For the vast majority of artists, all you really need for a website is a way to put images and a little bit of text together in a way that looks clean and straight-forward.
With xhbtr, these are the steps for creating a site:
- Sign up
- Choose a design
- Drag and drop a folder (or a few folders) of images into xhbtr.com
- Create some links so that people can move between pages
And that's it. Seriously.
Examples
Features
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Classic, modernist typography
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Use different layouts for different galleries
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Powerful, easy to use layout editor
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Unlimited hosting
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Unlimited images
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Free domain name with subscription
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Create a professional CV with Art CV
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Private, password-protected pages
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Google Analytics integration
Pricing
Yep, that's it.
If you want a confusing chart and deceptive pricing, go like anywhere else on the internet.
Layouts
The majority of artist websites are built to accomplish the same goal, which is to frame the following things with as little BS as possible:
- documentation of work
- bio / curriculum vitae
- contact info
xhbtr makes showing those things extremely easy—but also doesn’t lock you into a “template,” like other site builders do.
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There are really only a handful of strategies for showing bodies of work online—things like slideshows, grids of small thumbnail images, etc. xhbtr lets you choose any of them—and swap them out for different ones.
These are the layouts you can use:
Horizontal Sequence
Vertical Sequence
Horizontal Field
Vertical Field
Free form
Individual Slides
Mobile
On a phone, basically the only thing that makes sense is a vertically-scrolling series of images. So, no matter which image arrangement you choose, if the window is small enough (ie. “phone size”) the images turn into a vertically-scrolling sequence. (This is hugely important if, for example, you’re trying to show a gallerist or a collector your work on your phone.)
There are also really only a few sensible ways of arranging the navigation links on your site, too—but it's a little harder to put those into words so you'll have to just check them out.
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Those are the ingredients—and you can combine them in whatever way works best for you. There are also a bunch of really great looking default settings that you can drop your work into so you don’t have to think about any of this, if you just want to hit the ground running.
So try it out.