How to make an artist website? If that’s a question you’ve been asking yourself, then this is the right post for you! In this step-by-step guide, I’m showing you exactly how I built my artist website – the one you’re on right now! (ᴖᴥᴖ) I started from zero, and if you follow in my steps, you can easily create a website for your art, too!
Have you come to the conclusion that you should make a website for your art? Wonderful! Because having a website is absolutely key for everyone who wants to get some sort of exposure or do business on the web.
In this post, I am telling you step by step how I created this website. If you’ve looked at my ‘Build your Artist Website‘ section, you’ve probably guessed by the sheer amount of WordPress tutorials available that my website is built with WordPress, too.
So if you would like to design a website similar to this one, then read on. But also if you want to create a website that looks totally different from mine, you can go ahead and follow this tutorial.
Why? Because WordPress allows you to choose any theme (= look & feel of your website) you want. And even if you pick the same theme as mine, you can completely adapt it to your liking. But more on themes later on in this post.
For now, just know that you will find out everything it takes to make a website to showcase your portfolio and sell your art in this step-by-step process that I’m going to reveal to you!
Let’s get into it:
WordPress is definitely one of the website builders with a steeper learning curve, but it’s definitely doable.
After all, I also managed to create this entire website on my own, starting from zero without any previous knowledge of WordPress.
And if I can do it, you can do it, too!
Before we dive in, I still have a little goodie for all those of you who want to sell their artwork via their own website. To help you get started, I have an entire post on how to sell digital art. The post will make you familiar with the tools you need and 10 proven steps to help you make your business successful.
Plus, you can also download your Art Business Startup Checklist for free!
Grab your FREE Art Business Startup Checklist
Is it hard to use WordPress?
First off, to avoid any misunderstandings, there is a difference between WordPress.org (the one I am talking about in this post) and WordPress.com.
As I mentioned above, WordPress comes with a steeper learning curve than other website builders.
So if you can’t spare any time to learn WordPress or you just want to have an easy-to-use solution for now, you better pick an easier website builder, such as Pixpa, Squarespace, or Simvoly. You can learn more about those easy-to-use website builders for artists here.
However, if you are willing to invest just a bit of time and energy, you’ll be able to make your own website with WordPress!
And believe me, that time and energy absolutely pays out. You will get a website that belongs solely to you. (Your website on Squarespace, Wix, or Weebly actually belongs to the platform owners. If they disappear from the market one day, your website will disappear all along.)
WordPress is open-source software. That means it doesn’t belong to any company and any developer can work with it and improve it.
Your own WordPress site gives you full control over the content you publish, and most of the tools you need are completely free. The only thing that you’ll need to purchase is web hosting, but more on that later on.
For now, let’s dive in and see how you can go about creating an artist website!
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How to make an artist website Step-by-step
STEP 1: Get to know WordPress
When I decided to build an artist website with WordPress, I didn’t know much about WordPress at all. Honestly, nothing. Zero.
So before anything else, I decided to get an idea about how it works and started to look for free tutorials on YouTube.
I found a great tutorial by Dale McManus from Create a Pro Website on how to build your own photography website. I learned a lot from it, so I recommend you check it out.
It’s really a good starting point for any artist who wants to create a website.
STEP 2: Learn to use Elementor
With that done, I was ready to handle the next challenge. As I already saw in the YouTube video, Dale was using a page builder called Elementor to create the web pages.
That thing seemed to be pretty amazing, regarding all the design options that you would have at your fingertips. And so easy to use. You would just need to choose a widget (a design element), drop it on the canvas, and then you would be able to customize it to your liking…
I wanted to know more. So I decided to check out another tutorial from Dale, this time on how to create a personal / portfolio website with Elementor.
There are more page builders on the market than just Elementor. Divi, Brizy, and Spectra, for example, are as powerful and easy to use. And they all pretty much work the same way.
