Wordpress & Artists: My Favorite Plugins and Themes

EDIT:  I've updated this list on 2/17/2017!

A couple of years back, I did a series of posts on Wordpress and its value as a CMS (content management system) for artists wishing to create their own websites.  I am still using Wordpress to manage my site to this day and thought I'd share a few of my favorite plugins and themes!

Plugins

All In One SEO Pack - Lets you add custom tags and meta info to your pages very easily to make it more easily found by search engines.

Duplicator - Lets you copy your site and database so you can move your entire site from one location to another.  Handy if you've been building in a private test folder before moving it onto your main domain.  This plugin can also create a snapshot of your site at any time for backup purposes.

The Events Calendar - Great for adding your upcoming appearances into a calendar on your Sidebar.

Jetpack - This plugin combines a full suite of features for your Wordpress site, which I like to use the features that allow you to link to thumbnails of related posts, show my site stats in my Admin dash, and publicize each blog post to my favorite social networks.  The rest I don't use.

MailChimp by MailChimp and Crowd Favorite - Lets you add a widget with a customizable MailChimp sign up form into your site's Sidebar.

NextGen Gallery by Photocrati - A wonderful gallery management tool that lets you create taggable images with sleek layouts.  The pro version nets you extra layouts and social sharing links bundled in.  If you decide on the pro version, give me al ittle kickback by using my referral link!

WooCommerce - In the few years since I've originally tried this plugin, it's been much improved and stabilized.  Stripe and Paypal integration come right out of the box and it provides a sleek, professional looking shop.  The new shipping classes are much improved and easier to understand than they were a couple of years ago as well!

WP Hide Post - I use this plugin to hide Pages and/or Posts from my site's search and navigation function.  This is handy when you're linking people (ie. Patreon Patrons) to exclusive content.

WP-Spamshield - I get an insane amount of spam on my Wordpress based blog and this plugin helped me keep most of the bots out.  When it had conflicts with another plugin (namely that troublemaker NextGen), the creator of the plugin was friendly and responsive to help me sort out the problems and even helped me to make my site run faster.  The conflicts have since been resolved as of this writing and this plugin continues to be my site's spam blocking warrior.

Themes

All of the themes mentioned here are mobile phone friendly.

Make - What I'm currently using on my latest site.  Make comes with a free version you can use as-is.  I love the integrated social icons bar (I was hard coding them all before into a Sidebar widget) and it's very sleek looking.  The packaged Builder templates for creating Pages on your site allows you to do Pages with columns, image sliders, galleries, etc. very easily without requiring a lot of coding knowledge. It is e-commerce ready with WooCommerce integration in mind.

The Pro version lets you get rid of the template tag on the bottom as well as opens up extra Page layouts and pre-made templates where you can toggle Sidebars on and off and auto-populate Pages based on their intended use for quick Page building.  You also get access to more type kits that let you change the font style of your whole website at once.

The free and pro versions both have a ton of customizable Widget areas such as multiple Footers and Menu locations.  Buying the Pro version also lets me use this theme on all of the sites I own.

Virtue - Has a free and pro version.  The free version lets you create grids using Portfolio items.  I almost went with this one for my site, but I found the Portfolio setup a little confusing.  If you can manage it though, it seems like a pretty versatile theme.  Just like Make, you get tons of customizable Widget areas, such as multiple Footers and Menu locations.  It is also e-commerce ready with WooCommerce integration in mind.

Wave - I never got to test this one out on my own, but the demo site looks good and it's also e-commerce ready.  I'm including it here as an option because it was reviewed highly, is a decent price, and might be an option others might want to try.

So what are some of your favorite plugins and themes?  Share in comments!

Wordpress & Artists: Final Thoughts

After the latest redesign of my website using Wordpress' content management capabilities, I've let my thoughts percolate for awhile on my final impression of its effectiveness and usefulness for artists. So far, my impressions haven't changed much from the original Pros & Cons listing that I did previously. Here are a few thoughts that might help you come to a decision of whether you want to use it or not.

The Trouble With Wordpress...

