User Spotlight
www.bubblesweb.zoomshare.com
www.bubblesbackgrounds.zoomshare.com
Member Since: 08/2006
Interviewed by Sare
Sare: Terri, thanks for taking the time to do the interview. You have been a loyal Zoomie for nearly three years, and we are grateful for that. Your bubblesweb site is chock-full of fun stuff to do. Your bubblesbackgrounds site, with new backgrounds recently added, has become one of our member hubs for background images to use to customize Zoomshare sites.
With that introduction out of the way, let’s start talking about how you found us…?
Terri: Well, I actually didn’t find Zoomshare, my friend Caitlyn did. When I started, I was looking for a website to have extra articles for a newsletter that my friends and I had, and so I asked my friend to look for a way to make a website (I knew nothing about it at that point) and she just Googled it and told me about Zoomshare. From there, it gradually switched from a website about a newsletter, to my website full of things that I found interesting or cool (as in music, games, fashion, that sort of thing).
Sare: You have an eye for the color and shape of graphics. How do you make the famous backgrounds featured on your site? I know you work on a Mac, a good platform for creativity on the Internet.
Terri: I totally agree with you on the Mac thing. I would die without this computer and all it’s applications, including Photoshop, which is how I make all of the backgrounds on Bubbles (except the collages, which, oddly enough, I use Powerpoint for). As for how I make them, how do you make anything that it artsy? You just try it out and see if you like, sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t.
Sare: Sure. Terri, what inspires you to create graphics? What propelled you to decide to open up your backgrounds to the community, along with the clear instructions available on the home page of bubblesbackgrounds?
Terri: As far as inspiration goes, it's mainly curiosity. I started out because I was curious how all these people create these amazing graphics, which to me was totally incredible seeing, as I knew absolutely nothing about it. Now, whenever I see new brushes online, or I’m bored that day, I just go on... and start fiddling around seeing what I like. As for opening Bubbles Backgrounds, for a while I was trying to make a new background for Bubbles, and I realized that I was making a lot of backgrounds which didn’t quite fit Bubbles, but were still nice, so I decided, "Why not share them with other people?" When I realized that people actually liked them, I just decided to make it simpler so I opened up another site, Bubbles Backgrounds.
Sare: Have you had formal instruction in graphic design? Would you consider pursuing that as a career path?
Terri: No, I haven’t had any real formal instruction, my friend's and my dad have helped my around figuring out Photoshop. After that, it was just trial and error, with a lot of errors.
As for a career in it - not really. don’t get me wrong, graphic design is fun, but I’m more passionate about other things like why people do what they do (psychology), and photography.Sare: How do you promote your sites? Have you gauged how much traffic your sites are receiving?
Terri: Honestly, I don’t really promote Bubbles that much. My sites are really just hobbies, and I find it really fun to maintain them, but the whole advertising thing I don’t find as fun. So, as far as promotion goes, mainly word of mouth and the Zoomshare forums, which are always fun. After my older sister showed me SiteMeter, a website which helps you determine how many visitors you have, I added it. It’s really informative as to where I get my visitors, which is always nice to know.
Sare: How often would you say you update the sites? How much time do you spend on them? They look like a lot of hard work goes into them.
Terri: It varies dramatically by time of year. Like right now in the summer, I update a fair amount, but during a particularly busy time while I’m in school, I update it much less regularly. As for time, overall I spend a fair amount of time working on Bubbles, but it’s so much fun that I don’t mind at all. After all, I have been working on it for 3 years, so some stuff has been up for around that long.
Sare: Do you have any favorite Zoomshare sites besides your own?
Terri: Yes of course, highstar is full of really fun things. Drakeswillie, whose site helped so much when I was still trying to figure out all that HTML stuff. Spooniep, who showed me jotform.com, which I am totally obsessed with, and ceron's website is always changing, but also really nice.
Sare: What do you enjoy most about the Zoomshare service as a whole– what makes you stay with us?
Terri: I really like how it’s easy to use, but as you learn more, you can customize it more. I have looked at other sites over my period of around 3 years on Zoomshare, but you guys are definitely the best at combining simplicity with customization.
Sare: What can we improve/change about Zoomshare?
Terri: Hmmm, well on the Web Page Editor, if you could include an option that would be so you could go back to a previously saved version, so you could save your site, check it to make sure it looks correct, and if it doesn’t, undo the save so you can correct the mistake. Also the blog icons we have at the moment are a little limited, so I think it would be great if we could upload our own for each entry instead, or at least having a larger and more updated variety than what is currently available.
Sare: (Pulling a yellek-type question) What’s the most useless thing you know?
Terri: That 10% of the world’s population lives on islands.
Sare: Thanks again, Terri. Do you have any parting thoughts or sentiment to express to Zoomshare?
Terri: To site owners: You’re probably not going to make a lot of money doing this, so just make sure you have fun doing it, maybe something that you find entertaining isn’t very popular, but who cares? If it’s what you love, your site will be all the better for it. Also the Zoomshare forums are fantastic for getting help, there are tons of people who are not only very knowledgeable on a variety of things, but also love helping others out.
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We will showcase a different member every couple of months, so check back again soon!
FYI - How this page was created:
- The screenshot of the Terri home page was first uploaded to the image folder in the web page editor tools and then inserted onto the canvas area above.
- The text at the top of this page was added as free-form text typed right into our web page editor. All formatting was added while working in the web page editor using its menu/options.
- The hyperlinks were created by using our hyperlink tool in the editor menu, after selecting the text we wanted to make a link.
