How to Set Up an Art Website
It's easier than ever to set up a website, which means that it's now possible for any artist to be able to show his work to the world. It's even possible to sell your art through your website, without having extensive programming knowledge.
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Things You'll Need
- HTML editor, such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage
- Photos of your art
- PayPal account, if you wish to sell your art online
- Registered domain name and website hosting account
Instructions
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Using your HTML editor, create a basic page layout that is appealing to you. Think about what pieces of information you want to include on each page, such as a navigation area with links to different areas of your site, a space for articles or recent news and a heading area where you can place your logo, name or other graphic.
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Set the page layout you've created as a template. Do this by selecting "Save as Template" from the save menu in your HTML editor. You will use this template to build your other pages. Setting a template allows you to make changes to one file that will need to appear on all the pages of your site, without having to update every file individually.
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Set editable regions within your template. An editable region is any area that you will want to make changes to on pages within your site without those changes appearing across the entire site. The most likely place you will want as an editable region is the main content area of your page, since that will most likely be different on each page within your site.
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Decide what other pages you will want to include in your site. You might have different categories of your art, such as photos, pottery, oil paintings and sculptures. Many website owners, particularly those who are showcasing creative works, choose to include an "About Me" page that allows you to tell the world a bit about yourself and your background. You can have a separate page on your website dedicated to art in each medium.
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Using your template, create your site navigation based on the categories you've decided to include. You can use plain text links or create visually appealing buttons that Internet browsers can click on to get to each section of your site. Re-save this template document.
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Select "Create New" or "New File" from the menu of your HTML editor. Choose to create a new HTML document based on the template you've just created. Re-save this document as one of the sections of your site. You can repeat this step until you have a separate HTML document for each area of your website.
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Begin adding content to the different pages within your site. You may want to include articles or other text descriptions of your art, and you will probably want to include pictures. One way to do this is to add small thumbnail-sized images to your category page, so that you can fit multiple images on one page. Create a new document for each photo that contains a larger image of the same photo and make each thumbnail image on your main category page clickable to lead to the larger, more descriptive page dedicated to an individual piece of art.
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If you would like to sell your art through your website, you can set up a PayPal merchant account that will allow you to create "Buy Now" or "Add to Cart" buttons so visitors to your site can purchase art directly. PayPal also offers a free shopping cart service that is very easy to use.
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Publish your website to the internet using FTP software, such as Core FTP Lite, which is available free through an Internet download. Continue to monitor your site, add fresh content and make changes as your business grows.
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Tips & Warnings
Setting up a Google Analytics account provides a lot of free, valuable information about the traffic you're getting to your website and where it's coming from. It's easy to set up by creating an account with Google Analytics and adding a simple piece of code to your website. This is a tool that many website owners use to monitor their traffic and help them decide on steps to further optimize their website.
