I'm having a bit of an internal debate this month. Every year in December I get a notice to renew my web site, and every year I debate changing it. There's really nothing wrong with the one I have. My best pieces are on there, details of my biography and resume and so forth. But it just kind of sits there. There's not a whole lot of traffic that I can see - this blog and Facebook get a lot more hits. I think that's fairly common since sites don't change regularly - they aren't really designed to be interactive.
So now I need to decide, is it worth it? If most people are looking at my blog, should I even bother keeping the site? Conventional wisdom says yes, because galleries and serious collectors like to look at a more serious site. For now I am lacking in both categories, but I'm hoping to change that in the next year which makes me hesitant to abandon the site altogether.
Since I will probably keep the site the question then becomes, should it stay where it is or do I find another host? I like the one I have now because it allows a huge number of images - up to 240. For the same price I've seen a limit of only 20. But other hosts offer things like email newsletters, art forums, direct buy, online contests and prints.
Another thing to consider is my ability to keep my domain name - would it be a big deal if I was no longer ek-excavations.com? There are now a number of places online where I have this listed, I would have to go about changing each one, although again most of my traffic is through the blog and Facebook. But if start getting interest from galleries, it wouldn't be a good idea to suddenly change my web address. So if I don't change, I may be stuck with what I've got.
Decisions, decisions, like I don't already have enough to think about this time of year! If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
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1 year ago
Goodluck with your decision.
ReplyDeleteI think a "serious" site is something we all need sometime to move our art forward. For me, I haven't got there yet and found it interesting to read.
Re the name; I think if you can get a domain similar to the old one/ or even different (using your name for example) will be fine, as long as you post everywhere about the name change. It could even give you an excuse to mail galleries you are interested in showing in generating yourself some publicity.