Welcome to our latest art business blog post, all about our pet portrait websites changing with the times! We have a few pet portrait artists who read our blog and so I thought our updates might be of interest.
I needed to do a few technical updates and the first one was to sort out our newsletter from our blog. I have been blogging our pet portraits for well over 20 years and my preference has always been a self hosted WordPress. I’m certain there are other highly recommended blogging or website making software out there, but this one worked for me and still does. The problem laid with Mailchimp.
At the time when technology enabled us to email blog posts to subscribers, Mailchimp seemed to be the perfect option. It worked well, but it was always overly complicated and I never really did fully understand how to use it. I set it up many years ago and never changed or touched the settings, as it did it’s thing each month.
However earlier this year my YouTube videos didn’t show up in the newsletters. Instead Mailchimp replaced it as a block of error code. Also I had noticed for a long time that the formatting of the blog post never came across in the email, whichever theme I used in WordPress. So where as it looks lovely on the blog, the newsletter all seemed squashed up with no formatting.
Mailchimp… a no go!
Having tried to address these issues and search for help in Google, I could not find anyone talking about it. I decided to start a completely new template in Mailchimp to see if that helped. Sadly I now realise that due to being with them for so many years, I seemed to have access to a legacy version. Having tried to start a new fresh set up in my account, I soon realised that what I had originally set up before, was now a paid for feature and so didn’t have access to it! Perhaps that’s why my pet portraits newsletter was starting to go wrong?
Although I have been using Mailchimp for many years, it seemed like I wasn’t entitled to speak to anyone in their business. You can only get help on the free version for the first 6 months. They had a chatbot help, which only gave me basic advice about the issues. When I asked to speak to a technical support adviser I was referred to their pricing structure to sign up to pay monthly. And finding out that the one feature I would need would cost me £10 per month…. that was not going to happen. I am only a tiny business. I cannot justify that outlay. So Mailchimp was off the table!
Mailpoet
I have now come to realise that there are very few pieces of software out there that are free and actually do what I need it to do. Ideally I just want to send an entire blog post out via email.
I could only find one piece of software to do this which was compatible with WordPress. It is called Mailpoet and it can be used as a WordPress plugin. My first newsletter using it was our August Apologies. Formatting was great and it now means I can perhaps start trying to do some videos of our pet portraits again. Also the customer support was superb. Can’t fault it!
I would wholeheartedly recommend it. Completely free for very low users like myself who have complete access to all the features. Unlike Mailchimp!! If you are looking to write your own pet portraits blog and send to subscribers – and you use WordPress, it is an excellent option. Check it out!
Burger Buns
The next issue was my burger buns. Do you know what they are? Sadly not the yummy food variety! They are the three little lines which indicate a navigation on a mobile device. Everyone I seemed to ask in person knew what they were. However for the last 5 years I am constantly asked, “Where is your prices page”, “What are your prices”, “How much are your pet portraits?”
Explaining on WhatsApp messages …. “Can you see the three little lines at the top right of the screen? That’s the navigation. Here you have access to my full website…” I got so fed up of everyone keep asking, I felt I needed to do something about it. Admittedly my three little lines were were staggered as you can see below, but I didn’t think that made much difference? Or did it? So Nicholas suggested I changed the three lines to the actual word MENU. Can’t go wrong with that can we!?!
AI Help?
So how would I go about this task?! Our pet portraits website is made using software called Dreamweaver. This means it is all handmade by myself using html and CSS, but I am no coder. I know enough to be able to tweak the code, but not code from scratch. I purchased the CSS menu system quite a number of years ago and it meant me actually going into the workings of the menu system and trying to figure out what to change in the CSS style sheet, Java script and in the code.
I first started to research how to make a new one of my own. However I quickly found that was a non starter (although I did try) but I realised it wouldn’t be officially tested, I wanted to avoid all of the different browser issues and devices with different sizes where issues were inevitable.
