Coto.Studio

About The Project

I'm a writer, photographer, and filmmaker who happens to be a computer whiz. Over the past 15+ years, I've built and maintained technical infrastructure to support creative work. I got into this work to support my own projects, and later I used the skills I developed to help other independent creatives who need websites but don't have deep technical knowledge or big budgets.

Since 2007, I've taught myself web development, server administration, and infrastructure management by building and maintaining websites for my documentary film, podcast, books, and various other creative projects. In 2015, I started offering these services to other artists and authors who needed reliable, affordable hosting without the limitations of cheap platforms or the high costs of premium services. I currently manage 10+ websites, some of which I've maintained since 2009, and in 2022, I formalized this work as Coto.Studio.

The work has required me to learn a wide range of technologies from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to Ruby on Rails, WordPress, MySQL, Docker, and Linux server administration. But more importantly, it's taught me how to balance technical excellence with creative needs, and why reliability matters more than flashy features when you want your work visible online.

The Challenge

Independent creatives face a fundamental gap when it comes to getting their work online. You need a website (or several) for your projects, but the available options create a dilemma:

Cheap platforms like Wix or basic hosting are limiting. You quickly hit walls when you want to customize, add functionality, or run multiple sites. The constraints get in the way of your work.

Premium managed services work great but are expensive. Paying $30-50 per month per website adds up fast when you're working on multiple side projects, just starting out, or running a more hobby-oriented project. For most independent creatives, that pricing doesn't make sense.

Self-hosting with open-source tools like WordPress is flexible and affordable, but requires technical knowledge. You need to configure servers, install updates, manage security, watch for hackers and spammers, handle backups, and troubleshoot when things break. Most creatives don't have that expertise, and don't want to spend their time learning it.

What independent creatives really need is flexible, reliable hosting that doesn't break the bank. Not all the bells and whistles, but also not artificially limited. Infrastructure that works so that they can focus on their creative work instead of technical problems.

That's the gap I fill. I understand both the creative challenges because I live them, and the technical requirements because I've spent years building and maintaining infrastructure for my own projects.

My Approach

Learning Through My Own Projects

My technical education began in 2007, when I launched my first blog, Ana's Miracle, to help my adoptive mother with her memoir. I started on Google's Blogger platform but quickly hit its limitations. Around the same time, I was working with S.B.C. Panamá, my father's embroidery business, building Ruby on Rails applications to improve its operations. This work required setting up and maintaining an internal Ubuntu Linux server.

In February 2009, I rented a publicly accessible server from Linode and installed and configured Nginx, PHP, MySQL, and WordPress. I migrated Ana's Miracle from Blogger, redesigned it, and suddenly had complete control over my platform. It was liberating and allowed me to expand my creative endeavors.

Building Infrastructure for Creative Projects

Over the following years, I built and maintained websites for my creative projects, including:

• Nelsonroberto.com - My main portfolio site
• Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto - English and Spanish sites for my documentary film
• Inside the Journey - My podcast, hosted through my production company site
• Waking From Innocent Dreams - The site for my upcoming novel

For my documentary film, I went beyond just hosting websites. I set up Nextcloud for the crew to sync files across locations and created a robust backup solution so we'd never lose footage or project files. For The Misfit Playbook, I built a Podio-based project management system to coordinate a distributed team of writers.

Each project taught me something new about what creatives actually need from their technical infrastructure: reliability, simplicity, and the ability to focus on their work rather than fight with technology.

Extending Services to Others

By 2015, I'd been managing my own infrastructure for years and realized how challenging this must be for people without a programming background. Even a simple WordPress blog requires maintenance, security updates, backups, spam protection, and optimization.

I started offering services to friends and family, managing sites for:

• Missing Mila, Finding Family - My mother's memoir site
• Nature Stories - An environmental storytelling blog
• Lou Shackleton - Author and coach
• Jackie Lea Shelley - Painter and podcaster

Adding paying clients pushed me to design more robust, reliable systems. Sites needed to stay up, backups needed to be automatic, and security needed to be proactive. This forced me to improve my infrastructure and develop better processes.

Modernizing and Formalizing

In 2025, I re-architected my entire platform with Docker to improve reliability, automate updates, and enable faster recovery. While these improvements were all but invisible to my clients, they significantly improved uptime and security.

In 2022, I formalized the work as Coto.Studio. The name comes from my birth family's surname, Coto, and the business represents the culmination of everything I've learned building infrastructure for creative work. My core value proposition is simple: I help artists, authors, and independent creatives share their work online. I understand their needs because I share them.

The Results

I've been building and maintaining web infrastructure for 15+ years, managing 10+ websites, including some under my care since 2009. The work has taught me technical skills across a wide range of technologies: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Apache, Nginx, WordPress, Ghost, Docker, and Linux server administration.

The "negative space" story is actually the most telling: sites under my management haven't had major incidents. No devastating hacks, no lost data requiring rebuilds from scratch, no prolonged downtime. Reliability isn't dramatic, but it's what matters when you want your work visible online.

Some clients have been with me since 2015. This longevity speaks to what independent creatives actually need: someone who understands both the creative and technical sides, who charges fairly, and who builds infrastructure that works quietly in the background while they focus on making things.

What I Learned

Affordability and accessibility go hand in hand. Independent creatives deserve flexible, capable infrastructure even when they're just starting out. Technology should enable creative work, not obstruct it. The best technical infrastructure is invisible and lets creatives focus on their work.

Reliability matters more than features. Creatives don't need cutting-edge technology or impressive technical specs. They need sites that stay up, load quickly, don't get hacked, and don't lose their content. Boring reliability beats exciting innovation when your work is on the line.

Understanding creative needs from the inside makes me better at the technical side. Because I'm building infrastructure for my own creative projects first, I understand what actually matters: Can I get this online quickly? Will it still be there in five years? Can I add new functionality when the project evolves?

Coto.Studio isn't just a hosting business, it's the formalization of 15+ years of building infrastructure to support creative work, first my own and then others'. Every site I manage exists to let someone share their work with the world without technical knowledge becoming a barrier. That's what drives this work forward.