...is that it's definitely not for beginners, as far as online management of content. You must know how to install a database, backup a database, and upload files. If you have a Geek on call that can help you with all this, than all the better! I learned how to do this all myself and it's technically not that hard once you get the hang of it. Get yourself a good FTP program (I use Filezilla) and play around in your website's control panel until you're familiar with it. I killed my own website a few times before I finally learned how to make a backup properly. Luckily, Wordpress is insanely easy to get running again! I restored my site to basic functionality from scratch in just a day after nuking it.

Taking Risks with Plugins & Upgrades

Another issue of concern for me is that plugins are always being upgraded and sometimes they might be borked in the upgrading. There is a dialog menu that pops up before you download and install a plugin that tells you whether or not it has been tested with your version of Wordpress. Pay attention to this because it could spell disaster if you haven't backed up your site recently! Plugins and upgrades to the core of Wordpress are a calculated risk in my opinion. I'd much rather deal with that than going back to my old way of doing things (Photoshop, html, and building everything by hand). The Wordpress community also seems very tightly knit and there's always an ear out for troubleshooting, if you post your concerns on a plugin's webpage.

Code Makes My Brain Hurt

I did end up grating my brain a little over certain CSS programming that was required to make my website look the way I want, but generally I found that for everything I wanted to tweak, there was an online tutorial showing me how to do it. Be careful with following tutorials, however, as sometimes they might be for older versions! (I found this out the hard way when I nuked my site following a database backup tutorial). Pay attention to the date of the tutorial and try to find the most recent ones.

Easy to Use Gallery Functionality

Updating my galleries has never been easier with the NextGEN Wordpress plugin (you just upload, tag descriptions, and go!). It's saved me so much time with my website's upkeep, particularly where galleries are involved, and also provides a sleek looking slideshow integrated with its interface. This is definitely one of the strongest reasons I've decided to bank on Wordpress for my needs as an artist.

E-Commerce Capabilities

I've managed to get a shop running with the e-commerce plugin by Instinct (will review this in a later post). It's not the prettiest shop, but it is free (unless you want to pay to upgrade to a prettier interface with additional payment gateways). I had some bugs during setup, but have managed to get it working to allow me to accept Paypal. As an admin, you can also print packing slips and keep track of orders all in one place. Another randomly useful feature is the ability to make a product link offsite if you have it listed elsewhere. For example, I have many of my products set up so that they link to their Etsy listings instead when you click them.

It's not perfect, but it will serve my purposes till I can afford the premium plugin at $200 for a commercial license for a multiple person business. It's only $40 if you have a single employee. Considering how much I've paid in the past to upkeep an Amazon Webstore ($60 a month) or an eBay shop (approx. $20 a month), this one-time fee is a small price to pay.

All in All...

If you can handle the learning curve and don't self-destruct at the thought of a little coding, than I recommend Wordpress. It's not perfect, but it's certainly functional and easy to manage right out of the proverbial box.

Websites & Artists Part 4 - Describing Art Online?

After getting my website live last week, an interesting thought occurred to me. When we're showcasing our art online, is it really necessary to describe that work in detail in a little text clump next to the image? Is it really necessary to talk about your inspirations, how the work came to be, etc? Does anyone really care?

I posed the question to my Facebook/Twitter/social networking groups and received some interesting feedback:

Nobody Cares...
...or rather nobody has the time to read these days. This camp believes the image says it all and that those browsing your art are really only interested in the final product. Basic information, such as medium, the program you used, the size of the image, and the purpose of creation (for a commission, for a company, etc) seem acceptable by the 'keep it simple' philosophy. From the standpoint of the artist, this is also an efficient approach if you don't have the time to sit and write descriptions about your process, or merely have nothing you're inspired to say about your pieces. Many websites for illustrators, concept artists, and industry-focused fields seem to be done in this fashion.

The More, the Better!
This attitude seems more prevalent in the fine artist crowd who believe that process is an important part of the expression. I would argue that it is also more prevalent on the sites of artists who sell a majority of their work to the general public. While Art Directors and the like have little time to read long heart-felt descriptions of a work's creation and inspirational impetus, the general public appreciates learning why that work is 'special' and worthwhile. It all links up to 'implied value', in this case, or how much worth an uninformed individual places on your work from presentation alone when they have no previous knowledge of you or your work.

