14 Jul

Selecting a Platform for Your Artist Website

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Selecting a Platform for Your Artist Website

by Shaniya Reed (Communications Intern)

 

Hello, You have probably arrived here from part one of my website-building blog series. If not, welcome to this guide. I will be going into the technical side of website creation, helping you pick what’s best for you by going over a couple platforms and their technicalities. Creating a website is a feat, and it’s completely understandable and reasonable to need some help.

I will go over three different website building platforms: WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace. The most important thing to me, and most likely to other artists, is the price point. WordPress is $0-$45, Wix is $16-$45, and Squarespace is $16 or $23 per month, depending on the plan and which features you want. For each platform, you have to pay extra if you want certain templates. Although there are many free templates that will be set up exactly for your needs, that are wonderful. Also take into consideration if you have the budget for a website designer as this may cause you to spend more money.

WordPress has been around since 2003 and is an excellent website builder. WordPress doesn’t require any serious coding skills, but if you have some coding knowledge, this makes your experience all the better. They also have a variety of built-in plugins for those who have little to no coding experience.

WordPress is an open-source platform, which means it allows you to use templates and focus on the creative side of your website. WordPress does have some common problems, though. It’s not the most user-friendly and may be confusing for some. Its backend layout can be tedious and sometimes hard to learn, especially if the template you use requires more specialized code than others. Speaking of templates with more code, they can make your website run slowly, and the plugins can break often. There is no dedicated support system or team, so depending on which designers created your template, it can be difficult to get things fixed in a timely manner. WordPress has many free website templates, but depending on the customization you want with them, the cost can get into the $50-$200 range Popular wordpress templates While the open-source platform is very handy and allows for more creative opportunities, it also makes it easy to hack into the platform. For this reason, I believe WordPress has the most faulty system of the three.

Wix is our next contender. From the information I’ve gained, Wix is more user-friendly than WordPress; it also requires less coding knowledge than WordPress. They have a very simple and straight-to-the-point interface–if you’ve ever used Canva, it resembles that.

They also have a great 24/7 support team, so if you’re having any problems, those could be easily fixed, unlike with WordPress. Wix has a large template selection, many of which are free. Wix’s promotion features go above and beyond, allowing you to extend your website to a variety of different people and different markets. They also have great speed, so when those people are visiting your website, they typically won’t have problems with heavy traffic. Wix does have problems, like any other website builder. Once you pick a template, that’s pretty much the template you’re stuck with over time. Unlike WordPress, the templates aren’t interchangeable, so pick wisely. If you get any of the free plans, they do display the Wix branding.You do have to pay to see analytics, unlike the other two platforms that provide analytics for free, but other than that, Wix could be a great option.

Squarespace is the easiest of the three platforms and has the most user-friendly layout and experience, in my opinion. They have good customer service; if you have any problems with your website, they are on it immediately. They may even have better customer service than Wix. Squarespace requires zero coding experience and is easy to manage on mobile devices, which isn’t something that’s been highlighted by the other two platforms.

They allow you to have up to 1,000 pages, but the more pages your site has, the slower the speed. This leads me to the cons of the platform. As of now, Squarespace doesn’t auto-save your work, so you need to be careful and make sure to save your work. They have a huge variety in pricing for the templates has been a concern I’ve seen, but I personally don’t think it’s a big deal. While Squarespace can be more user-friendly than WordPress or Wix, it still requires a bit of a learning curve. 

What platform would I choose? For me, Squarespace is a fantastic alternative because of its usability, support, diversity of themes, and reasonable pricing. Squarespace is also newer than the other two platforms, so it has a more modern feel, which many people prefer. Given that learning to code is difficult, it is also a bonus that no prior experience is needed in order to work Squarespace. So you have one less worry since you won’t have to deal with any of it. Just keep in mind that any of these websites would be a fantastic pick, so I’m providing you the information you need to make your own decision as you embark on your website-building journey.

Note: Other things you will need to consider early in this process include include choosing a domain name, choosing a web host (here are some examples), SEO tools and analytics, backup scheduling and cache purging, website speed, and website security (SiteLock, Mozilla,CloudFlare, etc).

 

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