Making Improvements

Yesterday I decided that I'm going to put a lot more effort into building my career as an artist. One of the things I've struggled with is my website. It all started back in grade 10 when I learned HTML in class, which as you can imagine was very simplistic. Later on I started to build my own websites to show my work, but they were never exactly what I wanted. Then I learned how to use Photoshop to build sites but it was too complicated graphically, took too long to load, and was very hard to add onto spontaneously. So then I learned Dreamweaver and that was a big improvement, but still I had trouble keeping my pages consistent and reading the more complex Dreamweaver code so I couldn't go in and change/add-on things I wanted when I wanted. That's where I am right now. I know basic HTML, but I really need to know XHTML and CSS and possibly other stuff beyond that to get what I want. Ideally I'd be able to pay someone to do all of this for me but I'm not rich yet and I actually don't mind learning. At least I'll be able to do what I want afterwards.

If you take a look at my current website , first of all, it's Geocities which was ok for a couple of years ago, but now I really need a domain. Second, I like that it's simple because my website in the past have been loaded with graphics, but I feel like it's too simple for my taste. I know great artist sites have a very simple streamlined look to really show off the work, but I can't help but want to embellish more...I guess that's just me. I need to find a balance. Thirdly, the gallery section failed for me because what I really wanted was a flash gallery that looked really cool and I could add on to it easily. The rest is fine but, I have something much better in mind. I've been working on a concept but it's purely Photoshop right now. It looks great but, I need it to be much more flexible and for that I need to learn CSS. It's a lot of work to learn though, let me tell ya! But I'll let you know how it goes when I try it all out...