Making an Art Website

 Coast Chimes' Website Banner

A website for me is a constant work in progress

I'm proud to not only make all my works completely by hand using techniques mastered over many years of study, trial and error, but also to have learned how to manage all other aspects of running a (very) small business.

This includes taking photographs, managing supplies and stock, finances and taxes, Etsy, and building my very own website— the focus of this post.

Somewhere around 30 years ago, a very savvy fellow artist on eBay warned me that things were changing, that eBay could not be depended on in the long term, and that I should make my own website. I knew literally zero about that, other than that my internet provider at the time included a small amount of space for people who wanted to make a website. I found a little more information about that space, opened it up, and stared at a completely blank screen! Welcome to HTML.

I fortunately do have determination. Thinking back, I have no idea how I managed, but somehow I cobbled together an very basic website (back then, tons of sites were like that.. well, maybe not quite a bad as mine, but bad). Most remarkably, some orders filtered through!

As time went by, and I would nibble away at improving my site. I learned a bit more, and a bit more, and it got better (but still really bad!). Eventually, I moved on to using commercial software (Rapidweaver), which produced a huge bump in the quality of the site. I went through a number of versions using that software, always somewhat happy at the conclusion of the latest revamp, increasingly unhappy as time went by (time for another revision!). And always learning.

Finally, cloud based solutions clearly seem to reach a point to be a viable option. So I moved over to Shopify. Another steep learning hill. I am still with Shopify, and still learning. The one thing that I know for certain is that the more I learn, the more I realized there is a lot more to learn!

I'm never going to be a pro. Not a chance. I rely on the extensive available documentation, and even more so on forums, where usually the latest mess I make already has someone who has encountered the same mess, and skillful people have offered solutions.

Most recently, as I get a bit braver about digging into the actual code, I have found ChatGPT to be a lifesaver. For example, I did not like that the theme I use had an automatic 'hover to zoom' effect. I looked far and wide, and could not find a way to disable this feature. I did find through a forum the likely section of code responsible for this zooming, but I did not feel comfortable simply erasing it, because doing something like that can have unintended sad consequences. I provided ChatGPT with the code, and it confirmed it was responsible for the hover to zoom, and provided a clear simple way to disable it. Best of all, it worked.

So now, after spending several weeks putting the latest version of my theme in place, fixing all the pictures (over a 1000!), adding Alt Text to every picture, fixing the banner (see above), re-writing the descriptions, and many other changes small and big, I plan to take a break and start making new things to get restocked. In the mean time, please visit my new and improved site: Coast Chimes