As a creative, your online presence is a gateway to your work, a place of connection with consumers of your art, and a marketplace for your books, paintings, photos, crafts, etc.
I also find that for me, this website helps bring me clarity about what exactly I am working on, what my priorities are, and when I’m feeling like I’m not achieving anything, I can look at my site and see that I have actually done stuff.
A creative’s website serves many purposes.
I’ve been developing websites for over 20 years now and I’ve seen the process go wrong for so many people; websites somehow ‘disappear’ when a server has a glitch, or the web developer themselves goes AWOL, or some other problem pops up.
You want to make sure you get it right, but many people are not sure what exactly they are looking for when they are getting their website developed. What are the things to look out for? What are the things that could go wrong? How do you protect yourself?
I wrote an article recently about this for Valley of Writers. It’s targeted at writers, but it applies to all creatives.
Here are the questions:
- Who owns my domain name?
- Where will my domain be registered?
- Where will my website be hosted?
- Can you set up a hosting account in my name and give me admin access?
- Is my domain set to auto-renew?
- What CMS are you building my website on?
- How much will it cost to run my website each year?
- How easy and expensive will it be to get the site updated?
- Can I have access to the website admin?
- How often will my site be backed up?
- What measures will you take to ensure my site is safe?
- What happens if my website gets hacked?
Read the article
You can read the article here.
Writer | Digital Storyteller | Web Developer
I believe that every serious artist should be able to make a living from their work if they want to and I’m on a mission to find the best tools, ideas, and resources to help artists succeed. I experiment with business models, monetization ideas, and new technology in my own creative process as part of this journey of discovering.