Artists Website Software

My website has grown organically over 12 years, but the code is looking very messy and unmanageable, so I’m thinking of recoding it from scratch (while adding a lot of improvements).

I decided that I may as well make any such “artist’s website application” available as a free open-source application for anyone else who wants to download it for their own use. It’ll be PHP5 (object-orientated) with a MySQL back-end.

The main core of the script would be the galleries (gallery add-on modules for other applications like blogs always seem to leave a lot to be desired for a serious artist) with a strong emphasis on search engine optimisation.

There’ll be a “leave comments” function for each image in the galleries, integration with PayPal and/or Google Checkout for online sales, automatic thumbnail creation, and RSS feeds of new work in the galleries. There will be a facility to add a few static pages (artist’s statement, front page, contact form etc).

There’ll be an exhibitions/events listing function - with incoming and outgoing iCal feeds for calendars and geo-tagging of galleries/venues (so I can integrate it with Yahoo/Google Maps).

Rather than trying to write a blog application, I’m going to concentrate on writing “bridges” that allow the galleries to integrate with existing blog software (Wordpress etc).This is because there’s no way I could write blog software that’s anywhere as near as good as WordPress.

The same applies to discussion forums - I’ll just write bridges for SMF and phpBB. I am thinking of writing my own email newsletter application, though (because I’ve never found one that I’ve been 100% happy with).

I’m also going to investigate some ways to allow it to integrate with social networks, Flickr, etc.

So, my question to you is this:

What features and functionality would you suggest I include? What’s important for you in an ideal artist’s website?

8 Responses so far »

sikiu said,

October 15, 2008 @ 12:00 pm

On my blog I have two features I really like, one is live video with Ustream.tv and a Twitter gadget. Something I don’t know if you can offer is disabling right click on pictures and a very good zoom tool to see textures and brushstrokes with detail.

Paul Watson said,

October 15, 2008 @ 5:47 pm

Hi Sikiu

A Twitter gadget is definitely on the wishlist. Never heard of Upstream.tv but I’ll look into it.

A zoom tool - yes, that’s an interesting possibility.

Disabling right-click - no. It doesn’t achieve anything (it’s easily circumvented just by disabling JavaScript in your browser) and just annoys your potential customers (I’ve written about why disabling right-clicking is a bad thing to do before). What I will be doing is adding a facility to automatically watermark the images in the galleries if you so wish.

Jennifer Montes said,

October 15, 2008 @ 8:22 pm

Hi Paul,

I would really appreciate a software solution that is geared directly towards artists. I’m currently using modx CMS software and coded various snippets to get the functionality I want, but an integrated solution would be much better in the long run.

As far as the features that are important to me, I think it’s important that there are a few fields for image meta data. For painters this information could be about mediums, materials, etc; for photographers it can be camera, f-stop, etc; as well as some common fields like title, caption, customer… Since the breadth of different visual artists will have different meta data needs, it might be best to give the user the ability to add custom fields somehow.

Something like this would be a killer app for me, so I appreciate your effort and your intentions to make it open source. Let me know if you need a beta tester!

Paul Watson said,

October 15, 2008 @ 8:30 pm

Hi Jennifer,

I’m happy to say that meta-data fields that can be created by the site owner are already in the spec I’ve written for myself. I very quickly realised that I could never guess all the possible fields, so I have designed the back-end database so that such fields can be created by the artist/site-owner.

I’ll certainly be needing beta-testers. I suspect the beta version will take several months to create, but keep an eye on this blog (or sign-up to my newsletter) and you’ll be kept up-to-date.

Thanks,

Paul

shaun belcher said,

October 17, 2008 @ 12:55 pm

Great idea. Agree re. overall blog software e.g. Wordpress. Have you seen a couple of new variations on theme

WP Remix

http://wpremix.com/

and
Chris Pirillo variation

http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/03/03/social-media-questions-and-answers/

I am passing on to my students as great project…..

Joe said,

October 20, 2008 @ 5:45 pm

Along with the exhibitions/events listing function, it would be nice to be able to list which paintings are in each event, along with start & end date. Keep that historically, along with the price it was shown at, and you have a nice exhibition record for each painting (viewable by the artist, probably not by the general public).

For the meta data fields created by the site owner, would be great if each field could be set as public or private, ie viewable by the general public, or only by the site owner.