As you know, we introduced Category and Regional Directories a little over a month ago.

The main Regional Directory page is here http://www.artspan.com/region_directory.php

The main Category Directory page is here http://www.artspan.com/Category/

To appear in the Regional Directory by your state or city and and in one or more Category Directories, start by logging in to your main admin, and then click on About You. First make sure that you have a state or country highlighted in the Region drop-down. Then go to the bottom of the page. We have added category and subcategory drop-down menus so that you can control how you appear in the Category Directories. Just highlight all the categories and subcategories that correspond to your work.

For example, you might paint landscape and figurative paintings and also do figurative photography. You could then appear in the following 5 directories…. Painting, Figurative Painting, Landscape Painting, Photography, Figurative Photography. Just highlight the categories and subcategories that apply to you and click Save.

It is important to appear in these directories for two reasons:

1. More chances for visitors to find you
2. More links to your site and better search engine rankings
   

We are also taking a look at how visible and accessible the new directories are. We believe we can do better than the current homepage. So, while it has only been 3 months since we introduced our new design, we are doing another redesign. The new design looks very clean and should be up in a couple of weeksas the maximum dimension height or width or 20% larger than the 500 pixel enlargements that the current designs accomodate.

We are happy to help out members who call us with problems, especially as they go about setting up their site for the first time. For help after the first 30 day period, we ask members to use the help desk ticket system which allows us to better assign help issues to the appropriate person and to monitor and track them as they are worked on. You can still call for emergency issues (and if you are having trouble logging) in to the Help Desk. There is never any charge for Help Desk assistance, or for phone help in the first 30 days and for emergency phone help beyond the first 30 days.

This program will encompass essentially two types of calls: 1) site management questions and 2) questions concerning promotion and site optimization. If you need extra help with managing any of the features on your site, you will probably speak to Denise. If you need to optimize your site and images, and to have someone take an expert look at how your site and images are optimized for both Artspan visitors and for search engines in general, you will probably speak with Eric.

There will be a cost for this additional level of service, $48 per hour, billed in 15 minute increments ($12 for each 15 minutes). Please reserve a time for the call so that we can take a look at your site before speaking with you. Just enter a ticket at the help desk. Tell us what you would like to speak about and give us a couple of preferred times to contact you. We will confirm one of those times, review your site, and then call at that time.

Again, this is a service that will be of interest to only a small minority of members. There is plenty of information available on Artspan and in your admin section to help you with your site management and with promotion. There is also the help desk and, in any emergency, telephone help. The Artspan Personal Assistant Program is only for those who want more intensive help after the initial 30 days.

This program also applies to members who send us images to place on their sites. That is, those members who choose not to use the site management features but prefer to have us do updates to your sites. For example, if you have a bunch of images and want Denise to upload them, there will be a charge.

n the next week or so, we will introduce a new set of designs for the member templates. These have been coded and we are beginning to integrate them with the member admins.

The biggest difference from the current designs is that up to 36 thumbs will be shown on each gallery page as opposed to the 5 or 6 thumbs that currently show on the gallery pages. This will enable the visitor to see at a glance many more pieces and to choose much faster which to look at and buy. For some kinds of members, such as jewelers, this should be a popular choice, allowing visitors to see much more of your work without having to click through to additional pages.

Here is the revamped art calendar: http://www.artspan.com/calendar.php

The new articles section is here: http://www.artspan.com/article_display.php

We would love to add a lot of good content to the articles, so if you have an article to contribute we urge you to do that. Any Artspan member or Forum member can post an article here http://www.artspan.com/article_authentication.php

Copyright 2007. Artspan LLC. All rights reserved.

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