Even though you might think, this is a lot of stuff to watch before even setting up your first WordPress page, I recommend getting a good grasp of WordPress before getting started.
This will save you from many errors and misunderstandings when you start building your website. As I mentioned earlier, WordPress can be challenging, and if something goes wrong, fixing it is much more difficult than taking the time to learn beforehand.
I personally found that acquiring a good understanding of WordPress and following a fixed path made things much, much easier.
Over time, I became quite comfortable with Elementor and ended up building my entire website with it!
I even published an Elementor Review for Photographers and Artists and an Elementor Tutorial for Beginners that you can check out to learn more.
One thing that you shouldn’t forget to install along with Elementor is the Essential Addons for Elementor. These are the most popular addons for Elementor and the basic version is even free!
Over time, I noticed that I wanted more functionality for my website design, so I went for the premium version of Essential Addons for Elementor and also purchased Ultimate Addons for Elementor.
Some of the widgets that you see on my website come from those premium plugins. Nevertheless, it’s still possible to build an artist website with just the free Elementor plugins.
For example, the portfolio galleries on my website are created with the Elementor Pro Gallery widget. I have tutorials on how to create a masonry gallery and how to make a tiled gallery using the Pro Gallery widget, if you are interested.
But I also show you ways to create a free gallery in my post on how to create a portfolio gallery in WordPress.
However, if you are like me and you want to have some of these amazing design options that you see on other websites, then you’ll have to go for a paid plugin.
Anyways, you can always start with the free versions and upgrade later on, if you want more advanced features.
STEP 3: Get familiar with WooCommerce
If you don’t want to sell your art on WordPress, then you can skip this step. I for my part also wanted to have my own web store, so I looked into the possibilities of adding e-commerce functionality to my WordPress site.
I was pretty surprised when I found out that creating an online shop with WordPress is completely free, too! The plugin you need is called WooCommerce and it’s extreeemely powerful.
You will actually get everything you need to run a full-fledged online store. It comes with product pages, galleries, categories, tags, different product variations that you can configure, upsells, cross-sells, inventory management, reviews, shipping options, detailed sales insights, coupons, discounts, tax calculation, and much more.
Apart from that, you can integrate payment gateways like Stripe and Paypal using Woo Payments, and add other services, such as shipping providers, newsletter opt-ins, wishlists, live chats, Trustpilot reviews, printing providers like Printful that will handle physical print sales for you, and many, many more.
To get an idea of what is available, check out the WooCommerce Marketplace.
But – nothing without a learning curve on WordPress. WooCommerce also takes some time getting used to and if you tried to figure out everything on your own, it probably wouldn’t be working (or take a very long time). That’s why I encourage you to watch a tutorial first as well.
Good WooCommerce tutorials can be found on Ferdy Korpershoek’s YouTube channel. The most current one at this point of time is the full Elementor tutorial for beginners from 2021.
For everything else that you need to know about selling your art on WordPress, hop over to my Ultimate WooCommerce Guide for Artists.
STEP 4: Choose a WordPress theme
At one point of time, you’ll need to choose a theme for your WordPress site. You can change themes at any time, so if you’ve selected a theme that you don’t like anymore, it’s no problem to install a new one.
But regarding the plethora of WordPress themes available, it’s worth giving this some thought.
I for myself knew pretty fast which theme I wanted use: the OceanWP theme that Dale introduced in the video on how to build a personal website with Elementor.
It turned out to be a really good choice. I still have the theme installed and I’m absolutely loving it! (Other themes worth checking out are Divi, Astra, and GeneratePress.)
OceanWP is a lightweight and highly extendable multi-purpose theme. You can create almost any type of website, from a blog, to a portfolio, to a business website. It’s WooCommerce-ready and allows you to design a beautiful and professional-looking storefront.
Furthermore, it also offers unique WooCommerce features, such as the off-canvas filter, to make your store even more functional.
I have built my artist website completely from scratch, designing everything exactly the way I wanted it to be. But that doesn't mean you need to do the same. There are easier ways to go about it.