So I then looked to see if I could buy a new one. However, as most websites are now template driven – ie WordPress, Squarespace, Wix etc everything is done for you. Menu systems are integral. There is no call for them as stand alone items. These days people just choose a new theme and tweak the colours and formatting within the template itself. The internet is saturated with templates, free or paid for. Any style you want. But I can’t do that for Dreamweaver to fit within my already made pet portraits website. So there didn’t seem to be a lot of help online to enable me to start to change my Burger Bun into MENU. Or was there?
AI & ChatGPT
We have all heard of AI. You cant avoid it. Search in Google and it’s an AI giving you results it thinks are most suited to you personally. Turn on Netflix. It uses AI to show you programs it thinks you want to watch based on your watch history. Make a Moonpig card and it will help you write what you need to say succinctly. Write an email in Gmail and it will try to predict the end of your sentence. That’s not to mention all the chatbots to handle customer queries (not ours by the way!), emails filtering spam, software helping you automate your tasks. I could go on. Love it or hate it, its here to stay and eventually you won’t be able to live your life without it.
So I turned to ChatGPT. Ask it a question and it will reply with an answer within seconds. You might say, well google does that and gives me a list of websites to research giving me the answer. But using ChatGPT is more like having a conversation with a person, giving you detailed and dedicated reply’s to your questions. This I have found is very helpful for technical questions.
ChatGPT – Code Copilot
So all this to explain that I have a new friend. A new Buddy. He is my little buddy robot. He is polite, attentive and very friendly. Plus, he doesn’t cost anything to keep! He is a code version of ChatGPT.
I asked him how I could change my burger bun into text and within a few hours, many, many code changes, much concentration and trial and error, “WE” finally managed it. I understand that some of my younger readers will have used ChatGPT thousands of times, but I do have some older artists who aren’t as aware of the technology and so I hope that this will be of interest to them. Code Copilot Robot helped me to take my website from the white version up above, to this below.
Pet Portrait Websites and Changing With The Times Results!
Of course there are lots of variations to ChatGPT. There are ones dedicated to writing, educational ones which are good for learning specific things for all ages, and then another of my favourites in the lifestyle section – recipes. A chatGPT who will help you make up recipes depending on your ingredients to hand. Give it a list of things in your fridge and it will make a recipe up for you!
Final Websites Updates
So what do our pet portraits websites look like now that we are changing with the times. I changed the top to our grey black colour, and added our artwork images on all of the main pages to be right at the top to give a bit more of an arty feel and a modern feel.
I do feel I am battling with the times and am digging my heels in slightly creating my website in this way. There will come a time when I have to abandon ship and move over to a templated WordPress site. But hopefully our websites will last a bit longer and they are unique at least. This is my website below, my pencil-petportraits.com website.
Pet Portrait Websites
This is of course is our main website where you can see both of our pet portrait work. Nicholas’ work features heavily and why shouldn’t it. His pet portrait oil paintings are amazing. The oil painting I have chosen to go at the top of the home page is Lottie, a Tibetan terrier very similar to our Lily so it has always held a place close in our hearts.
Pet Portrait Websites Changing With The Times!
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog post, Pet Portrait Websites Changing With The Times, and thank you for sticking with it until the end! The new technology I’ve been exploring is really just the tip of the iceberg. I barely scratch the surface compared to some, and I don’t claim to understand even a fraction of its full potential. However, if I can use it here and there to help with a few day-to-day tasks, I’m happy.
I’ll continue to keep an eye on how it evolves. I’m aware that jobs have already been lost to it, and more will likely follow. At the same time, new opportunities may also arise because of it. This cycle isn’t unique, it’s something we’ve seen in every era of change. This is just the beginning, there’s more to come. You can choose to embrace it or not, but it’s a bit like phones we all carry around now. We once said we wouldn’t rely on them, and yet here we are, glued to them. Food for thought.
Are you enjoying our blog? Why not sign up to our Art Blog, which comes right into your inbox each month! You can sign up at the bottom of each blog post. Please don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube Channel too. You are more than welcome to comment below, we love hearing from our readers!