Let’s pick up on last week’s presentation and the homework.
Last week you had some reading and list making to do, time for thinking about a new domain name and using a search to determine if your desired name is available to purchase.
Write a couple of paragraphs about yourself, your work and services. You’ll also need a good summary of both, so an edit of both to a sentence or two will be useful, too.
You were to start compiling relevant keywords and phrases about your work or services and test them against a word-tracker.
I want to show you how this exercise will be put to good use under the hood of the website.
The next set of slides are about why names, titles, and image nomenclature are important for getting your site seen and why following a set of rules — algorithms — is critical.
I did a random search for the term “installation artists”.
I wanted to see how deep in the image “weeds” I would need to go to find an artists’ site. I found this one in the shallow end—note the scroll bar in the upper right encircled in dotted yellow.
This website was alone among plenty of Artsy, Pinterest, Museum, and Gallery sites. I want to see what was causing this. For the sake of transparency, I have never seen this person’s work before.
I then viewed the code, or the source of the page. Note that in the upper menu of the Chrome browser I am using that developer is under “View”.
Highlighted in pink is the pathway to see the page code.
Viewing a page’s source may be found in different places depending on the browser you are using.
In Firefox it is located under “Tools”
In Safari, it is located under “Develop”
Here is what viewing the source brings up.
You may ignore the majority of this gibberish—its the code that is making this page quite a pleasure to look at, organizing its layout, and making its textual content readable with specific fonts in a variety of sizes for hierarchy and in color or on a field of color.
Look at the phrases I highlighted in pink. This is the text appearing on the page and meta text that search engines are Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking.
The code that the text is “wrapped” in tells it what to be, where to be and how to look.
Some will appear in the url bar, or the browser tab, page title, text on the page, or even the name of the image.
Note the “alt” reference. This is the meta tag. It does a number of things, one of which is to serve as alternate text for an image if the image cannot be displayed. The alt attribute also provides alternative information for an image if a user for some reason cannot view it because of a slow connection, an error in the code, or if the user is using a screen reader.
I hadn’t noticed the link in the yellow circle during my initial search and didn’t discover it until I was searching the site name again later on.
I found it interesting that this site’s navigation starts with a “Shop”. How serendipitous that here was a site that helps build my argument that multiple sites connected to each other can be very effective in search engine ranking and ecommerce initiatives!
So, I went to see what this primary navigation link brought me to. I say “primary” because this is usually where one sees the “Home” link or start page.
While the “Shop” link on the artists url page (www.gabrieldawe.com) takes you directly to the “objectsoflight.com” site, it lands on the navigation link “Gabriel Dawe” and its page, it does not go to the name which you can see is the “Home” page.
I suppose this is may be the artists way of linking and separating the sites in an orderly and logically way— to stand alone first and together next.
Back to my search for installation artists. The next I found was deeper in the search results. Note where the scroll bar is.
By viewing the page source, I found that this was not like the last one which was built using Squarespace. Squarespace is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) platform. Squarespace is what is called a Content Management System application or “CMS”site.
A CMS is a tool or application that lets you make a website without having to write the code. This means you have a WYSIWYG when you are working under the hood. For instance, it’s like having a touch screen that allows you to change your oil. No dirty hand work. Just button controls.
Before I continue, I will digress and talk about some important acronyms and the “Olden Days”.
First and foremost, the Internet is not the World Wide Web. The internet is simply a global system of interconnected computer networks that exchange data.
The Web is made up of the information spaces you can find on the Internet using a web surfer or browser. URLs, HTTP, HTTPs and HTML are the “identifiers”—like addresses and links—that identify the ever expanding resources you find on the web.
The World Wide Web Consortium or W3C institutes the standards or protocols we use to make a website. It’s an international community where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Standards that builders follow. Their work is why the web as a whole looks so much better than they did in the past. They have advanced web technology (otherwise known as code) and the results have greatly improved the look and feel of content and the way it is organized and delivered on a screen.
Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc, have advanced and expanded while some have not (Exploder and AltaVista). There are many search engines, so look them up.
All this progress has put us further into what I call “jump through hoop land.”
And we can’t forget the Browser technology such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera.
All those players have kept web designers very busy and always behind the eight ball. A hiccup from the W3C would ripple through and well, change is sometimes not wanted.
You see here screen grabs from the olden days circa 1980s-1990s.
