However, our portfolios are such a crucial part of our self promotion that I think it deserves a challenge all of it’s own – so I’m officially announcing the zero2illo…

The aim of this new challenge is to create 1 targeted illustration for our portfolios each week for 4 weeks. As per the previous challenge, you’ll be able to get critiques and feedback from fellow challengers in the clubhouse (the new one, not the old Ning one as that will cease to exist as of 2oth August).

How to take part:

• Watch out for the weekly task posts on zero2illo as part of the ’4 Week Portfolio Challenge’ (or better still subscribe to the rss feed to make sure you don’t miss them). The challenge starts this coming Monday, the 2nd August.
• Join the new zero2illo clubhouse forum (don’t forget to introduce yourselves to your fellow community members) and take advantage of critiques from your fellow participants throughout each week to help you make the strongest illustrations possible

I’m really excited about this challenge – as you’ll notice, I didn’t get much time to participate in the 12 week challenge but this one’s mine! I hope you’ll join me…

Related posts:

1. 12 Week Challenge: Starting As We Mean To Go On
2. The zero2illo 12 Week Challenge: Week #4
3. The zero2illo 12 Week Challenge: Week #5

I mentioned this as part of the 12 week challenge but some of you have come up against a few challenges setting it all up so I asked Lea – my tech whizz wife – to create some tutorials which show you how to do most of the things you’ll need to do. Without further ado, I’ll hand over to Lea for the tutorials…

Installing WordPress

In the first tutorial, I show you how to do a basic install of WordPress on your domain name. While we use & recommend Bluehost as a hosting provider, a similar cPanel (control panel) is used by many hosting companies so the advice should remain the same.

Configuring WordPress

In this next tutorial, I show you how to set the initial configuration settings in WordPress including how to set up a home page which isn’t the blog.

Tweaking WordPress

In the final tutorial about WordPress, I show you how to install a new theme and change the order of your pages.

Resources Mentioned

The following are the services, links & resources I’ve mentioned throughout the tutorials above. Some of them are affiliate links which means we’ll get a small commission if you use our link to purchase it – thank you for your support, if you do this!

• Download WordPress
• WordPress Plug-ins & free Themes
• Bluehost web hosting [aff]
• Headway WP Theme [aff]
• Themeforest themes [aff] – good but very affordable WordPress premium themes.

Related posts:

1. The zero2illo 12 Week Challenge: Week #8

Taking part in Illustration Friday is not only a great way to practice working on live projects with a real deadline, but it’s also a safe place to experiment and try out new styles and mediums without the pressure of an Art Director breathing down your neck.

You also never know who’s looking at the work submitted to Illustration Friday either!

This weeks topic is ‘Double’ and here’s my contribution…’One For Sorrow, Two For Joy’

Medium: Traditional cut paper collage

No related posts.

A while ago, I asked you guys for feedback about what you’d like to see us do with the forum – whether you’d be willing to pay a fee to cover the costs, whether you’d prefer me to keep it free and whether you liked the Ning functionality.

Many of you said you’d be happy to pay a small fee for membership of the Clubhouse but you also said you weren’t sold on the Ning functionality, especially the way the forums work. Lea also runs a Location Independent clubhouse on Ning and since the announcement we’ve spent hours & hours discussing what to do, researching the different options & alternative software and trying to come up with a solution which works for everyone…

The challenges…

What technical platform to use: there are plenty of free ones but trying to decide which would be best, offer the functionality we want and be simple to use & install has taken lots of research & testing. We’ve considered some premium ones too but can’t justify paying for them, when many of the free ones do a great job.

Whether to charge for membership: although many of you indicated you’d be happy to pay for membership, I’ve never wanted to charge for this. It doesn’t sit well with me and I’d constantly feel like I’d need to be adding extra value to justify charging for access. If we’re moving away from Ning, we’ll only have to cover web hosting fees and one-off costs to set up/brand the forum ourselves rather than an ongoing service fee.

How to migrate content out of Ning to a new platform: this is the biggest thing we’ve struggled with as Ning don’t make it easy to do this and in some cases in order to import content to a new platform, it would require a custom import tool to be built.

The solution…

I’m really happy to say we finally made some decisions and have now built a brand new forum. You can find it here.

The goods news is that:

- It’s free now and will continue to be free for all members. In time, we may implement some private parts of the forum which may have a fee attached but it won’t be mandatory to join these. If you’d like to contribute something to this project, I’ve added a “donate” button in the sidebar of the main site.

- The Clubhouse functions much more like a standard forum which many of you are used to so there’s no big learning curve and it should be far easier than Ning to follow conversations and join in.

- The Clubhouse is now much easier to find and sits “within” the main zero2illo site (see it up there on the nav bar) so it’s easy to find. This is thanks to some custom CSS help from Hanna who did this at a great price and within record time for us.

The not-so-good news is that:

- We haven’t yet managed to import the member data which means you’ll need to sign up for the Clubhouse again. You can do that here.

- We can’t import the existing content/threads/discussions from Ning unless we want to pay someone to do this for us and build a custom tool or figure out a way to do it from a hotch potch of existing tools. While this is really frustrating, we hope that the fresh start means we can all create some great new content, share new resources & provide useful critiques in the new Clubhouse.

