What you are seeing represents the 5th major revision of the Ruth Bachofner Gallery Website.
The site is currently served from an Ubuntu server with NginX and uses PHP for page generation. It is back-ended by a MariaDB database with many hundreds of records in numerous categories such as "artists," "artworks" and "exhibits."
With our new platform, we anticipate development iterations to be much quicker and we expect to deliver new functionality throughout 2015.
First online in 1998, Ruth Bachofner Gallery is a pioneer among fine arts galleries, having had one of the first art-related websites on the internet. At that point each page of the website was generated by "hand." We offered over 150 images of fine artwork for viewing.
In 2001 we began to merge content into static HTML pages from a database. Those pages were generated on a local machine and then uploaded to our server. At this stage we offered over 250 images of fine artwork for viewing.
In 2004 we took the next logical step and created a true content management system (custom). We began serving pages dynamically using Microsoft's ASP technology and a mySQL database. Styling of text was transferred to style-sheets.
In 2005 we we increased the number of publicly available images to 8 per artist. At this stage we offered over 400 images of fine artwork for viewing and added a comprehensive library of press releases for each exhibition.
In 2008 and 2009 we began experimenting with using ASP.Net 3.5 technology. We converted to this technology for internal use (the content management system), but hoped for something better for the (public) presentation layer. Our decision matrix included the following factors: very fast and lightweight, standards based, open-source (if possible), and not restricted to just one vendors server platform.
In March/April 2015 we began to finalize a comprehensive update of the site using the most contemporary technologies possible.
Not only do we use CSS style-sheets for text styling but now also for layout and positioning. Furthermore, mobile platforms (i.e. phones and tablets) are considered "first class" consumers. The site is designed to be responsive and automatically accommodate different screen sizes and resolutions.
Our custom templated pages now allow for even easier saving of images to a viewer's local storage (for future off-line reference — if desired). On save, the templates will propose a "logical" and deterministic file-name, ensuring we can help you find the artwork in the future if it is still available for sale (or resale).
Perhaps even more importantly, the site now includes the ability to search all past exhibitions and will soon offer registered design professionals the ability to search and/or sort for specific types of artwork.
We hope you enjoy perusing the artists and artwork we represent. Please come in to see art in person when something on the site catches your eye. While we make every effort to ensure quality photographs of the artwork we offer for sale, there is simply no substitute for seeing fine art in person.
If you experience any problems with the site, please let us know by giving us a call or filling out our contact form.
Thank you for visiting!