor neutral and seeks to ensure that software languages remain open, non-fragmentary and WC3 compliant.  It also contains self guided tutorials that can be done when time permits and a coding validator for your site/blog.

So, whether you’re handcoding a site using a text based editor like Notepad for PCs/TextEdit for Mac for the experts/masochists or using a WYSISYG program like Golive (discontinued), Dreamweaver (now replaces Golive),  Frontpage (discontiued – replaced by Microsoft Expression Web) or other – they all use the same language and there are also rules regarding building a site, whether it’s a dynamic blog or a simple website.  Here’s a more complete list of html editors both text and WYSISYG editors, along with comparisons of each.

I know this is lot of information for a novice blogger!

Back to Why Move?

I wanted my blog to do more and to behave differently; and at the time, I was frustrated with the limitations of Blogger.  Sure, I learned some hacks to make it work for me, but in the end, I knew there was better software out there.  Blogger had served me well in the beginning so I did my homework to make the best choice for my needs.

I happened to find The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie at the library one day last winter which got me started on my search for a new blog platform.

I settled on a self hosted Wordpress blog, which is open source software free for all to use, which required even more learning on my part but after picking up Wordpress for Dummies I was ready to make the move.  First, I had to find a reliable host, point my domains to the new host, and learn how to use a new platform.

Why not save myself the money and headache and just go with a hosted wordpress.com blog?  I could easily spend the $10.00 or $15.00 it costs to get my own domain, but wordpress.com has limitations including not being able to use javascripts and limited template choices (though you can pay another fee and upload a custom template).  In the end, it just wasn’t right for me.

Back to hosting – In the beginning, I signed up with Start Logic since it was the cheapest hosting I could find but immediately knew I had made a mistake.  It was a bad choice – it was slow, support was terrible if not non-existent, and the interface was clunky.  I was out the $35.00 I paid, but then switched to Blue Host (1 of 6 recommended hosts by Wordpress) and paid another $83.40 which works out to $6.95/mo and includes a free domain name for the life of your account.  Even though I already owned my domains, I was able to transfer coloradoartstudio.com to the new host for no additional charge.

Hosting Considerations

Make sure you research hosts before forking over your credit card if you decide you want a self hosted blog or decide to build a website!  The perfect host probably doesn’t exist, and after researching Blue Host, there are plenty of detractors out there as well, but I have had no complaints myself.  I’ve had to call Blue Host support 2x and each time I’ve called, the phone was answered within 5 minutes if not less which pleased me to no end since I had to hold for almost 2 hours when I called Start Logic for help or tried to use their “chat with a CSR” feature.  Most times, I just gave up – then I made the switch.

As a bonus, Blue Host has an auto-install feature for WP, so I didn’t even have to upload it manually.  So after a rocky start, all ll I can say is I LOVE Wordpress.  Now, I’m not out to convert anyone – but it is the perfect choice for my needs/wants.

CMS

Wordpress also acts like a website, allowing pages to be added on – you can decide which ones are visible, order them, have password protected ones, and there are a ton of plugins that can make it do anything I want.  I’m actually considering deleteing my website that I painstakingly built with Golive in favor of fleshing out my blog to act like a website.  Wordpress is a CMS or content management system that allows non-technical people like myself manage and create dynamic well written web pages with little to no coding or programming expertise.

So, deleting my static website in one of my goals for the near future after I think about it some more.

Cons of Moving a Blog

So, if I’m so happy, what problems could I possibly have?

Lost Traffic: My Blogspot blog was 2 years old when I decided to make the move and this means I was developing an audience, had a lot of inbound links which are necessary for building page rank on search engines, I had decent traffic anywhere from 100-300 hits a day depending on the post and day of the week (not huge – other sites have 1,000+ hits a day), I had about 100 subscribers (again, maybe not a lot by big blog standards, but it was growing), my blog often was on page 1 or 2 when searching for info, I had all my subscriptions managed, and I had to learn how to use a new platform.

Lost Inbound links: When I moved, I kept my blogspot blog up and just posted a link to my new blog informing people that I had moved and to please update their bookmarks & links if they so desired.  Many did, but a lot didn’t.  I totally understand too, we only have so much time in a day and priorities often take precedence.

Takes time and work: I had to update all my accounts with my new blog url and email address.  I didn’t backup my emails when I switched my domain to Start Logic, so I lost some contacts and messages.  In hind sight, I should have kept the domains with the original domain host maindomain.org ($6.95/yr for domain) and just changed the nameservers to point to my Start Logic account.  Once you transfer a domain name, you’re often locked from transferring it again for another 60 days.  So, I had to go into my Start Logic account and point them to Blue Host for awhile.

Domain & Hosting Management: Just yesterday, I initiated the process of transferring 1 of my domains to Blue Host since it’s free with hosting, and am transferring the other 2 back to maindomain.org where I will point those to my bluehost account instead.  I also own cynthiaguajardo.com and coloradopotterystudio.com.  I could just sit on those domain names, but decided to forward them, just in case anyone happens to type those into their browser.  I also initiated the cancellation of my Start Logic hosting account so that I’m not charged the annual renewal fee – to which I received a I’m sorry you’re going email and we’ve improved if you want to stay.  No thanks.

Lost Subscribers: I became frustrated early this week when trying to configure a 301 redirect from my old blog to my new one.  I still get a bit of traffic to the old blog even though I haven’t posted to it since March.  Instead of taking a deep breath and trying another day, I got frustrated and deleted my old blog permanently in a fit of exasperation.  Guess what?  While the direct link doesn’t work, Google has still cached the site and the pages are still available.  Doh.