IMPORTANT ACTION REQUIRED: As I asked in the message I sent out to all existing Clubhouse members, it’s really important that you log into the Ning clubhouse and download any of your content you’ve shared that you need & don’t already have a copy of. If you feel so inclined, please re-post this content in the new Clubhouse.

Thanks for your ongoing support & I hope to see you in the Clubhouse soon

Related posts:

1. Have You Joined The zero2illo Clubhouse Yet?
2. zero2illo Asks For Your Help!
3. The Future Of zero2illo

Here’s the thing…Jonathan doesn’t actually know I’m writing this post and he’ll probably be a little unhappy with me when he finds out (he’s currently taken Mali – our 1 year old – out for a walk so she can nap & I can do some work!).

It’s quite a long post but I’d really appreciate it if you stick it out to the end because it’s got some good stuff in that I hope you’ll appreciate…

As you know Jonathan started zero2illo as a way to chart his progress in becoming a full time, professional illustrator in the hope that it might help others to do the same.

It’s been a while since he’s done an update on that because there’s actually not been much progress! He’s been so busy running the challenge, running zero2illo and in his day job as a graphic/website designer.

I hate being the nagging wife…

Unfortunately, that’s left me playing the role of nagging wife (which, by the way, I do rather too well!). I love the fact that he’s passionate about helping others achieve their goals too but it doesn’t pay the bills – and he’s spending more & more time on this which leaves him less & less time on the stuff that actually pays & puts food on our table!

There’s a reason you didn’t see much of him in the z2i Clubhouse during the challenge – he didn’t actually get any time to do the tasks himself <cue nagging wife mode, again> – which was totally not the point of the challenge <cue nagging wife mode, yet again>.

Coupled with the fact that Ning have started charging for their networks, we’ve spent the best part of a month or so discussing what we’re going to do with the Clubhouse, what he’s going to do with zero2illo and how the hell he’s going to find time to make progress as an illustrator.

Something’s got to give…or he’s going to have to find a way to start generating an income out of this side of things. That’s basically the ultimatum I gave him a while back.

Here’s how you can help with that…

As you may know, Jonathan asked for your feedback about what to do with the clubhouse & whether to implement a small fee in order to cover the costs of keeping it on Ning.

He has been pretty much adamant all along (despite the feedback) that he wants to keep it free. That’s cool – and we’ve decided to migrate away from Ning so we don’t have to be out of pocket.

In fact, he’ll be announcing the all-new clubhouse soon (I can’t tell you how difficult it’s been trying to decide what to do and all the parameters we’ve had to consider – but I’ll let him tell you about that!) which *will* be free and which we’ve also had to pay for to be customised & branded <cue nagging wife mode, yet again>.

But that still doesn’t solve the problem of Jonathan spending too much time on stuff that doesn’t put food on our table! So, here’s where I’m asking for your help.

We’ve got a ton of cool stuff coming up for you at zero2illo, including:

• An all-new Clubhouse which will remain free for you to join & use
• An expanded 12 Week Challenge kit with lots of additional resources focusing on some of the bits many of you found the most challenging
• New tutorials coming up including:
  • How to get the most out of WordPress for your portfolio website
  • An introduction to using Headway for your portfolio website
• New articles scheduled including:
  • How to use your creative skills to create additional income
  • How to get more done with the time you have & other creative time management strategies
  • How to design your illustration career to fit your ideal lifestyle

With the exception of the 12 Week Challenge Kit which will be the first product Jonathan will release at zero2illo, everything will remain 100% totally & utterly free.

But if you’ve got or get any value at all out of the zero2illo resources & community, here’s what I’m asking you to do in the hope that we can keep everything free & most importantly, keep it running:

Donate

At my nagging, Jonathan just added a “Donate” button in the sidebar of the site. If you’d like to donate anything at all to help keep this going, please do so – any amount will be gratefully received & put back into the pot to re-invest in the site.

Pre-purchase

The 12 Week Challenge kit will be ready to ship within the next month. We don’t even have a sales page for this yet nor exact details of what’s included (except in our notebooks!) but if you liked what you saw in the challenge (or heard about it), then this will be like that but even better.

At the very least, it’ll include extra resources on how to create your OGSM and more in-depth WordPress & Headway tutorials to create your killer portfolio websites. If you’d like to pre-purchase the kit, $14.95 is a pre-purchase price which will go up to $24.95 once the kit is released.

Spread the word

Jonathan’s currently on the lookout for sponsors/advertisers for the site. There are 2 ways you can help with this:

1. Let him know of any services, companies or contacts you might have who’d be interested
2. Spread the word about the z2i site & community, the bigger & better it is the more attractive it’ll be to sponsors

Ok, so that’s it from me – I think I’ve nagged quite enough for today and if you’re still with me then thank you for listening. This site and community means an awful lot to Jonathan and it’s something that he cares about deeply so I’d rather not be the nagging wife anymore

Related posts:

1. Have You Joined The zero2illo Clubhouse Yet?
2. The Future Of zero2illo