Name of your website?The Independent Graphics & Manipulation Organisation
Your name?
D.A.S.
Your Location (city, etc)
Conder
Please give us a short summary of your website?
IGMO is dedicated to providing free, high-quality tutorials in order to help reduce the learning curve of various graphics packages.
Our written tutorials, in particular, feature step-by-step instructions coupled with screenshots for every step so that you don't get lost along the way.
All content is copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerical 2.5 license which allows users to distribute and modify any content without the author's permission as long as they reference the original source.
To prevent users from making money off my hard work, the license I have chosen does not allow those to make a profit without my permission first.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I've always wanted to run my own tutorial web site. Ever since learning Photoshop in early 2006, my passion for digital art and graphics has continued to develop.
In addition, all of my previous web sites were never popular. As a result, I undertook this web project in an attempt to provide high-quality tutorials for educational purposes.
While the main intention of IGMO is to teach, it also aims to promote artistic and open design in a commercial-dominated world.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
My first web site was launched back in 2004. It was called 'InfoeXchanger'. While it wasn't much, I wanted to feature articles related to nearly everything, however I soon lost interest in the project after a few months.
One of the problems was due to my age. I wasn't old enough (at the time) to purchase my own domain and it was therefore very difficult to encourage visitors to my web site.
The site was hosted with 150m.com and since I failed to update the web site, they cancelled my free hosting.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I put the words 'Independent', 'Graphics', 'Manipulation' and 'Organisation' all together and I liked how the abbreviation turned out.
I was also considering other different words such as 'Pixel', 'Open', 'Design' and 'Guide'.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
All content (including the tutorials) are copyrighted under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 license. There are plenty of tutorials out there, however few actually allow users to modify and distribute the work freely. While there are a few tutorial sites which provides this, they're usually limited to just one software package, hence why I offer so many differing graphics software tutorials.
I also wanted to make sure that all tutorials wouldn't have to cost and I'm hoping to build up a database of free and easily downloadable images and source files. This will include renders, wallpapers, sigs, avatars, userbars, headers, animations, logos and source files (PSDs etc).
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
My eventual goal would be to find a suitable assistant admin who could update the site and keep the content open-source when I'm not as active as I could be.
I never really liked the idea of selling my web sites as 1) it's just a hobby and 2) it's hard to let go. I think, however, that a few other staff members would be a suitable compromise.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The time and money that I have invested into this project definitely exceeds the success of IGMO.
One reason I blame is that the domain uses the .info extension. You see, after searching for suitable names at Yahoo! Domains, I found the igmo.net was available. One day after my initial WHOIS search, the domain has been registered. I am still frustrated that 'someone' stole igmo.net from me right under my nose.
All the coding, database work, typing, resizing images and other time-consuming tasks far outweigh the popularity of IGMO.
I hope that this will soon change in the near future.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would first employ a few PHP programmers and MySQL experts would could build a custom-CMS to manage the web site. At the moment, there is no back-end for the web site.
I would also purchase the igmo.com, igmo.net and/or igmo.org for the web site since .info domains are practically useless at the moment.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
I think I would after all the web site is hosted with DreamHost. I have 500gb of space and 5tb of bandwidth a month, so I think the web site would be able to manage.
If IGMO did get incredibly popular, I also have the ability to purchase my own 'Private Server' which would help to reduce the load on the shared servers over at DreamHost.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
While there have been no unexpected costs, the headache of having to integrate several PHP scripts and the RSS feeds into my design was a nightmare, particularly since I'm only a novice in these areas. The MySQL databases have also been a major problem.
Whenever I want to submit a tutorial, I first have to create the tutorial in Word. Once the Word document is saved, I must fill in all the necessary details in PHPMyAdmin into the correct table. Once that is completed I must convert all text and images from Word into HTML and then upload all the files.
It's very time consuming work, however I don't know enough about PHP coding to automate the submission process.
What has been your biggest challenge?
To get the search functionality to work properly with the web site. I've fixed all problems except the search is not capable of listing and organising the results into several pages.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
I would have to say that the Alexa toolbar has helped to increase my site's ranking. I have also submitted my web site to many free and paid directories, including this one.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It did not differ too much. While I expected to use a free host, they had a few DNS issues. I then tried another and they accidentally deleted my account two months later!
After having two free hosts fail on me for this web project, I took the plunge and purchased my first free hosting package from DreamHost which I haven't regretted ever since.
As for the forum and blog, I was hoping to customize both scripts into the design of my layout however I soon gave up after having great difficulty modifying the templates (particularly MyBB).
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
While I'm not necessarily looking for a profit, I do want IGMO to become moderately popular (i.e. a page rank of 2 or 3 minimum).
If it fails this basic level of success, I will keep the web site hosted until my 1 year of paid hosting ends with my DreamHost contract.
However, if the web site does become a significant hit, there's no reason to discontinue IGMO from running.
What is your website address?
The Independent Graphics & Manipulation Organisation