Things to Think About
From the standpoint of a website designer with search engine optimization in mind, remember that meta-tags are not the most prevalent form of how search engines find a site. Nowadays, search engines like Google index the content, or text, of your pages in order to glean the most relevant results, though meta-descriptions on pages still seem relevant, if you have time to fill that field in for each page you design (meta-description being what shows on the results of any search engine's results page).

But neither should you fake a description! Personally, I think it's not worth it to ramble on about something if you really don't care about it. You only waste your own time and leave fans with a false impression of your priorities as an artist (and the more astute fans amongst us with doubts about your sincerity).

Personally..., I've invested myself as a writer and an artist, meaning there's a bit of poetry or a story behind most (but not all) of the pieces that I do. My site has barebone descriptions right now, but I hope to find a way to include text in a collapsible box so the most ADD amongst us can either skip the fluff or click a plus box to reveal a brief bit of prose.

In the end, I think an artist should consider what their site is going to do for them, who their audience is, and just how much time they have to manage writing long descriptions. Do what works for you and what you feel comfortable with.

How do you showcase your art online? Do you write long or short descriptions? What value do you see in either method?

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Websites & Artists Series
Part 1 - Considering Your Audience
Part 2 - What's in a Domain Name?
Part 3 - Search Engine Optimization
Part 4 - Describing Art Online

Wordpress & Artists: A First Impression

Have any of you ever wished you had your own personal Geek on call to fix your website? (I know I do!)

An important part of my business as a fantasy artist is my website where I can keep in touch with my fans and friends. From there, people are guided to information about me, sections of my stores on Amazon and Etsy, my social media profiles, and to all manner of odds and ends. Maintaining my website, however, is never an easy task for me with my archaic method of using html tables and images.

It takes weeks at a time to alter the navigation, update the galleries, or add new content. My info is scattered across a forum, 3rd party sites, and various sections with broad organization that requires a lot of click-throughs. In short, my website is a bloody mess to update because I have to do everything by hand.

I build the thumbnails, large and small, every time I want to update my gallery. I build my menu navigation from scratch in Photoshop. When I want to add news, I have to do it by typing in text on the news page and then having to redo all the RSS coding for that page. I dream constantly of a CMS (Content Management System, a type of database powered program that is useful for designing websites) built especially for artists that bares in mind our need for easy gallery updating, dynamic content, and a smooth customizable look.

It may not be specifically for artists, but I've recently stumbled upon Wordpress, a free CMS I've been investigating lately to solve my website woes. Last week, I finished a 24 hour trainer book (in about 3 days at my absorption rate) which really opened my eyes to how much having a php/css powered website can help me manage my website better!

I've only just started playing with it and here are my first impressions:

The Pros	The Cons
Super easy to create image galleries by default (or with handy dandy plugins like NexGEN)	A moderate learning curve.
Ability to import blogs and comments, including Blogger, and most major blogging services.	Some CSS code knowledge required (but none I couldn't find tutorials for online so far)
Tons of plugins, including ones for forums, easy form builders, social media integration, automatic metatagging, and shopping carts!	Updates to Wordpress may cause some plugins or themes to go wonky.
Visual interface that's fairly self-explanatory
Tons of free themes that you can customize for your own look.
Ability to make individual posts or pages private or password protected (IE. Good for giving special subscribers sneak peeks, perhaps?)
Multiple admins and co-admin users allowed (IE. Handy if you have have a studio with multiple people)
Ability to integrate your forum, blog, and website together so people won't have to register a username at all of them separately.
Page editor allows html or rich-text editing (super handy for seeing how your pages look and giving ultimate control over your code)

So far, it seems like Wordpress is going to do everything that I want it to do to help me keep my website updated! Expect a full report once I've had more time to play with all its bells and whistles.

Websites & Artists Part 3 - Search Engine Optimization

Websites & Artists Series
Part 1 - Considering Your Audience
Part 2 - What's in a Domain Name?
Part 3 - Search Engine Optimization
Part 4 - Describing Art Online

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Now that you've settled on your domain name and have some semblance of an idea for a design, there's yet another aspect of designing a website to consider - SEO (or Search Engine Optimization). SEO is an overarching term used to describe the elements of a webpage and strategies which can be altered in order to make it easier for search engines to find your page.

