Dear all, I hope your 2011 has started on a good note! I view it as a brand new year full of opportunities for me, to which I bring all the learning from experiences from 2010, good and bad, an ongoing enthusiasm, a clear direction for my future and the support of friends old and new! I hope things will go well, but as always, good things are mostly the result of hard work, and I'm here ready with my sleeves rolled up ready for action.
I launch 2011 with my business website, finally, as my blog has been a valid showcase for my work for the last eighteen months, and flickr before that.... Many have thought I was new to websites and I've had a good number of professionals network with me trying to sell me the benefits of a website. ;)
The reality is that my experience with websites goes back to the year 2000, when I convinced a friend of mine to build a personal site for me that centered around my passion for motorsport. The site was an advanced one for the time, with a flash intro, and music from one of my favourite Maltese bands
Beangrowers, and aptly named Antonella's World, to cover my many interests...
Photography was featured, as I've always been into this, but, being the self critical person I am, it took me a long time and some convincing from people around me that I had talent so it took me around 25years to start calling myself a photographer. Anyway, website one brought me into contact with many petrolheads around the world and opened my world a great deal, and gave me my first experiences into design and elemenatary SEO skills.
At the time I was also public relations officer for the
Island Car Club (the Maltese Hillclimb and Sprint Club) and we launched the ICC website, which I helped to design, to a very impressed crowd at the ICC annual awards dinner in December 2000.
My website designer became very busy as his business took off with the motorsport links he got set up with and Antonellasworld became an abandoned site, as I had no control over the site and had no working knowledge of HTML.
Around 2005 I decided to go my own way and launch a functional version of my website on Moonfruit.com, which allowed me to use ready made templates, offered few features but allowed me to upload and change things at will. I still recommend
Moonfruit to small businesses and individuals with a limited budget as it provides a step into the web without major expense and allows people to slowly learn their way though the basics of managing a website. I used Moonfruit up to early 2008 when it became clear to me that my life needed a change of direction and that the content no longer reflected that and I closed site
two down.
Since I've started to run my photography business, people have asked me for my website address, and I've directed them to this blog all the while. The blog has served me very well in allowing me to showcase some of my work and also letting people have some insight into what sort of person and photographer I am. I must say I am impressed by how much I have continued to have business and continued interest in my work via this blog.
I have delayed the website by a long time as I wanted to make sure I was ready.. I wanted a site that was better than what I had before, and the bar was already set high... I spent many months thinking, and weighing out options before I sat down at my desk last week and worked out flat for nearly 48 hours... coming up with what I think is a site that best reflects me and my style of work at this time.
As with all that I do, it is a site in development, and I have been doing lots of tweaking over the last few days.
I hope you like it, and look forward to your feedback....
Note that if you are using an iPhone or android phone to view the site you will see the fast loading mobile version with less features.
Meanwhile I will continue to blog regularly and look forward to your suggestions for new blog postings, if there is anything that you would specifically like me to cover.
Hope 2011 brings you peace, happiness and good health xxx