About Voodoochilli

Voodoochilli.net a is growing community of artists founded by artists. This site is a free online resource and online portfolio service for both visual artists and clients looking for talent.

History
Voodoochilli.net was originally developed in 2002 as an experiment by Harry O'Connor. At the time the site was simply a personal space to display the artwork of his, and of his then girlfriend Becky Needs, who he later married and is now known as Becky O'Connor. Harry had always been interested in computers and saw web design as the next logical step so essentially the site was developed to help him gain an understanding of existing web technologies while at the same time promoting their artwork. The initial site designs were very limited technically however they started to gain popularity on the internet, and before long people started to email in asking if they could have their own artwork presented on the site. Within a few months there were over 20 artists featured on the site and a handful or musicians.

Making updates to the site was taking up a lot of Harry's time and he would often get in trouble at his job as a Technical Demonstrator in IT at the Herefordshire College of Art for updating his website when he should be working. It was at this time when harry met a talented overseas student of his called Carl Palm. Harry asked Carl to develop the site into a dynamic site using PHP and Carl was paid the grand sum of £70 for his work. Although most of the code on the site today has been updated with newer code, a lot of Carl's work still remains.

At this point several key features were introduced including the Image Of The Month Competition which is still going strong today. Additional, Harry decided to take a bigger interest in web development by learning PHP and MYSQL and eventually quitting his job and setting up the web design company Voodoochilli Design. When launching the new version of the site in 2003, Harry, Carl and Becky persuaded around 10 students from the college, as well as a few members of staff to help with the testing prior to public launch. Once launched the site soon started to grow much faster than anticipated and it was not long before the site had several hundred members. By December 2003 a milestone was reached when a total of 1000 images had been uploaded. On the 11th of November 2004 Voodoochilli received it's 1000th registered member. By now, most of the features that exist today were in place in one form or another. On February 7th 2010 (incidentally Harry's 31st Birthday) Voodoochilli.net received it's 10,000th registered member.

BBC Interview
Following an exhibition of his work at the Courtyard Centre for the Art's, Harry was interviewed by the BBC where he made full use of this exposure by blatantly plugging Voodoochilli.net. The site got a sudden influx of new visitors causing the server to crash, sadly resulting in it being offline during most of the exposure. The BBC were impressed with responses to the article and kindly did a follow up the following year.

Other Media Exposure
Voodoochilli has appeared in in many books and magazines over the years but the first serious review was back in 2006 in Advance Photoshop magazine, giving the site a glowing review and another surge of registrations. A full list of media appearances can be viewed on the reviews page.

Origins of The Name
The name "Voodoochilli" was taken from the Jimi Hendrix song "Voodoo Child". When Becky was young she always mispronounced it, instead calling it Voodoochilli. The term resurfaced in a brain storming exercise between Becky and Harry in 2002 when they were trying to think of a name. Since terming the phrase several other individuals and companies have attempted to use the name for their own uses forcing Voodoochilli to have the name officially trademarked.