zoll studios vs. zollstudios

   My first website, zollstudios.com, was registered seven years ago. It was strictly used as an online gallery of my work. I was not sure where it would lead me, but I was intrigued by the idea of a universally available portfolio. This was not even conceivable when I was in art school. The unintentional benefit of the site was a structure that quantified my productivity. This is a great tool for an independent artist that does not have a due date or an upcoming show.
   The bar was set relatively high, I would only allow myself to update a new gallery after 60 pieces were completed and up to my standards. This worked quite well for awhile, but ultimately Life and other responsibilities would consume my time.
   I bought a wreck of a house and some of my best work languished in desktop folders. Furthermore running the site was tedious and exhausting, mostly from me needling over every little visual detail. Around the sixth anniversary I stopped hosting the site all together. My remaining studio time was too valuable and running a website was the least of my concerns. I kept the domain name and the desire to someday bring the galleries back with the addition of my unpublished works.
   A year later and enabled with a new attitude, I started embracing the template like never before. This is revealing a lot, because I was such a site crafting snob. Becoming a parent has compressed ever ounce of free time into a platinum nugget. I really enjoy writing these posts, but I also like to sleep more than five hours a night. I have taken the last week off to be with my new son, but it has also given me time to reevaluate where this blog and the new format is headed.
   I included the zollstudios intro as a segue into a new venue. I will be honing the DIY focus of the blog as well as addressing organizational issues along the way. Blogger has a great support network and it has taught me a lot about handling my online presence. In hindsight, I can see all the countless mistakes I made when managing the site solo. Trust me, every decision I made was working against someone actually finding the site on a search engine. There should be little difference for the reader, except for better navigation. Thanks for your patience and support as I steer the ship towards a new horizon.
  

Check out the madness, the original zollstudios gallery.