In the meantime, I checked my Feedburner account that I use for my email subscribers and I lost 40 subscribers as soon as I deleted the old blog.

Too Many Feeds: Speaking of feeds, (which really broadcast and syndicate information to interested parties and the web) my new blog has too many.  I’m not quite sure what to do about it, but will have to research it.  I think having 1 or 2 – maybe even another for comments is okay, but otherwise, confusing to potential readers.

Pros

Import old blog: Wordpress has an import feature and I was able to import all my posts, images, comments, and tags to my new blog, so it had instant content when I went live.

Cleaned House: I had the opportunity to clean up my blog, edit my blogroll, and to customize my blog to reflect me and my work thanks to a bit of tweaking using information I’ve learned in the past 2 years.

Customize: There are a gazillion themes (known as “skins” on blogger) to upload and use  – a lot of these are free, and if you don’t want to do the work, some can be customized for you for a price.  I was looking for a really clean looking minimal theme that would allow me to upload my own header image that was as close to what I wanted so that I wouldn’t have to do much work under the hood.  When a user first installs wordpress to their host, there are only 2 themes uploaded and ready to use.  I searched an searched, and finally settled on K2 – all I had to do was to change a few colors in the template, create a header, and voila you have what you see here today.

Control: I have complete control over everything and don’t have to rely on anyone to make my site work the way I want it to since I’ve done my homework over the years.

Multiple pages: I love this for all the reasons mentioned above.

SEO:  I’m now embarking on a mission to make my site reach more people which hopefully will result in more readers and connections and more artistic opportunities.  It might result in new customers, maybe not.  My blog was initially a marketing tool for me to gain customers, but it’s just as much about networking and opportunities now.  My teaching stint at Anderson Ranch this year is a result of the Children’s Education Coordinator finding me via my blog.  I’ve also been contacted by galleries through my blog as well which is exciting.

Last night, I logged into Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics in my Google account and read all I could on how to get my site in tip top shape.  I added sitemaps to both my website and blog (I found a plugin to do it for me on Wordpress).  Verified that I am indeed the owner of my sites.  Added a robot.txt file to my sites so that they can be crawled.  There seems to be some paranoia about web bots and spammers, but I allowed all my pages to be visible until I know better maybe.  See Webmaster Central for all kinds of info.

Want to see what kind of a grade your website/blog receives?  Visit http://www.websitegrader.com/

Built In Functionality: I love being able to add all different kinds of things to my blog including video, music, photos, pdfs, word docs and more.  I can truncate posts, add special symbols, toggle between a visual and html editor, schedule posts to be published at later dates, control how a post gets put into moderation, change templates without losing everything and having to plug all that stuff in again and more.

Now, blogger has some of these features too, and from what I’ve gathered by visiting those of you who have blogger blogs, it looks like blogger has a lot of new features too that weren’t there when I was using the service.

Akismet Spam Catcher: This is awesome!  Sometimes, 1 does sneak in – but I always catch and delete it.  One thing I dont’ like are the blog scrapers, but I’m not sure what to do about that.  I love not having to have the word verification thingie and I really don’t like to moderate comments since that takes an extra step for me.

Summary

Good move for me – and since I’m in this for the long haul, I know it will take time to gain back and exceed my previous stats since I’m really trying to improve the functionality of my web presence.

Also, I want to add that I don’t just blog to blog.  I actually enjoy writing and it’s brought way more to me than just traffic/stats/etc.  I feel like it helps create community, especially for artists who tend to work solo.

So who do I have to thank for this long winded post and why did I write it?  I often get questions about blogging from people who are new to it (maybe they’ll read this and save themselves from the same mistakes I made) and then I appreciate all of the fabulous people who write the blogs I read at least weekly that inspire me including Emily Murphy, who wrote a very timely post a few days ago on how clay bloggers can improve their site’s SEO (though it applies to anyone who is new/old to blogging).  After reading Emily’s post, I was reminded that I hadn’t taken care of everything when I moved my blog and that I’ve been lax in certain areas including adding alt text to images, using appropriate key words, thinking locally, and updating many of my accounts.  I found outdated links and all kinds of anomalies when I got down to the business of web master.  I do a lot of things right, but I know that there are areas where I can improve.

Also, clay people are fairly new to blogging which leads me to Michael Kline, a potter from North Carolina who recently wrote an article for Studio Potter, titled Clay_Wheel_Rib_SpongeÉBlog? that I’m looking forward to reading.  I let my subscription lapse, but am going to renew.  It makes it a little more fun to read when you sort of have a connection, albeit virtual.

One final note, blogging isn’t for everyone.  You have to post consistently, reciprocate, read, comment, join groups and participate in the culture to be successful.  By successful, I don’t mean monetarily either – it’s more all encompassing.  Of course you probably don’t have to participate if you’re a celebrity in your field, people might just flock to you regardless though it won’t be as much fun.  A blog is a dialog with other people, unless of course, you want it to be a private journal.  Finally, I am by no means an expert on blogging or any of the other things I’ve written about.  I’m merely sharing my uphill learning experience of the past 2.75 years of navigating the net as an artist and I’m not afraid to include my hits and misses.  It’s how I learn.

So, that’s it in a nutshell – Happy Blogging,

~Cynthia