Dennis Jones
eclectic artwork & other random things
So Long, DJ-ART
Back in 2005, I coerced my nephew Keegan (with the help of a little cash) to build a custom website for me. Keegan was just starting to flash his monster design chops and I knew if I was ever going to be able to afford him it would have to be right then while he was still in high school. He build a great website for me and has since gone on to become an internet rock star. He currently works in California for Facebook.
Things become obsolete pretty fast when it comes to the internet and sadly that is what has become of the DJ-ART website Keegan built. Since it is a Flash based website, it will not work on any Apple mobile devices, (some sort of Apple – Adobe feud) and since so many people access the web now from mobile devices, DJ-ART for all practical purposes has become an abandoned island floating in a vast internet ocean.
One of the other changes since 2005 is the popularity of blogs. I personally always look to see if an artist I’m interested in has a blog. If they do, that’s where I’m going. Why? Because there is at least some slight possibility that I’ll get to see new content popping up there occasionally. You hardly ever see anything new appearing on an artist’s main “portfolio” website. My experience has been that I always get more internet traffic on my blog than I do on my main “portfolio” website.
For those reasons among others I am going to let the website Keegan built for me expire at the end of this month. At this point in time, I’m going to continue to flesh this site out with content and carry on my web presence from this location.
It was a good ride, DJ-ART.COM. Thanks for the memories.
4 Comments on “So Long, DJ-ART”
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Dennis Jones 
I am observing a moment of silence for the DJ-ART site. I am blessed to have crossed paths with this site. May you rest in … whatever expired web sites rest in.
Your blog is set up pretty well I reckon, with the added thumbnail pages serving as a gallery instead of DJ-ART. It also seems to be partially ‘responsive’ in terms of adjusting itself to suit small screens. With a good premium theme you can have a reasonable portfolio and a blog in the same WordPress site, with extra features for mobile devices (including changing the menu and search fields to little phone-friendly icons and adjusting the number of thumbnail columns to suit the screen size). Anyway, just thought I’d mention this stuff in case that’s a direction you want to go. The main thing is to keep doing cool pictures and posting them here for me (and maybe other people) to look at!
Thanks for the feedback, Ben. When I have spare time, I load up portfolios of themed art. I will try to continue to do that. I keep looking at the premium WordPress themes, but haven’t really found one I’m wild about yet. Any suggestions?
I ended up with one called “Phototouch” (http://themify.me/themes/phototouch) which I’ve customized (with help from their forum) and set up at benhartnett.com.au. It has limitations but it seems to be the best for touch/swipe, plus it shrinks the menu and search bars to icons which most responsive themes don’t do. I’d have liked it to support Apple’s ‘retina display’ (which some themes do) but no such luck.
A couple of other themes that stood out to me were Reaction, Innovative, Jigsaw, and Propulsion (I forget where they’re from, just Google something like ‘wp theme reaction’). For general searching, themeforest.net seemed to be the best place to look. Strangely, I never found a perfect theme!