One option is to use any of the premade OceanWP demos that you can import at one click and then simply fill with your own content.
Another option is to use the pre-designed Elementor pages or blocks. Once you’ve installed Elementor, you will get access to a selection of free templates. With Elementor Pro, you will even get to choose from hundreds of more sophisticated designs. I talk more about that in my Elementor Review.
So if you like the way this website looks, I suggest you check out the OceanWP theme for your artist website, too!
STEP 5: Get premium portfolio features
If you’d like to have dedicated portfolio pages on your artist website to showcase your body of work, you can install OceanWP’s portfolio extension. This add-on lets you create an unlimited number of dedicated pages to display and speak about your art.
The OceanWP portfolio extension is a premium add-on. That means it is not available for free.
Of course, you can also show your artwork on a post page or a regular page. But if you want to have ‘real’ portfolio pages that focus on displaying and selling my art, you’ll need an extension.
The Portfolio extension doesn’t cost a lot of money, and there are many more premium extensions that you’ll get along with it. This includes an OceanWP sticky header and footer, Instagram feed, cookie notice, and even some special Elementor widgets! You can view all premium extensions here.
STEP 6: Start working on your local computer
The good thing about WordPress is that you can start completely free! Sure, there are other website builders like Pixpa and Squarespace that come with a free trial period, and Wix even offers a free plan.
However, WordPress is the only option that you can use free for as long as you wish and with the full range of features available! That means you have all the time in the world to test the web design system and see if you like it. You don’t need to rush things and you don’t need to work with limited features and ads as you would on Wix’s free plan.
So before committing to any hosting provider, I recommend installing WordPress on your local computer and testing the waters. Upload the basic plugins, create a gallery for your artwork, write a few blog posts, and maybe start designing the front page.
This allows you to experiment freely without worrying about anyone seeing your unfinished website. If you later decide not to use WordPress for your artist website, you can simply uninstall everything without having to worry about expenditures.
It’s really easy to install WordPress locally. You can download the WordPress Bitnami package that will automatically install the content management system and the server environment on your computer. You can also use MAMP if you are on a Mac, or XAMPP if you work with Windows.
To make sure everything works fine, you can have a look at another of Dale’s YouTube tutorials on how to install WordPress on your local PC.
STEP 7: Learn about SEO
So what on earth is SEO? Well, let me explain.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it’s an important part in making your website rank in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Having a blog on your website is especially helpful to make your site search-engine friendly. Why? Because in your blog posts, you can focus on the keywords and keyphrases that your visitors actually search for.
Selecting keywords that people are actively searching for is the key to optimizing your website. After all, if you only write posts on topics that no one is looking for, how will anyone discover your site?
Especially when your website is new, it’s important to find keywords with a relatively high search volume and low competition. Those keywords have the highest potential of bringing traffic to your site.
To find those “low-hanging fruit,” I recommend using a keyword research tool. Those tools analyze the competition level and suggests the most searched keywords for with the lowest difficulty to rank for in your niche.
Below is an example of the KWFinder showing the keyword difficulty of search terms related to “surreal Photoshop tutorial.” The lowest hanging fruit on the list is “surreal photography tutorial” with a keyword difficulty of 24, marked in green (= go for it!).
Other popular and powerful keyword research tools are AlsoAsked.com, Semrush, and Ubersuggest.
But there is much more to SEO than just keywords. There's technical SEO, site structure SEO, on-page SEO, link building, and domain authority.
I have a couple of free tutorials for you on how to do SEO as an artist and how to find the best keywords for your art.
For more help in setting up a successful artist website right from the start, I got you covered!
I have an entire guide for you to build an artist website for success that shows you everything from setting up your WordPress site, creating an online store, growing a mailing list, to starting an art blog—with a huge chapter on SEO and driving free, organic traffic to your site.
If you’d like to have more personal guidance, you can schedule a one-on-one website consulting call with me!
