Choosing a Domain Name for an Artist Website

10 Tips for Choosing a Domain Name for an Artist Website and using your Domain Name.

What’s a Domain Name?

You can’t have a website without a web address. A domain name is your website address and it is what people type into the address bar of a web browser that will take them to your site files; your website.

A domain is a name that you choose that appears between the www.AndThe.com

A typical URL (an acronym for Universal Resource Locator) includes your domain name plus the path to locate specific pages on the hosting server.

YourWebsite.com will direct people to your landing or home page, while everything after the .com/ directs people to specific pages on your site.

The www is now optional. Visitors don’t have to type it in to the browser to reach your site.

How Do I Get a Domain Name?

Domain names can not be bought outright. You lease your domain name through a Domain Name Registrar for a period of time from 1 to 10 years. The process is called registering.

If you do not renew your domain name at the end of the term it can come back on the market and someone else can register it. There is a 30 day grace period so if you forget to renew your domain name you won’t lose it if you renew within that grace period.

There are many registrars out there, with different prices and features. They all have access to the same central database of domain names, so there’s no difference in selection or availability of names between registrars.

Rules for choosing a Domain Name

The international body that governs the registration and use of domain names has set a few rules. When choosing, keep in mind that domain names:

• Can use letters, numbers and hyphens
• Cannot begin or end with a hyphen
• Are limited to 63 characters in length
• Are NOT case-sensitive
aside: browse the 10 tips using the Listic Slider above and see how you can use WordPress’s media library with it.

Tip #1:

As an artist you need to ask yourself how you want to go down in art history.

Choosing the right domain name is part of this decision.

For instance choosing a descriptive or keyword domain name like EncausticSculpture.com may be what I, as an artist, have come to be known for, but it is not my brand. I am my brand because it is me, Kim Bruce, that makes the art.

Tip #2:

You can either focus on branding, or focus on keywords. KimBruce.ca is my brand, while EncausticSculpture.com focuses on my keywords. I have registered both and point them to the same site, but I use kimbruce.ca as my primary domain.

You can use both types of domain names and point one to the other. But I submit that if you use your keywords properly in the content of your website, your site will be indexed by the search engine for that term.

Try entering the search term encaustic sculpture in Google and you will see that KimBruce.ca comes up for that term.

Tip #3:

Bear in mind that using a keyword based domain name does not individualizing your work. A site with the name Encaustic Sculpture could be any ones work. Perhaps it is a site that collects images of work by all encaustic sculptors from all over the world. It is for this reason that I chose not to use it as my main domain name.

If you feel strongly about using keywords in your domain name consider a name that includes both your name and your keyword. For example I could register the domain name KimBruceEncausticSculpture.com but I won’t because I think it is to long and hard to explain. See Tip #7

Tip #4:

Always buy a .com if you can, it is still the most prized domain name extension (suffix). If the .com has already been registered consider adding a descriptor to your name as described in Tip #3.

That is what I had to do to register a .com for my fine art site.

KimBruce.com is registered to a realtor in the USA, so I added fine art and registered KimBruceFineArt.com

Other examples are:
YourNameArt.com
YourNamePhotography.com
YournameJewellery.com
YourNamePottery.com

When you create your site make sure you use “Your Name Pottery” or what ever your descriptor is in the title. Search engines will add value to your site if your domain name is in your site tile.

Tip #5:

It is important to remember that your name can be registered by more than one person just by registering it with a different extension.

This means that:
Yourname.com
Yourname.ca
Yourname.net
Can all be registered by 3 different people, which in turn brings up 3 different websites.

Don’t limit yourself to a single must-be-perfect domain name. Buy more than one and use domain forwarding to point them all at the same website.

Tip #6:

It is hard to over invest in domain names, if you can afford to buy more than one it will help protect your brand. They are around $10 to $12 each.

The most I’ve ever paid for a .com domain for one year is $11.99.

Tip #7:

Find a “no explanation needed” domain name. Be aware of how you’re going to tell people about your website.

You can have up to 63 characters in a domain name. That would be a long name and hard to remember.

5 to 30 characters is the norm.

Don’t be tempted to use dashes or numbers if your name .com is not available. Especially Roman numerals, is it an I or l or an 1. You will be relying on people to remember that. And if it just sounds awkward when speaking your domain name, chose a simpler name.

People are used to having the words run together and more than likely will not remember to add a dash.

Can you explain to a total stranger how to get to your website, without;

spelling words out
explaining what abbreviations mean
explaining what the terms are; like “encaustic”

If not, think simpler, even if that means longer.

Tip #8:

Keep domains in print should be readable by human beings!

When you use your domain name in print, humans are going to have to read and understand it. Capitalization is your friend for printing media since your web address (your domain name) is not case-sensitive. If people type it in the address bar capitalized or not, it will site go to your website.

Use capitalization to distinguish one word from the next when printing business cards, brochures, catalogs.

YourNameFineArt.com

While on the topic of printing, other creative ways to make a distinction between the words of your domain name could be:

Bold every other word

yournamefineart.com

Use a different colour for every other word

youryourfineart.com

Use a different font for every other word

yournameFineArt.com

This also includes your email address. Be consistent in the way you write (type) your email address and your website address in print and in your email signature.

