Category Archives: artist hosting

Artist Website Hosting

 

This site is a resource for artists looking to create their online portfolio. With so many options for artist website hosting out there this guide should help.

You have a couple general options when looking to create an artist portfolio site. Let’s start with two categories: managed solutions and hosted solutions.

Managed Solutions

A managed solution is one where your portfolio is created by an application which lives on your providers server and is based on templates which you select. Some examples of managed solutions are Cargo, 4mat and Squarespace. Pros: Easy to set up and manage. Cons: Not as flexible as a custom site.

Hosted Solutions

A hosted solution is one where you upload your site to a web host. You create your site or install an application like WordPress. Some examples of artist friendly hosting providers are smallGod, youarethere.net and Laughing Squid. Pros: More flexible and more options available. Cons: Not as easy to set up and manage.

Both managed solutions and hosted solutions have similar features. One thing that all portfolio applications have in common is that they are Content Management Systems (CMS). Some examples of CMS which may be useful to artists are WordPress, Indexhibit, Stacey and The Secretary.

Some Content Management Systems (CMS)

Indexhibit is a long time running CMS platform and default to may artists, designers and photographers.  The default indexhibit site is ahh-gu-lee, but with a few simple CSS tweaks, you can get some pretty cool looking portfolios.  It runs on PHP and you upload the files to your server, run through the simple wizard and away you go.  Just create your sections and add your content.  One thing that really sucks about Indexhibit is the inability to upload multiple files, so when you have forty photos to upload individually, it kinda blows.  The cool thing though is that it has a helpful community administered by grumpy developers, stay on their good side and they’ll help you out, just don’t ask questions without reading prior threads or write your message in caps!!).  Indexhibit hasn’t been updated for a few years now and the developers have promised a new version soon, hopefully an early 2012 release will fix, update and improve on an already solid CMS portfolio platform.  Here are a few samples of Indexhibit portfolios.