Now, one thing I will make clear at the beginning, if you don't want your site to be easily found by search engines, there is no need to go through the trouble. Sometimes, like in the case of personal portfolios to be presented to art directors, we don't necessarily need to obey these rules of optimization and don't want people stumbling upon these pages because they're not meant for public display, beyond job solicitation. By all means, go crazy with Flash and other things which aren't very search engine friendly. (See this article on hiding your webpage from indexing)

But chances are, you do want your webpage to be found easily! For this purpose, I personally employ Google's edicts of website optimization. As one of the foremost search engines on the net, Google also offers a wide variety of free tools and guides for webmasters to use in lieu of hiring SEO marketing experts.

A good first step once you have a completed page is to submit your url to google or the open source project to begin indexing your page with various search engines across the web.


Some Things to Remember:

Metatags have become moot! - At least for Google, and a growing number of other search engines. There was a time in the past where all you had to do was put a bunch of invisible metatags into the header of your webpage, but now, most search engines crawl your page in search of keywords and relevant content that actually exist within your webpage itself and aren't present in invisible tags. For artists, this means that you will need to actually include relevant info about your images rather than merely leaving the images to speak for themselves. The exception to the rule here is the meta description and Title tags, which are still used as a summary for your page in search engine displays.

Flash galleries are tricky - Because of the metatag issue, Flash galleries also present a bit of a problem. Because the text itself in most Flash displays are embedded into the Flash, this makes the text impossible to crawl for the majority of search engines (though it seems Google can read it now!). My suggestion is that if you're going to use Flash galleries that you put your relevant keywords in your artist biography, add them in the title tag of your page, or incorporate them within your page's content somehow, instead.

Note that web standards are always evolving so this may change in the future! Also, if you try to hide your text using CSS or making your font small and the same color as your background image, Google may remove your site from its indexing if it is deemed 'deceptive in intent'!

Backlinking is your friend! - A 'backlink' is basically a link which is incoming to your page (particularly from another website outside of your own). Search engines often calculate your rank in their search engine by the amount of backlinking present on your site. Search engines will also measure the relevancy of the text providing the link and the relevancy of the site which you are linked from. If you are being linked to from an authoritative source, this adds to the importance and ranking of your site.

For artists, this means being sure to link to your website from your forum signatures, online articles, blogs, and website profiles. The more linking, the higher your rank! But also remember to keep these links relevant and pertinent to your content! One wouldn't link back to their art gallery from a webpage on baseballs unless you're doing baseball art.

EDIT: 6-15-2015 - Be Mobile Device Compatible! - Phones and tablets have become all the rage since this article was first published.  Google has recently announced that your site's ranking can now be affected by whether or not it can be viewed properly on these devices.  To test your site's friendliness for devices and read more about this topic, see Google's article here.

For further info on designing for search engine optimization, see Google's Webmaster Guidelines and Google 101.


Additional Tools for SEO

Google Analytics - So you've optimized your site, how do you keep track with what's working for you and what's not? My favorite tool is Google Analytics. Using Analytics, you can see the amount of traffic, new and old, to your page, as well as where this traffic came from, how long viewers are looking, what referring sites linked to you, what keywords people are using to find your page, and a plethora of useful information. All it takes is the insertion of a little bit of code into the pages you would like monitored by Analytics.

Google Alerts - Want to know when an article might be posted online about you, but don't want to have to manually search online every night just to find information? Try Google Alerts. The way it works is that when Google crawls a page and finds a search term which you've told it to alert you about, it will send you an email with a link to the page it finds with that specific term on it. I have Alerts programmed to find my name, my characters' names, and my alternate usernames on various art sites.

For an example of its usefulness, Alerts helped me to discover that a Twitter-bot took my artist username so I could put out a notice saying that this user on Twitter was not me! Alerts also helps me to keep an eye out for art thieves who are are dumb enough to use the same title on images that I originally used (Tineye is also good for this purpose, as it is an image recognition tool that scours the net for you).

For further reading about SEO, check out these great resources!
Google's Search Engine Optimization Guide
Yahoo's Search Engine Optimization Guide

Websites & Artists Part 2 - What's in a Domain Name?

Websites & Artists Series
Part 1 - Considering Your Audience
Part 2 - What's in a Domain Name?
Part 3 - Search Engine Optimization
Part 4 - Describing Art Online

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In the last part of this series, we discussed considering your audience and what things you need to think about when designing an artist's webpage. This time round, let's consider the strange and weird world of domain names.


