Website Research

This week I have being looking on whats the best way to design my online portfolio. I have being looking at prices and what extras the companys offer.

With myself already knowing what I want my website to look like I was searching for the website that offered me more for less. Before I started researching online I went around the class to get some ideas on the best way of making a website. There were loads of different ideas, some involving dreamweaver and making everything from scratch and some using a domain name and having the host website doing everything for you.

Looking at a couple of previous years online portfolios I gained a better idea nad understanding on how the website should look to keep people attracted to your website.

There is the really nice websites where you can tell quite a lot of effort has gone into it. For example Alex Legg is a 3D environment artist who's website think looks great but there is room for improvement

http://www.alex-legg.co.uk

There is also the simple route with just plain backgrounds and nothing attractive that makes you want to keep looking at the site for example Jared Skold website is very simple and when I look at it nothing attracts me to his website and keeps me on there.

http://www.jaredskold.com/

An overview on how I would like my website to look is simple, Firstly I would like the common heading etc, Environments, Props and all the others, but when these headings are clicked I would like all of my environments to show up with one picture each, each of these pictures beign the main link which takes you to the main page for that environment. Here there will be information about the project, Texture sheets and beauty shots. If I do this for all of my props and environments I think the website should then look preffesional and attractive.

So coming to the conclusion that if I want a good website I have to put quite a bit of effort, I have basically 2 main ideas that I can use. The first one beign I can use Dreamweaver and research website deveolpment and start to make my website from scratch. Doing this opens up more options but will obviously take more time.

The second option is using a host for my werbsite for example www.weebly.com., What you do with there website hosting is you pay them a yearly fee and then you have all of these templates you can use for your website. Doing this obviously does not give you as much options and you may even risk having a website looking a lot similar to somebody elses.

So in the upcoming weeks I am going to be looking in more depth on which area to choose to do my website and choosing which is the best way to start it. I will also be looking into business cards and which template may suit me better