Tip #9:

Make sure you don’t end up saying something totally unintended.

Sometimes you get unexpected results when you run an otherwise-great phrase all together in one word. My favorite example is a company called Best of Art. When you put that together, you get bestofart.com Oops. Try a less gassy combination of words.

You can not count on people to use your selective first letter capitalization.

Tip #10:

Ask for objective opinion.

When you are considering a domain name, remember that you are going to run it all together with no spaces. As I mentioned in Tip #9, you can use selective capitalization to help out, and you can register domain names with hyphens in them.

Ask somebody to look at it. Get a fresh set of eyes to check it out before you purchase a domain name.

Final Thoughts

Choosing a domain name for an artist website is what you will be building your online reputation on. Once you register and build you site with your domain name of choice, search engines are going to index that way, make sure it is how you want to be known.

Now that you have a domain name and you type it into the address bar of a browser it may return a page similar to this:

That’s because you do not have a website or hosting yet. To use an analogy; just because you bought a parcel of land doesn’t mean it will automatically result in a house being built on it. You have to build it.

A word of advice:
I always recommend that you keep your domain name and hosting accounts separate.
Here’s why…

Artist Website Home Page Content

The Home page content welcomes visitors and tells them a bit about who you are and what your site is about.

Artist website home page content is usually just an image or a slide show. They forget to write a few words.

The words are important! Not only do words inform, words also help search engines index your site, which in turn raises your website rankings and (most importantly) helps visitors find you in Google.

Here are some words you can use on your home page. Copy, paste and change the underlined words to suit your work.

Jane Doe is a Calgary artist that creates vibrant abstract landscape paintings with oil on canvas.

This one sentence has 4 searchable terms in it and informs your site visitors about who you are.

Your home page also provides you with the opportunity to direct visitors to where you want them to go. For example…

I am very excited about my upcoming solo exhibition “Inside the Landscape” at XYZ Gallery on Oct 20 to Nov 20.
Please see my Events Page for more information.
Preview the work in this exhibition.

In the above example you would provide a link to the gallery and an internal link to the events and image page of your site.

If you don’t direct visitors to where you want them to go, you leave it up to happenstance as to where they go to next. And that could be to leave your site.

I see a lot of artists’ sites that use “I” or “my”. These words do not reinforce your name or the type of work you do into the memories of your site visitors.

Write in the third person, using your name, location, a description of your work and your medium.

By crafting this one sentence you have not only made your artist website home page content more memorable to the actual people who visit your site; you have just written a meta description for the search engines.

For more on SEO for Artists

What To Do If Your WordPress Site Has Been Hacked

Last week I was hired to help an artist get her WordPress blog back up. When I went to the site all that was there was a blank white page. At first I thought it was a simple plugin conflict and if so a quick fix, but alas it was not.

The site was hacked with Malware/iframe virus code.

The first thing you have to do when this happens, as outlined in this great article from WordPress, is stay calm.

Ya right, your site is gone, all your hard work and Google may penalize you.

No really, you must get hold of yourself, there are logical steps to take to get your site back online and one of them is to use your WordPress Backups, but first…

SCAN your computer for Malware and viruses. It could be that you inadvertently downloaded something and infected your computer. The Malware is lying in wait for you to upload something to your site and then goes with it.
CHECK with your hosting company, they should be able to remove the virus.
CHANGE your FTP, WordPress and database passwords. Also change the secret keys contained in your wp-config.php file. There is a link there where you can generate, copy and paste them in to the file.
UPGRADE WordPress and plugins will help prevent a hack in the first place. This is one of the most important things you can do to protect your site.
DELETE everything and start over. Not what you were hoping to hear but sometimes this is the most expedient way to restore your site. Download and install the latest version of WordPress and restore a clean copy of your database from your database backup.
BACKUP! Keep at least three weekly database backups. If you backup daily then you may want to keep a weeks worth so that you can go back far enough to get a clean copy. You can export a database backup from PHPMyAdmin or install a database plugin that will export a backup right from the WP Dashboard.

Regarding item #6: The WordPress Export Tool is not the same as a database backup.

The export tool only creates a file that contains your post, pages and upload content, while a database backup creates a file that contains your site configurations.

It is important to note that the while the database backup does contain the site configurations and even NextGen Gallery image descriptions, it does not contain the physical images, themes or plugin files.

You should be performing both forms of backups, because if your database can not be restored at least you have your content!

What steps have you taken to create WordPress Backups?

Make Your Website Content Stronger

A list of ideas to implement and make your website content stronger.

Looking at artists sites I see one thing that strikes me as odd.

Artists are visual people right, image is worth a thousand words and all that. What I see a lot, are blog posts with out images and portfolio images with out descriptive text.

