I want to start up a website for my Artwork/Portfolio.....Need experts

I am a Game Art and Design student working towards my Bachelor's degree of Science in Game Art and Design. I have some drawings and digital works saved throughout my drawing pads and folders, but I want to organize them into a website portfolio as well as potential commission work to help market myself for after I graduate and for potential projects to build on my portfolio while I'm still in school.

I have never done web design completely, however I did help work on the back end of Joomla as a graphic admin through a gaming clan, so I am familiar with 65% of their templates and I would feel most comfortable learning everything about Joomla for my website.

I need expert advice and guidance as I have no idea where to start. With all the multitude of hosting sites available, I don't even know where to start. I started with google as a basis for my search and looked up the best hosting sites for artists and this is what I got:

Top 5 Hosting Sites for Artists

Are any of these good?

Here are some things that I need immediately and things I plan on doing in the future:

1. Uploading medium to High Resolution images and renderings, some as high as 1920x1200 or possibly higher.
2. Uploading short video sequences (8-10 seconds) of objects rendered in 3DS Max. (Times will increase in the future as complexity grows)
3. Portfolio-capable section that showcases my work in such a way as to promote my work to potential employers, either paid or internships.
4. Potential store section to purchase some of my artwork or commission new work

Software I currently have:

Adobe master collection CS4
3DS Max 2011
Mudbox 2011

I would love to buy Zbrush for my work, but I don't have the money, and my 3DS software is an educational version through the school, so it has an expiration timetable.

I don't mind paying for a host if it is going to have unlimited bandwidth and upload capability for the future, but I don't want to just pick any and get screwed either. I have to get this started now as I am a senior and I should graduate by spring/summer of next year, so I want to create a digital portfolio to mirror my original artwork portfolio.

Here is a link to a thread with some of my artwork posted.

King

wordpress.com... is a pretty easy site to get started on. It is a good idea to make the images smaller so they can clearly fit on the screen.

I just posted links from my photobucket account as an example, not final web sizes. I have various programs to format them correctly for the screen though.

**Edit to add**

Just checked out wordpress, and while it is fine for a blogger, it doesn't really suit my needs as a portfolio/professional site. 3gigs of storage would be filled up within a few weeks, and even less time if I uploaded my turntable videos of digital rendered objects.

I need at least the requirements in my OP for a web host to be considered, but I am still open to program options as far as scripting, preferably joomla because I am familiar with it somewhat already.

Is there a function to upgrade to a pay service through wordpress that allows greater storage? I couldn't find much through the site on this, unless I missed it.

King

Wordpress websites don't necessarily need to be hosted by Wordpress, they can be hosted via your own hosting account.

1. You need a domain name: www.domainsite.com charge around $9 per year per domain - I personally use this company for all of my and my clients domains.

2. You need hosting. There are various different hosts out there, but I recommend not choosing one on the cheap as if a host disappears, your website, files and images will be lost with them.

3. You need a website. There are loads of templates out there, find one, start with that! Alternatively use Wordpress. Although it's traditionally a blogging platform, I've developed full on websites using the Wordpress framework such as springfieldsch.co.uk You wouldn't guess it's a blogging framework huh? To use Wordpress as a website rather than a blog, you'd need to find a decent theme where the page links stand out and the blog post links aren't visible. When you add a new page, add it as a page rather than a post. More than likely, if you have little/no knowledge of web, you'll need to get someone in to remove the blog post system for you, but honestly, if you're not experienced with HTML/CSS, Wordpress's admin area is far more advanced than anything else out there.

PM me if you need any more advise.

First off, thanks for your detailed comments...it is tremendously helpful.

I have set up a complete site with Free-webs as an introductory to web design and I have used Joomla to some extent to set up forums and work on the main pages of our gaming website (which has since changed platforms and hosts a dozen times) all within the last year, so I am familiar with some of it.

I have done a little bit more research today about not letting the host provide the domain name or else it could be stolen/refused to the owner if you decide to switch hosts, and I have also come up with some do's and don'ts of hosting, but I am still lost in the absolute multitude of hosting sites available.

I will be pm'ing you with specific's once I get to that point, thank you, but I am still leaving this thread up for advice from a variety of sources before I commit to one idea financially.

Are there any particular hosts that you recommend for sites that fit my requirements?

Anyone else?

King

I did manage to get ahold of our site creator for our gaming clan and he told me about the host that we just switched to, BlueHost.

Has anyone heard of this site? It seems on the up and up, and since our designer runs an administrative company of some kind that is web related, I'm inclined to trust him on it. I checked out the site and it looks like it will fit all of my requirements, but it does look quite demanding to setup once I have it up and running.

There are various options regarding programming and format for the site including joomla, the already suggested Wordpress and Drupal to name a few. PHPBB forums are included as well, something I am somewhat familiar with already.

