The Woes of the Web

This weekend I felt a tinge of nervousness when I saw that the software I use to publish this art blog (Wordpress) offered a version upgrade to 2.5. Nearly every previous version upgrade has resulted in disabling of my website for several days - mostly due to incompatibility with many of the plugins I use (bits of programming that add features to the site). This time the upgrade started a chain reaction of little tweaks to get used to the new version. The last of which, a little plugin that would let me work on the look of the website without taking the many pages offline, quietly crippled the site, even after I disabled and removed the offending plugin. After reinstalling many files from backup, the site is up and running - sort of. You'll notice many images have disappeared throughout the pages. So, bear with me for a while until I figure out how to get them back, or, worst case, upload them all again. It got me thinking about the increasing technological demands on the artist. Where our domain was previously paper, pencil, and slides, now we've moved to digital images, webpage submissions for juried shows, and online blogs. Webpages can require anything from a little bit of technical savvy, to writing actual code to get what you need. The exposure you get from webpages is terrific - but the requirements are getting increasing technical as well. Just a little rambling as I ponder which digital void to begin searching for my missing images.