Make your site stronger by:

If you are writing about a process to create a work of art show us images of the process.
If you have an image or group of images on the landing page or anywhere in your portfolio tell us in a few sentences what we are looking at. This can be an excerpt from your artist statement and will go a long way in satisfying lay people.
If you are writing a blog post about a specific body of work provide a direct link to your portfolio page that contains all the images on the blog post where you discuss this work and vs
If you are posting announcements to events and ask us to go to the event site for further information please provide a link to that website. Also if you list up coming exhibitions please provide us with a link to the gallery.
Redundancy: If you had a “News” page but are now posting your news to your blog you can safely remove the News page and transfer the content over to your blog.
Try to be more creative than using “Uncategorized” as a blog category. It is the default WordPress category use to catch those posts that do not have a category assigned. If you don’t want to use categories then consider changing the name of “Uncategorized”. Some clients have used “In General”, “Studio News”, “The Artists Life”. Just go to Categories and rename it.
Have you added descriptions to your gallery images; name, medium, size? What if an interior designer visited your site and saw the ideal painting for a client but there was no size and nor could they contact you and ask the size of the piece because there was no name. Um, third image from the left, two rows down is not good.
Forgot how to add images to your gallery and stacking single images on top throwing off the entire layout of the page? Please review “gallery management”
Most artist sites will have a page called “Events” or “Exhibits” used to list current or upcoming shows. In WordPress your pages can be removed from the menu if there aren’t any current events. Better not to have it in the menu than have people land on a blank page. If you don’t want to remove it from the menu stick an image on the page and tell visitors that there aren’t any events at the moment and invite them to check back.
Has the same image been on your home page for 3 years? Returning visitors may think you haven’t created any new work and your site has become stale. Switch out your images from time to time – keep it fresh.
Consider using an image of yourself on your Biography page. Yes as an artist you identify with your work but your collectors and potential collectors want to know the real you. It doesn’t have to be a professional portrait, a shot of you in the studio is pretty cool.
Thought that you would really get into blogging or use the blog to post news but haven’t posted anything since December 2008. Get rid of the blog and just use a page and call it News.
Do you have a new and exciting announcement like an instructional video. Use your home page to create a link and say a few words. Rex Beanland does this well.
Calendars on your blog are meant to highlight the days that you have created new posts. Consider removing the calendar from your sidebar if your post frequency is rare and there aren’t any highlighted dates on the calendar.
Use your home page to promote an upcoming show complete with an image and show details. This is good use of your home page, keep it fresh with new content BUT remember to remove the event when it is over. People coming to your site will see that the exhibit was 6 months ago, that is stale content.
Typically I set up your portfolio with generic names if you don’t have proper series names. It will mean more to your visitors if you categorize your work and name your galleries accordingly.
If you have exhibition images with people in them post them. It’s great to see people interact with your art. Have a look at Liz Sullivan’s site as an example. Liz uses a page called Recent Exhibitions but you could also do this in a blog post.
Do people have at least two ways to contact you? Email and a phone number.
Is all your contact information on your contact page? Where are you in the world? It is called the World Wide Web after all and you will get visitors from everywhere would it not be nice to tell them where you live. It doesn’t have to be a full street address but why not something like: “Jane Doe Artist works out of her studio in “city name”.
If you use archives which lists the months and years that you have posted to your blog and you only have 2 and they are two years apart consider not using archives in your sidebar.
Have you remembered to resize your images for the web? You have 8 seconds before your visitor gives up and leave because your image is taking too long to load.

Your readers will appreciate it and so will search engines. Really!

If you have any questions I’d be happy to help. Email me

Pages Vs Posts

Understanding the difference between pages and posts

Before we start working on your site, it’s important to have a clear understanding of the difference between pages and posts:

Pages are usually those which have a static purpose in life. For example an artist statement, bio, CV, Gallery pages or a contact forms. They do not usually contain information about news items, for example, which are added to the site on a regular basis. Pages are generally defined so that they are always accessible from the front page. Some people build entire sites with just Pages – this is especially the case for sites with little need for dynamic content and is very popular with small businesses and us; the artist.

Posts usually contain semantically and chronographically arranged information – for example, news reports, event results, and of course blog entries! The semantic structure is defined by categories and tags, and whilst making it easy for people to navigate your site will also help search engines to understand the content of your site and so improve the relevance of search results.

Clear Your Browser Cache

How to clear your browser cache and refresh the browser.

When I am working with a client and make changes to their site I ask them to clear your browser’s cache and refresh the browser so they can see the changes.

Refreshing the browser just reloads the page.

Look for a circle with an arrow on the end of it. Usually it is up by the address bar, right or left and looks something like these examples.

When changing a background or header image you may need to refresh twice and/or clear your browser’s cache.

Clearing your browser’s cache removes temporary internet files from your computer.

Every time you visit a website your browser stores the pages on your local computer in a temporary file. This enables quick loading of the pages when you revisit a website.

But when you are working on your site and go to view your changes and see that nothing has changed – it can be a bit freaky. You say to yourself I know I did that right or I thought I did.

First thing to do before you go back and change anything is to clear your browser’s cache. It is good practice anyway and if you have never done it you may find it helps your computer to speed up.

Clearing your browser’s cache will remove the stored pages from the temporary file on your hard drive. Every browser has a slightly different process to do this.

Now clear your browser’s cache and refresh your browser and you can see all your hard work (and mine).