Has anyone here had experience with BlueHost? The former CEO of BlueHost was also CEO of HostMonster, another site I linked to earlier that came recommended.

I would love some more input on this folks, I am ready to pay for a service, but I need expert advice as to which direction my money will be best spent. Also, since I was told that allowing the host to provide your dommain name is a bad idea in case you want to switch hosts and don't want your domain highjacked, is there a domain provider anyone can suggest?

I've been told GoDaddy, but there is a forum complaint board that is just full to the hilt with complaints about GoDaddy being scam artists and selling domains out from underneath people, denying it and then trying to give them lesser domains as a substitute, or have the buyer upgrade to a better one.

Ideas? I would like to start working on some format designs by the end of the month, and as I said, I have CS4 including Dreamweaver which I was also told could setup websites offline and then upload the format directly to the host.

Thanks in advance.

King

This may be a little late but I can tell you that I've personally had no problems with GoDaddy. I have seen the complaints though so maybe I'm just lucky. I've heard good things about the other 2 hosts you mentioned as well. The website I have is for college fantasy football and is mainly just for a few groups of fantasy leagues (ie. not a big traffic site) but I used Wordpress just to save time with the design part of the site.

I know with Wordpress, and I think for Drupal and Joomla as well, there are so many plug-ins that you can make your site look/act almost anyway you want. For example, on my site most of the content is pulled from SQL DB's, natively, Wordpress doesn't really handle that, but with a plugin (exec-php) you can code php in your wordpress pages so you can have your site displaying dynamic data if you want. Same goes for Javascript/JQuery. I've also created a page that handles live scoring for march madness college fantasy basketball .

The point I'm trying to make is, don't let the fact that a CMS is used mainly for one thing (ex. wordpress for blogging) deter you. There are so many plugins & themes for the major CMS' that you can almost make them into any type of page you want. They definitely do make things a little easier from a design standpoint. Also, yes you can upload directly from dreamweaver, if you use a CMS though, most if not all page creation will be done from the admin section of your website unless you're creating separate php files to be used in conjunction with the CMS (you may not want to have your connection info hard coded into a wordpress page for example).

Anyway I know I wrote a lot here but if you're still looking hopefully this helps!

A little late for me too, but I'm currently hosting a site at GoDaddy and using Wordpress. It's "stupid easy" to set up and maintain. There are plenty of "styles" you can choose from, and a lot of different plugins as well. There are a few downsides that you need to be aware of with GoDaddy though. Their PHPMail is a complete joke. When members sign up, it can take up to 2 hours before they receive their registration email. This is because GoDaddy puts these messages into a queue and then sends them out in bulk. Other hosting companies do it different.

If you're going to run a forum, you'll probably want PHPBB3 or something similar. I wasn't impressed with the forum plugins that Wordpress offered. I eventually installed PHPBB3 and took a "live with it" approach to the databases. The problem with Wordpress is that they don't have anything that marries up to PHPBB3 from a database standpoint. You'll have to have users create a username/password within the Wordpress site (using Ajax or something), and then they'll have to create a separate username/password to post on any forums. Ultimately, I assigned "site editors" who have access to edit the main website, and everyone else just uses the forums. It works for what it was intended.

I've read that you can hack some of the files, or build your own code to marry the two, but it wasn't worth it for the project I was doing. PM me if you want to see what the site looks like.

Thanks for the replies, and no, none of you are too late because I am still looking at different providers and sites to start with. I haven't nailed down exactly what I'm going to use as of yet, but I had forums in mind as a side alternative for projects or communications instead of a blog which is really one sided. I want to be able to communicate with people and not just through email. Shared conversation and have this experience be on my site so that the portfolio I present will have some interaction to it and not just pretty window dressing.

I haven't decided on anything yet, but I do thank you for the suggestions. I will post a final word on this thread when I have made my choice, until then I am still asking for suggestions, comments, experiences and help.

Thanks,

King

I'm trying to get my web development portfolio going. I'd be happy to help you out with something. Make it look pimp. I've been doing this for a while, we may be able to help each other out.

Let me know what kind of formats you are familiar with, what templates you currently use as well as what programs (if any) that you use as well. We might be able to come up with something.

I'm still leaving this open for advice on site hosts and templates, I haven't committed to anything yet, but I need to soon because I graduate next year. My portfolio needs to be buffed,but I need time to get it up to par.

Thanks,

King

reply to post by Kingalbrect79


I would expect you to come up with the template, as it is your portfolio. You woldn't have to do much more than a mock up in photoshop, or a detailed explanation of what you want with some images. I've seen allot of art portfolios handled different ways. After a layouts designed, I'd throw it over a simpole php script so you could easily upload and manage images.