For years I procrastinated on creating a home page for myself, and for the longest time, I could not quite articulate why. I’ve long had the technical knowledge to do it, and, being a photographer, I could have certainly borrowed concepts from that art form and muddled through site layout and design. Being a writer, coming up with all of the copy text in order to communicate what my home page was all about would be an easy task. Being a musician, I always thought it would be fun (and effective) to bring the web to life with sounds and music in a way that was tasteful, not distracting. The problem is really in my answers though: being, being, and being. And I still struggle with this.
Any time I’ve tried to come up with a home page for myself, I could seem to figure out what I wanted it to do in order to be representative of me and what I do. Do I want my home page to help me advertise my photography and sell services and prints? Yeah, I want that. Do I want my home page to help me advertise my music, to promote and to sell it? Yeah, I want that. Do I want my home page to advertise, to promote, and to share my writing? Yeah, I want that. What about having a portal for people to connect with me on social networks and YouTube? Yeah! I want that, too! So how do I come up with a single, professional website that can unite these various artforms and services into one focused front? This is where I begin to feel like a professional schizophrenic. Should I split these artistic personalities into distinct entities or attempt to integrate them into one web-personality?
The best answer I’ve come up with is the use of subdomains. I presently run my personal blog through blog.jeremiahhenry.com (as you can see), and I’ve had thoughts to expand on that idea and push my photography through photography.jeremiahhenry.com. If I ever want to move forward with the music side of things, I can always work with music.jeremiahhenry.com, and it wouldn’t be difficult to move any of these subdomains to a proper www.mydomainname.com if they really commercially took off.