Before the emergence of terrific WYSIWYGs platforms like Squarespace, that have simplified web design production, or Wordpress a competition of Squarespace, we designers wrote that code we looked at moments ago. One comma or tag in the wrong place or missing and hours if not days could be spent looking for the code typo. Often you would send it to a friend for fresh eyes and pray.
All the reasons why websites have gone from “old” looking to beautiful with interesting interactions we find today is due to the culmination of advances by the W3C, better browsers, bandwidth, computer chips, and retina displays.
Back to Scott Hockings website.
I found it curious that the site did well in searches and did a deeper dive on the content. It uses lots of SEO tricks that bring indexing and ranking. It uses an interesting strategy that includes:
lots of content
including names of people, and
links to other sites with relevant content.
SEO things to keep in mind are:
A slow site is a problem. Everyone wants to go fast.
Write the content for humans first, search engines second.
Get your web analytics capability in place at the start.
Write unique and relevant meta descriptions for every page.
Use readable and meaningful URLs only. “Search engines” follow “search users”.
Long titles if readable are better than short ones. For instance, https://criscoladesign.com/site-design/2020/6/14/introduction-to-site-design is a phrase. Stay away from page URLs like this: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272531 because the numbers are meaningless or irrelevant.
Use social actions by offering links to your content so users can share it.
Tested and relevant KEYWORDS.
Make a blog part of your life. You should publish unique content consistently to improve your rankings. It shouldn’t be hard since you are all culture makers of some sort.
Deeper in my search I found Leo Villareal! It is another Squarespace site and I realize it uses the same template as I used for the Ely Center of Contemporary Art!
Let’s take a look at the source code together.
villareal.net
If we apply SEO best practices here we can see that more content would help. Better names for images, etc. And it is unfortunate that “Leo” is not in the url. I tried leovillareal.com and leovillareal.net and both “can’t be found.”
Your design brief should fit just right—for you.
If you are inclined to ask yourself, “why do I want to be a professional artist?” You are young or young at heart.
If you are inclined to ask yourself, “how can I make money from my work?” You are mid-career and figured out you are unique and have something, or things, objects, ideas, stories, knowledge, expertise… I can go on so you can fill in your unique assets.
I will admit, my band width for paperwork is not wide. I’ve pulled out the most relevant info needed for making a business plan. There are some really good sites I have found that help you think through a design brief and apply it to a business plan. But feel free to make it work for you.
Three key statements will go a long way to get you started: a mission, a vision, and a statement of your goals.
On the other hand, who are you trying to reach? Do you know how they became and why they are your patrons?
For the Mission, be honest with yourself about what you want. Money does not have to be the answer, but, answer this question with the passion you have for making and that urge and satisfaction you get from your work. Write it down and let it be the ingredients of your private recipe.
Think beyond your box and dream big.
bout dreaming big, describe what a future may look like.
Put this list in an order of your liking. Flush each question out a bit.
Depending on your definition of success, develop short-term and long-term goals that will keep you on track. Try to set goals for each of the following: the next three months, six months, one year, three years, and five years.
Sometimes it can make good sense to skirt the gatekeepers by taking a DIY approach.
You might have heard that people don’t want to be put to task and think about a site. People want it easy!
You may have perused a site and found it confusing to navigate. It was probable designed by someone following a pattern of text and imagery and navigation that was not so logical nor intuitive. You can’t just find a template and pour the content in. That doesn’t work.
But it doesn’t work well that way. I disagree with the first generalization I mentioned and I point to gaming to illustrate why. Games are Navigation through symbols and imagery and if you are a gamer you expect to discover the pathway and not have it make you numb.
Whether this means curating an exhibition, starting a new publication, or launching your own business, making your own opportunities means being proactive, and not waiting around for someone else to determine your fate.
Sometimes it can make good sense to skirt the gatekeepers by taking a DIY approach.
Whether this means curating an exhibition, starting a new publication, or launching your own business, making your own opportunities means being proactive, and not waiting around for someone else to determine your fate.
The course carefully takes the student through each step using the Squarespace platform for web hosting and construction. Weekly 1-hour Zoom video classes run for 16 Thursdays, starting June 18 from 5–6 pm. Class time consists of lectures, demonstration, sharing, and q & a. Outside class time is for homework, browsing, readings, and viewing. The fees for the Squarespace platform will depend on the services and capabilities desired.
Your initial investment may range between $150–$350.
Students will need the following:
• download and install Zoom (a free video app)
• have audio- and video-capable computers
• internet
• basic / average computer skills
• basic experience buying products on-line