Artista Digital

Artista Digital was a hell of a project, in a positive way. It was my personal initiative together with a friend, Ulisses Mello, who lives in Brazil and works as a (…). The website was made with Joomla, an open-source CMS that was awarded the best open-source CMS more than just once. It took me about 6 months to develop it, for three obvious reasons: 1st. I was still making myself known to the system, 2nd. the project only grew as more and more features were integrated into it and 3rd. I had a full time job while developing it so it was developed on my free time. Even though Ulisses Mello was involved in the project, I did all the developing myself.

It was built to serve as an online community. The target audience was the Brazilian public, mostly young in age and interested in digital art, regardless of their level of knowledge on it. The community offers its registered users (who register for free) the possibility to make friends, interact with other registered users through several applications and promote themselves as digital artists – if they so wish. That they would do by writing a small resume on their skills, creating a network of friends, uploading images of their work and by contributing with articles related to digital art (news, tutorials, reviews, etc.)

Artista Digital was (and still is) a web design project with big ambitions – perhaps too big. Originally, the website aimed to cover everything related to digital art and its derivatives. That in itself makes the concept very vast, which can be positive and negative: in one hand, possibilities are nearly infinite, allowing to variation and diversity – on the other, the lack of a specific subject to focus on makes it a bit too loose concept. But these are only speculations. The website itself is very well designed and the platform has proven to be quite stable. I would definitely use Joomla again for a similar project, though there are many other options available depending on the purpose/functionality of the project.

The community is still open to those willing to join, but it is a very demanding project that neither I nor Ulisses manage to keep up with. That’s unfortunate, but the community is still growing and a fine network being built up among members.