After weeks of planning, copying, and pasting, my new website is live and ready for viewing.
Yet why bother with a new website at all? After all, wasn’t the site I built over the summer serviceable? The answer is yes and no, so today I’d like to explain why I made a new site.
When I created my previous site, I wasn’t enrolled in any classes yet, let alone digital humanities. My primary focus was documenting my previous work, museum and otherwise, so working with a single platform like Wix was fine. With the digital humanities class, however, I needed a hosting site where I could work with multiple web-building apps like Scalar or WordPress. So I went to Reclaim Hosting, a host geared toward academics, and bought myself a domain. The website you’re looking at here was made with WordPress, but the DH project I’m working on now will be a Scalar piece, which allows you to publish interactive online books. In the long term, I’m looking into building an archive for the Roswell Museum’s historical documents using Omeka, a platform that specialized in archives and online exhibitions.
Speaking of domains, that’s another reason why I wanted to build a new site. When it comes to searching, you want a domain that’s easy to remember but still reflects your work. I was planning on changing my less than memorable domain on my previous site, but since I was already building a new one, I focused my attention on Reclaim Hosting.
But why call my website Sara Woodbury in Transit? Isn’t it enough to have my name? As it turns out, there’s another writer out there named Sarah Woodbury with her own website, so I didn’t want to get the two sites confused. I added the tagline “in transit” because it playfully references my interest in travel infrastructures and their role in the production and reception of art, not to mention my own habit of moving around the country in search of new opportunities.
That’s the story behind my new site. The other one was fine, but rather than simply document my old work, this one will allow me to share what I’m working on now. After all, I’m here to move forward, not rest on my laurels, so I’m excited to continue building my web presence.