You can find out more about the e-guide here:
STEP 8: Install RankMath
Once you understood the importance of SEO and learned how to optimize your website, it’s time to install a little helper.
RankMath is one of the most popular and effective WordPress plugins for Search Engine Optimization. It allows you to enter a focus keyphrase and will then tell you how well your page is optimized.
This includes an SEO and a Readability analysis. As for the SEO analysis, RankMath will analyze things like keyphrase density and length, internal and external links, image alt attributes, metadescription, and more.
The Readability analysis mainly checks paragraph and sentence length, subheading distribution, passive voice, and ease of reading.
There are three levels of rating: red, orange, and green. Your web page is at the top of the game if both are on green, but that’s not always possible. You should try to make sure that SEO and Readability are at least on orange. If you can get the SEO on green – even better!
RankMath is not the only plugin you can use. YoastSEO is another option that is very similar and as good. It’s largely a matter of personal preference. Both plugins are available for free, so you can try each one out and then decide which you like better.
Below you see the Yoast SEO analysis for my post on the Best Hyperlink Colors for your Artist Website. That one turned out pretty great – both SEO and Readability are on green… 😆
STEP 9: Write your first blog posts
Now that you’ve learned so much about SEO and installed a respective plugin, you are ready to write your first blog post!
I still wrote my first blog posts on my local WordPress install, without sending them live immediately. That takes a lot of pressure off you and you can relax into your first pieces of content.
I suggest you start doing everything the ‘professional way’ right from the start. Research a keyphrase that people in your niche really type into Google. Try to optimize your blog post for this keyphrase and to get Yoast’s and RankMath’s SEO and Readability analyses on green (or at least orange).
For most people, writing good and informative blog posts takes some practice. Don’t despair if the Readibility of your first post is on red, and you just don’t manage to get any better than orange for your SEO. It was the same for me.
But over time, you will get better. You will get the hang of writing interesting content and you will also catch on to how to make them SEO-friendly.
As I already mentioned above, blogging is very helpful to make your website visible in the search engine results. That’s why I’ve got a whole range of articles about blogging on my site. Here are three of the most important ones that I suggest checking out after reading this post:
STEP 10: Find hosting & send your website live!
My last step of making an artist website was to send it live to the internet!
As I already mentioned above, I prepared my WordPress site on my local computer before making it public. I think that was a great way to experiment with the design, build the structure, set up my web shop, and get a few blog posts ready.
After that, it was time for me to find a hosting provider. There are so many hosting services in the market, which makes it really difficult to find the right one.
When sending a new WordPress site live, I recommend opting for a lower-cost hosting platform that still offers good quality. A good pick is A2 Hosting.
All of A2’s hosting plans come with speed optimization, comprehensive security tools, and automatic backups. In case you quite a number of files available to download on your site as I do (you know there is the Freebie Library and I’m selling high-resolution files of my artwork), it’s a good idea to go for a plan with enough storage.
The A2’s Accel Plan provides you with unlimited SSD storage. This is just for convenience. You can as well choose a cheaper plan with lesser storage space and link to any downloadable files in your Dropbox or on your Google Drive.
Other recommended hosting providers are Bluehost (endorsed by WordPress itself), ScalaHosting (good and competitively priced), and DreamHost (for premium WordPress hosting at affordable prices).
Now you know exactly how I went about making this artist website! I hope you found my tips helpful and feel encouraged to build your own website. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to post them in the comments.
Woah! I’m really loving the template/theme of this website. It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s tough to get that “perfect balance” between superb usability and visual appearance. I must say you have done a great job with this. Also, the blog loads extremely quick for me on Internet explorer. Superb Blog!
Thanks a lot, Hillary. It means a lot to me to hear that from my readers ♥︎
Some really nice and useful information on this web site, also I think the design contains great features.
Thanks a lot for the compliments, Lomascolo. Great to hear that you like the site and the content (: