The History of DaniJones.com
I was going through my archive of old site designs the other day, and I was amused and appalled. I thought it would be fun and educational to share them here, even if there is a slight risk of embarrassment.
I have had a pretty brief illustration career - under 4 years - but in that time I’ve had eight website designs. Eight! That is not something I would recommend, and if I were to go back in time I would have exercised a little more restraint. However, I learned a lot about web design, which has been an invaluable skill for showcasing my portfolio, building blogs, and marketing myself on the internet.
So, here it is - the history of danijones.com. If you’ve been following my work for a while, you might even recognize some of these. I hope you are able to learn from my successes and failures.
Disclaimers
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I’ve disabled some of the links, but you will still get a good idea of how each site looked and operated.
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In order to accurately portray each site and the content that they held at the time they were launched, I am displaying a lot of my old artwork. PLEASE don’t judge!
November 2004 - The College Years
In my junior year, I was just starting to get serious about my illustration career. I knew I would need a website, but I had absolutely no clue how to make one. I slowly started to learn the basics of HTML and built my first web page.
Actually, the website shown here is not the first site I ever built. The first was actually painstakingly HAND-CODED, because I had no idea that programs such as GoLive or Dreamweaver even existed. I just thought all websites were built with text editors.
Well, I don’t have that first site anymore; it quickly got discarded once my professor showed me how to use GoLive. The look and layout really didn’t change all that much from my first concept, though. Very simple and plain.
April 2005 - Starting Out
This is the site I launched shortly after I graduated. I wanted to create something prettier and fancier for the launch of my illustration career. It’s funny how simple and sparse the site looks to me now.
August 2005 - The One That Never Happened
At this phase, I was just starting to really get the hang of HTML and GoLive, and I really wanted to create a website that pulled out all the stops. I used a lot of fancy tricks like animated GIF’s, image maps, rollovers, templates, CSS, and Javascript. Notice that I was going to create several “themes” so the user could change the look of the site. I spent hours and hours on this concept and obsessed over it for awhile, but it didn’t get very far. It was VERY VERY complicated and frustrating to make, and I didn’t really understand half the tools I was using.
My prototype was kinda cool, but ultimately too time-consuming, hard to to update, difficult to navigate, and annoying to use.
All I’ve got to say is… thank goodness I didn’t know Flash.
September 2005 - The Sensible Alternative
Instead of going with my EPIC website concept above, I decided on a simpler route. But notice I still used a lot of fancy tricks for my Fun section.
February 2006 - More, More, More
This site was an attempt to fit more stuff - more artwork, more pages, more features, etc. - yet still trying to keep it simple.
August 2006 - Facelift
Are you getting whiplash yet? I knew at this point that I was changing my website much too often, but I still wasn’t satisfied with the design, which wasn’t as refined as I wanted it to be.
So, I set out to create a simple, pretty site that I could hopefully live with for more than a few months. I think this site was the first one I was truly happy with. I actually kept this site for about a year, but I found it was too hard to modify and update.
July 2007 - Another Stepping Stone
This site was easy to update, simple to navigate, and looked okay, but ultimately I thought it was a little boring.
June 2008 - The Result
I am very happy with the design I have today. For the first time, I think I finally have a site that is attractive to look at, simple to navigate, and easy for me to update and customize. I will probably stick with this design for a long while.
But given my history, you never know. 
Related posts:
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Hello Dani, I attended the one of the Art Institutes and the only instruction we received as far as website design was a class taught by an instructor who didn’t know how to teach artists. I’m not sure if you knew how to teach at all but, somehow I learned how to create one or two pages of a website. They’re not all that pretty but, oh well. As tech-savvy as you are you may have already become a member of Lynda.com. It’s an online training site where you can download quicktime video tutorials on huge collection of creative software and interviews of some people who use them. I sent a money order and will have my $25.00 monthly membership up and running hopefully by the end of this week. (I didn’t want to give out any card information.) If you didn’t know about this website please consider this part of my paying you back for all the great help you’ve given me over the two or three years I’ve been reading your blog. Btw, are ever gonna post anything on The Drawingboard again? That’s where I initially found out about you. Have a great day and keep up the great work.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Dani you right about changing your website too much. I suffered from the same thing. The company I work at does web design and develops web tools but they never bothered to update their website. One thing I do like about your current site is that you can view your work from the home page. Your prospective clients don’t need to navigate anywhere to see your work. We’ve been using PNG 24 as our image format. They load faster and has lower compression so they look a little shaper.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Thanks Eric for the link and input. I haven’t been to The Drawing Board in awhile. Time has just slipped away from me. Perhaps I will pay a visit soon.
Thanks for the comment Jared. I had an “intro” page for a long while and finally got rid of it. Probably one of my better decisions.
September 6th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Dani, you are a perfectionist! One thing that is very evident in all of your web redesigns is that you have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge! It’s also clear that you are passionate about designing successfully! Good for you for having that passion! It’s an incredible addition to your illustration skills/talents. Congratulations on ‘working it’ in that way!!
I’ve had so many designs that, once finished, I was unhappy with, but in the end, it ALL adds up to helping to find our voice as designers. Ultimately it is all great learning experience under your belt. I wish I took screenshots of my past sites, as YOU did! That’s very forward-thinking of you.
Your new site looks SMASHING - wonderful work!!!
It will take you far, in so many ways.
September 6th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Hey Dani. ^^ I’ve been watching your blog-site for a while and I really like your articles, they’re very helpful! Many of them have even helped improve the brush/linework I do in Photoshop and I thank you for sharing them. I saw the newest version of your artwork website and I admit I’m impressed! O_O I was wondering if you could share how you get your work to show up on the main page to the right like that on the thumbnail’s mouseover? I’m still new to HTML and though I have a book on HTML 4, I don’t recall learning to do that particular thing, lol. It looks fantastic though and I’d love to learn how to do it for my own art site I’d like to have someday, if you wouldn’t be angry about that…?
September 6th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
You’re very welcome. It’s the least I could do for all the help you’ve given me. Without you I wouldn’t know where to start. Now, I’ve got to research some things about the business of art. Client negotiations, contracts and such. This is all very new to me. I’ve taken your advice about FreelanceSwitch.com’s podcast. I don’t listen to it as much as I should but, I am downloading it to listen to later. My name on The Drawing Board is Hugo. I’ll try to post something in the most recent Drawing Jam after I finish some freelance work for a friend of mine. I’ll paint them on my DS Lite using Colors! DS.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Thanks for your kind words Kathy!
Andrew - To create the effect you described, look up tutorials for “remote rollovers”. You can probably just Google it and come up with a few tutorials. They can be coded, which involves learning Javascript; or web design programs will have specific instructions to make them much more easily. e.g. in GoLive in the Actions/Rollovers window, or in Dreamweaver in the Behaviors window.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I’m glad you gave the history of the design behind your website. It has been truly informative indeed. I have learned much thus far from the blog and this article you posted. Is there any chance you’ll post tutorials about making a website in GoLive? I know a bit about web design, but I don’t know how to build one in GoLive. This blog always has my attention.
November 8th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Dani-
I have lots of artists bookmarked for many reasons on my pc, least of which is a source of inspiration when I am in a creative rut, but I have never actually felt motivated enough to leave comments. It is my humble opinion that many talented, working artists who post blogs play their cards close to their chest (so-to-speak) and limit what they reveal about themselves and/or their art. You are the exception because, judging by your extensive and in-depth content, I have never seen an artist work so hard to educate, inspire and inform the rest of us hopefuls. I am not a digital artist, but I find some of your traditional methods similar to mine. I was uber happy to see this particular post regarding your serial website designs. I thought I was going crazy because I have changed my website about ten times withing the last three years! I use WebEasy which is incredibly user-friendly for the pc challenged (like me) and I have a few glitches I am still working on. If you visit my site at http://www.roberteberz.com you can see what I mean. I just found out that some images are all caddy-whompus, but tech support is closed for the day. If you have a chance to stop by my site I would appreciate any feedback you might have or any of your bloggers for that matter. BTW your current site is the best design so far, in my opinion, and super easy to navigate! Keep up the great work…..you are an inspiration!