Surprise! Illustration Portfolio Website Redesign!

So… a fresh new illustration portfolio website redesign wasn’t at the top of my to-do list for the end of summer, but here we are.

It feels like everything has been completely non-stop since the end of the school year. My family got to head to California to celebrate our cousin Michelle’s marriage to the love of her life. I painted a new mural for Rico’s Mexican Restaurant in Stockbridge, GA, and led a week-long art camp for middle schoolers for Henry Arts Alliance. I updated the mural page on my old illustration portfolio website with the traffic signal boxes I painted for the City of Stockbridge and worked on my third book dummy as an author/illustrator.

You’ll notice web design wasn’t on that list.

Because that wasn’t a thing I was looking to dive into.

Because life is life-ing, man.

My family spent a week in Minnesota hanging out with my little brother Justin and attending Icon Illustration Conference. It was glorious – the cousins all bonded over fireworks, ferrets, and frisbees. We ate amazing food. I had hours to hang out with my brother. Josh and I had Lime Scooter dates all over downtown Minneapolis.

I had my a-ha moment that the sketchbook I carry around in my purse doesn’t have to be included with a crapton of art supplies – my illustration practice actually needs dedicated sketchbook time each morning to play with materials and techniques, and to loosen up as a whole. As kooky as I am overall… I get really tight and stiff when I’m working sometimes, because I want things to be so so so good, and man that’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself. Stop it if you do that, too. (High fives if you just said “oh thank you I magically instantly fixed that!” in your mind in the most sarcastic voice possible.)

And then, we came home. Life isn’t done life-ing my friends. We now have about 30 baby chicks living in our garage waiting patiently (but not quietly!) for their new chicken coop to be finished. School starts for the kids in two weeks. I’ve been thinking about my illustration portfolio website and better ways to lay it out, but this is all things that can come piecemeal here and there over time, right?

Right?!?

I’d love to tell you that’s exactly how it worked.

I sat down on Tuesday to start working through my email inbox since I’d been out of pocket for over a week. I had a couple of emails from my PCI compliance service saying there were errors… and so I started digging in. I was having errors getting it to scan my website. Which is bizarre, because as I’ve mentioned before… I have an illustration website that is fully-functioning. With no problems.

So I followed the FAQ page’s advice on SecurityMetrics, and got in touch with my former webhost to whitelist their IP address.

And after a lengthy back and forth with the very helpful support person… he asks what hosting account I would like to do this IP whitelisting with.

“What? My stephcalvertart.com one.”

And what followed was the sickening realization that no… I don’t have a hosting account anymore. Because I’m an idiot.

I’m not really an idiot. But life was just high speed life-ing, and the emails I skimmed over saying “Your CodeGuard and Your SiteLock subscriptions are expiring renew today!” actually included my hosting account as well.

And my site was gone.

Who knows how long it’s been gone. I could have sworn I saw it, and that I edited it, before Icon Illustration Conference. Right?

Or maybe that was weeks ago, before school got out. Who even knows.

So I was stuck with a conundrum. I could get my site back if I chose a different hosting account that cost $50 a month with Hostgator. Which is way to rich for my blood. I decided to jump back to Bluehost for a less expensive hosting plan (I’m paying about $20/month now, and you get deep discounts for paying for 3 years of hosting up front). I do keep illustration portfolio website backups, but I started thinking about that. My website had existed with its blog posts since about 2004… and then it’s been some form of WordPress since 2010. All of that is great, but.

According to Google Analytics, was my old site bringing in the right types of traffic? With its ages-old posts about fold up bathtubs and how to use Simple Green in your laundry? Not on your life. My biggest traffic-getter was a blog post I wrote about how to make fox ears and a tail with simple sewing techniques. And if I really want a sea change in the kinds of traffic I’m getting, and I really want to push forward with that illustration portfolio website focus… it becomes easy to say the next thing.

Let’s dump the old website and start from scratch. Here’s to fresh beginnings and moving forward, my friends!