Made a huge leap with the website yesterday and last night.  We have finally been able to connect it to RSS to create feeds and social links.  We have also linked to Google Analytics so we can see how people are using the site.  These were the last major missing pieces to this labyrinth of a project.  Now I can begin to focus my energy more on the content and less on the structure, and I can openly release the site and begin promoting it.

I am still missing the splash page and can’t seem to figure out how to add it with this Joomla 1.7 system.  Each day we get closer.  The blog section is now completed with links to feed.  If you are currently using the old RSS feeds, please convert them over to the new site as I would like to close down the other blog.  The new site has a very good search engine that enables one to find almost any post instantly.  Danny has been working diligently on breaking all the past blogs into topics that can now be accessed from the list on the left hand side of the panel.  We will begin to focus more of our energy on creating a monthly gallery of the past blog images so they may be readily browsed.  Then I will create a master list of titles that can also be indexed and will become searchable.  It’s amazing to think I have created so much text in such a relatively short period of time!  It suddenly has become a massive body of work for someone who is not a ‘writer’ to have created bit by bit.  I wish I had created this website first – it was my intent to create it much sooner – but I just couldn’t figure it out.  Now it has taken ten weeks to get this whole thing up and running as it is.  My total cost on the project so far has been $135.00 for the entire site.  But the learning curve has taken a lot of time and effort and trial and error to understand its dynamics and functionality.  Although very technical, it has also been extremely creative to figure out.  Once I begin to add the content to the site I will begin to market myself as an artist, collaborate with other like-minded artists, and begin recruiting new models to become subjects for my various studies.  So far, being in Montana, I have had great difficulty gaining the credibility to be taken seriously by potential subjects.  “You want me to what?????” is the common response.  There always seems to have been a sense of perversity surrounding the idea of men exposing themselves nude, or partially nude, that has been the source of greatest resistance.  It is the process of establishing myself with quality tangible images that I believe will make me more accessible.  After all, it is about creating the images, and my connection to the subjects, that brought me to this sort of creation in the first place.