sculptor website

[Bill Brayman <meta@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

George,

Sue's reply to your question about setting up a web site
is a perfect summary and a great attitude. I can add a
few details.

How much time does it take to set one up? Two weeks
technical orientation at the book store (get your
University of Barnes and Noble degree). One week
planning. Two weeks learning and installing software.
Many days (weeks, heh, heh!) capturing and manipulating
photos to digital format. One day typing. Voila, a
simple web site. A simple web site has text, images, and
photos, nothing else. Your first effort should keep it
simple. Home page with intro and contact info. Pages
showing your stuff. You aren't trying to entertain, but
merely making yourself available.

This you should do if for no other reason than just
planting the tree knowing its value later as it grows
and becomes an integral part of your life.

Just like sculpting or any other constructive effort,
really very little time is needed for the technical
stuff. Most of the time is planning and dealing with
your content material.

Later, you will enhance your site with complex formats
(frames) and dynamic interface (animation, javascript,
forms and serve applications). You will learn how to
minimize your bandwidth requirements with compressed
pictures, etc. All that, Virginia, is a horse of a
different color.

Be careful to see through the old guard multimedia and
entertainment hype (TV culture, Advertising culture,
slick magazine culture) and avoid complex stuff the web
doesn't do very well yet. Use sites you like as models.
Yahoo, for example, takes the venerable and keenly
efficient internet approach keeping it simple and fast.

Remember once you can read HTML, you can view the
underlying code for each page you view. Shamelessly
steal this code for your own. In the software world,
code reuse is a highly esteemed activity and not
considered stealing. Just be generous with your credits
and honor copyrights (as well as you can keep up with
the evolution of this bizzare situation where you must
copy something to see it in the first place!).

What can I get for a low cost versus an expensive site?
The site itself is pretty much fixed price. Say
$20/month for a personal/artistic site (but you probably
already have web space privledges). Extra storage space
is a few bucks extra. You won't be tapping into the
expensive software side at first. Hiring help is another
matter altogether.

Does it take a lot of time to maintain? Just like
landscaping your yard. At times lots of maintenance
because you are learning and creating new things. But,
you can settle down to a very low maintenance site it
that is your goal.

"Do I even need a web-site, when I can e-mail pictures
to clients? Is a web-site not professionally used,
nothing more than an ego-site?" Sure it is an ego trip.
But no more than buying a car was when they first came
out. The bigger picture is that there is a big cultural
transition to the internet. It began in earnest in the
mid nineties. We're really not to the ten year public
experience stage yet. So, just get on board.

"Clearly the art buying public has changed over the last
20 years." The last 20 years has been a revolution in
many quarters. Warp speed. Some art fields have adapted
to the internet faster than others. The stone artists on
this forum seem overall less internet oriented than
other areas. I, too, have radically lessened my interest
in sitting behind the computer after getting into stone
sculpting. But the other parts of the art society and
community, buyers, viewers, suppliers, and so on are all
"jacking in" (Snowcrash).

Regards,
Bill