What's in a Name?

Or a domain name, specifically. There are several approaches for choosing an artist's domain name. Many artists go the easy route and simply use their real last and first name (ie. www.angelasasser.com). If your real name is taken, you can try your first initial (ie. www.asasser.com). Or even hyphenate (ie. www.angela-sasser.com). You might also try your name plus the word art (ie. www.sasserart.com). Some folks are wary of using their real name, but if you intend to be a public figure involved with the community as most self-marketed artists are, you will have to overcome the fear of identity theft and simply be cautious about the information you post online. Unfortunately, presenting your real name to your audience is the first step to getting to know them!

Still others decide on a studio name, which is the path I've chosen for my Art Nouveau and angel art. A studio name can help build a sort of brand identification, especially if you can think of a quirky name that defines you or your real name is unusual and difficult to spell or remember. I decided on Angelic Shades years ago as a play on my own name (Angela) and the multi-faceted quality of the word "Shades". Not only can 'shades' signify shadows and all the ephemeral imagery shadows entail, but it can also represent varying values of a single color or indicate multiple colors in an image, which works perfectly as the name for an artist's studio.

The downside of building a brand, however, is that you limit yourself to one overarching theme. Having a single theme, though, is not necessarily a bad thing when you're trying to market yourself professionally. Plus, there's no rule saying you can't have multiple websites on the net (which I actually have two additional sites for my character art and artisan crafts).

A note of warning! Check your studio name on Google, or your preferred search engine, and make sure that your studio name is not similar to anyone else's! You wouldn't want the same studio name as a porn studio, would you? Not quite the audience you want to drive to your site (or is it?). And yes, this has actually happened to major businesses before!  I recall reading about a church whose domain name was bought by a porn company and whose name was very similar.


The Many Names of Net Domains

There is no need to settle for a single name. It's easy enough these days to register multiple domain names and domain suffixes (.com, .org, etc) that it has become common practice to register multiple names to cover all possible ways that a web surfer might arrive at your website. I can buy www.angelasasser.com in addition to www.angelicshades.com for $20 a year or lower and set them up so that they both lead back to my main website. This way of forwarding addresses is useful for funneling your web traffic back to your site OR to different sites, if you have different venues set up on the net to present various aspects of your art.

Also, be aware that some domain names imply a certain type of website, such as .biz and .eu, which are respectively reserved for businesses and websites associated with the European Union.


Don't Forget Sub-domains!

There is also a facet of domains called sub-domains which allow you to create an address within an already established domain. For example, I have set up a forwarding address with the sub-domain blog.angelasasser.com which links to my art blog. This subdomain is a part of my main domain, angelasasser.com, and can be setup with my website host, which allows me 99 sub-domains to do with what I will.

The advantage of creating this sub-domain for my blog is that it associates my blog address with my main address and appears more professional and succinct. You can do this with all facets of your online identity, from your forum, blog, professional portfolio, licensing portfolio, and more!

Examples:
My Blog - http://blog.angelasasser.com
My Shop - http://shop.angelasasser.com


How to Register a Domain Name

The most common method is to check the availability of your domain name at www.whois.com. Once there, you can also register domain names for a fee. Additionally, you can check and see if your website host offers package deals where you can register a domain name for free.  For example, my web hosting package with www.oneandone.com came with a single domain name with free registration.  Squarespace also has a similar deal.

A word of caution about registering with Godaddy.com as I've heard really terrible things about the headaches that come with transferring your domains from them.

Now go forth and register!

Next up: Search Engine Optimization and why you need it!

Websites & Artists Part 1 - Considering Your Audience

Websites & Artists Series
Part 1 - Considering Your Audience
Part 2 - What's in a Domain Name?
Part 3 - Search Engine Optimization
Part 4 - Describing Art Online

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Some of you may ask, "Well, why do I need a website anyways?" and I guarantee you that the first question any person will ask you when trying to learn about you is "Do you have a website?" It's a new age, my friends, the age of the internet!

Artists couldn't be more lucky in the fact that the world wide web helps us connect directly and easily with our target audience (and at a very low cost!). What you can't fit on a business card can be expanded upon at a website, as well as acting as a way for any person curious about you to remember you more easily than if they looked at your business card for a few milliseconds and then shoved it away in a file somewhere never to see the light of day again.

Before we get carried away, though, I think you should know a little about my experience with websites. I worked for a couple of years as a self-trained webmaster and website designer for a writing center in the past. Also, the information in this entry was taken from various lectures by illustrators and professors at the Savannah College of Art & Design and various articles & books. Much of this info is additionally gleaned from research pursued for my thesis on e-marketing, which is available at the SCAD-Atlanta library.

In short, these are only suggestions informed by a plethora of sources and methods and my own personal experiences, which may be different from yours. Feel free to share your own methods and do what works for you! I've decided to break this topic into a series so I can go into detail on each topic.


Considering Your Audience
A single website need not do it all.

Designing for the General Public:
When the theater gates open, a mob pours inside, and it is the poet’s task to turn it into an audience. --Franz Grillparzer

A website, like the theater, is open to a rush of all types of folks who wander in from the net. And more often than not, these people do not know you. You have about 10 seconds to gain their curiosity before they get bored and surf to another page. People don't want to hear how amazing you are, but would rather see examples. Bright colors and images keep people much more engaged than heavy pages of scrolling text.

People like to see a glimpse of your personality and what type of person you are. If you're a children's book illustrator, make a site with a fun, colorful mood like the books you would be illustrating for. People respond even more to the thought that an artist is willing to teach and share their experiences with others (which is one of the most alluring strengths of social media).

Tutorials, blogging, and some kind of method to communicate directly with your audience (like a forum) are all great ways to draw people in and add to your website's arsenal. Don't let your website become a lonely island floating lost in the net! Throw it a lifeline by linking from your email and forum signatures, your Facebook/Twitter/etc, and where ever else you can. This increases your search engine rankings as well! (More on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) later)

Also, if you are hoping to sell your art directly to the public, a personalized website with a shop area is generally the first stop for anyone wishing to support an artist directly.

However, beware! Running a forum, blog, etc DOES take time! You're not required to go that far in the making of your website, but it's a smart idea if you have the time and intend on doing much of your marketing mainly through the internet (which I do).

Examples:
-- My Main Site
-- My Blog
-- Shadowscapes
-- Pat Schories

Designing for Art Directors: If you wish to build a website with the intention of showing your work to art directors, I recommend building something small and simple without the bells and whistles. Art Directors don't have the time to wait for massive loading time or to look at every single piece of work you've ever done. It's best to pick a few of your best works (no more than 10-15) and structure them in a simple gallery format where they can click on the thumbnails and load the full picture. A note about the size and medium along with a little intro page about your skillset and your contact info might also be prudent.

Personally, I build a simple portfolio page using Photoshop's automated gallery feature where you just tell Photoshop where your pictures are and it builds you a page, complete with html and images, instantly. I gear each portfolio page to the company I'm soliciting and link them to the appropriate portfolio, which I store in a subfolder hidden within my web server. These simple portfolio pages are not connected at all to my main website, which is geared towards the general public. That way, I have a choice in sending any client a simple page or something a bit more fun and personable, like my main website.

Example: Simple Portfolio Page (EDIT: This example link used to link to a very simple gallery page generated by Photoshop, but I have since changed the link to point to a DeviantART Portfolio instead. It's just easier for artists to build and maintain, in my opinion.)

Get FRESH!
And by that I mean keep your site updated! Both art directors AND the general public will get bored if they go to your website and find that there's nothing new to discover or explore. Give them a reason to keep coming back, be it a new blog post, new discussion at your forum, or new pieces of work. If you are a slow worker, you can always titillate your audience with work-in-progress shots of your latest painting or talk about your methods.  You can also include an RSS feed of a blog or other journal with new content showing up in a sidebar to show that you're still active.

In Conclusion:
Do art directors not care about your personality? That's not always the case and some of them may enjoy a glimpse at your personal website and what it says about you. The biggest difference to keep in mind between types of viewers is the time factor. Most art directors do not have the time to peruse a large gallery while casual surfers may be more able to let themselves be lost in the tide of creativity, but still require tidbits of interest to keep them going.

When in doubt, you can always include links to both in your cover letter or email.

Next Up: Domain names - What's in a Name?