Building my first website

My software development journey began in 2008 when I built my very first website using Site Build it (SBI). The platform taught me the fundamentals of creating a website, search engine optimization, and how I could monetize my content. During this time, I also did commission work and showcased my artwork on the site.

Ranking well with the search engines

It did not take long and my site began ranking very well with the major search engines. My page about famous drawing artists became the top Google search result for the keywords famous drawings and my home page ranked in the top results for the keywords realistic pencil drawings. However, most of my traffic came from Google Images, where many of my drawings were ranking at the very top. I even earned a bit of income by running ads on the site.

Learning to customize my website

Once my site was live, I quickly grew tired of the default SBI template. I wanted it to look more modern and less cookie-cutter. Since SBI allowed users to override the template’s CSS file, I started learning CSS. Using Adobe Dreamweaver, custom CSS, and a bit of jQuery, I redesigned my site to look cleaner and even implemented an early version of infinite scrolling.

Creating my own CSS templates

Around this time, I created several website templates of my own with the idea of selling them to other SBI users. But eventually I decided against it. Maintaining the templates felt too time-consuming, and I wasn’t sure how I would even handle payments at that point.

Building a submission form in PHP

Instead I focussed my efforts back on my drawing website and made it possible for artists around the world to post their drawings on my website with a simple php form. Several people submitted their drawings but each time they did, I had to create new static pages for their drawings which took a lot of time and effort and I eventually decided to remove the website and just create my own facebook page instead.