Chewing over Chewing Pencils
Published by Matt Glover January 24th, 2007 in Building a WebsiteI’ve been working on a few ideas to expand the usefulness of this site and make the web a more friendly place for cartoonists and illustrators to earn a living. I’ll outline more of my ideas as they become a little clearer, but one I’m after a bit of feedback on at the moment has to do with web sites and web hosting.
Back in this post I spoke about the need for developing a web presence. To make any money at all from your artwork, having yourself on the web with a world wide audience is absolutely vital. But, the web can also be a difficult place to navigate if you’re not technically minded. The learning process is a long and confusing one, and often frustrates artists to the point of giving up.
Anyway, I’m working through some final details with my web host to offer a ‘Cartoonist Friendly’ web package that offers good, simple technical support PLUS the specialist type of support an artist needs to optimise images, construct web pages, set up galleries and the like.
The packages will be flexible with no long term contracts - when you’re happy with your site, simply revert to the ‘tech support only’ version and go your merry way.
What I’m after now is some specifics of the sorts of things YOU would like included in a web package for cartoonists/illustrators. What sort of things does your current host do that drives you nuts? What do you really wish your host would provide but doesn’t? What sort of questions do you ask your help desk that receive nothing but a shrug of the shoulders?
Leave a comment with all the things on your wish list. Hopefully the packages will be ready in the next two months or so.
Stay tuned!
I don’t really see how the mentioned “cartoonist tech support” is any different from regular tech support. Typical tech support can easily tell you how to optimize images and whatnot.
What I think would really be effective is a package of scripts that cartoonists can easily plug into their site. Such as a simple archive script, uploading, updating news or galleries, etc.
I second what Greg said. Scripts to simplify things like archiving, posting daily cartoons, etc., would be most useful.
Thanks for this guys. I agree.
One of the main reasons I thought of offering the ‘cartoonist friendly’ package was that I had a number of people wanting to enter the two group drawing projects we’ve run, but haven’t had a website to display their work. Nor did they have much idea on how to set one up - the usual tech support didn’t seem to help.
We’ll see how it goes!