For several years I have been running ShawnOlson.net. It was the effort of maintaining the original version in HTML alone that forced me to learn PHP and database programming… it became a major issue when I wanted to add new articles and pages to that site.

With the launch of the database driven version of this site in 2002 I gradually moved some of that old content onto the new site… as well as looked ahead. One of my goals was to create a site that was a community for creative artists, and my site turned into the "Shawn Olson Artistic Network”.

Over time I realized that it was impractical to use a domain name based on my own name for an arts directory—for obvious reasons I should have seen from the beginning. Oftentimes artists would not join this site because my name was built into it (who wants to post their creative work on another artist’s site?) Other times visitors would attribute member work to me.

So I launched the official Artistic Network earlier this year. That site now has hundreds of member artists from around the world. When I launched it, I removed the facility for open enrollment in this site. Today I have further changed this site to list only articles on this site by members who are very close to me personally—meaning family and close friends.

While I know that some current members of this site may feel that I am putting them off, I believe that this is a good change for my site. I have not removed content of members—all articles, images and profiles still exist untouched. The site simply doesn’t list articles on the main pages and topic pages. All member articles still appear in keyword searches.

I encourage all members of the site to migrate their articles and images to the Artistic Network site. It is much more advanced, professional and focused on promoting artists around the world than my site is.