We have two programmers (soon to be three) working on different facets of the site. Rodney is finishing up the integration of our billing systems with PayPal – critical to the shopping carts and the other initiatives. Our tech lead, Caoimhin, has been working on the shopping carts. He has had to put back the launch of the carts a bit because of a lot of fixes that were needed (font problems, text changes, email and image upload issues and more). Those of you with the B template design will be interested to hear that the top navbar now wraps – so that you can put in more navbar links without stretching the page.

He tells us that the problems have now lightened up and he is back working on the carts which are now projected for launch at the beginning of March.

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Those of you who registered your domains through Artspan before September 20, 2007 registered your domain with a company called Its Your Domain (IYD) for which Artspan was a reseller (we are no longer). IYD was acquired by another company, Tucows, which has discontinued the automatic renewal option. Therefore, if your domains come up for renewal in the next 6 months, you must go in to your Control Panel renew them. The consequences of forgetting to renew can mean loss of your domain and therefore of your web ‘identity.’ You lose a lot of the promotional effort that you have put into building up your web profile. Therefore, we urge you to log in to your Control Panel, and, if you registered you domains before September 20, 2007, to please renew now for one or more years.

Still not ready to say good-bye to 2008, our Editor, Nina Alvarez, chimed in with the following 5 reasons why 2008 was a good year for Artists:

1. Web 2.0: A New Frontier for Art
A number of artists have actually started to create art around the concept of Web 2.0: collaborative, multimedia, and interactive works. See here for some examples http://www.culture-buzz.com/blog/Art-2-when-the-web-2-inspires-artists-1392.html

2. Social Networking Sites (Facebook)
A Facebook page is a fun, direct way to connect to your friends, supporters, and aquaintances: usually people who have bought your work in the past. You can easily post your website pages or blog posts to Facebook, which your friends will be more likely to see and visit.

3. YouTube (Val's Art Diary)
Look out Damien Hirst. Without galleries, auctions, or dealers, this young artist turned herself into a art-selling powerhouse. Her art, under normal circumstances, would maybe make it into only a handful of galleries. Yet she's managed to go from selling no paintings to selling EVERY PAINTING SHE MAKES by filming in time-lapse, editing economically, posting the video to youtube, then selling the piece on eBay.

Almost all computers come with video editing software. Why not try your hand at a video of your own process?

4. Twitter
The world seems divided between people who think Twitter was the greatest gadget of 2008 and those who think it's a big, weird waste of time. It took a little while, but I now belong whole-heartedly to the 'greatest gadget' crowd.

Like any tool, Twitter is what you make of it. If you develop a following and tweet regularly, you can keep your art and your brand on the minds of the people who are interested. Beth Dunn has this post on artists and twitter. It points over the Cycling Artist's post about the benefit and value of Twitter for artists. If you don't mind mixing the personal and the professional, Twitter and Facebook are the way to go.

5. The Recession
That's right! I said it. A downturn in the economy might be the stuff of nightmares for some, but artists can turn these into defining moments, challenging themselves to really take action, to sell more art, expand their resources, deepen their message, and connect to their communities.

Our marketing blog continues to grow in size and relevance. Here is just a sampling of the content that Nina has posted in the last week or so.

16 Ways to Be More Linkable

Storefront for Your Art, p.1

Storefront for Your Art, p.2

Featured Portal: Art in L.A.

Using PayPal to Sell Your Art

There is a lot more and most is directly relevant to your marketing efforts. Incidentally, this is not a one-way conversation. Nina is responding to visitor posts, many of real interest.

Become a regular visitor (and let Nina know any suggestions or questions).

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Uploading images to your website pages (NOT to the Artwork section) can be a bit confusing at first. We are looking at ways to simplify this without removing the functionality that allows you to insert videos and other file types. But, in the meantime, here are the directions for image upload. Just follow them carefully and you will be ok.

1. Place your cursor at the spot where you want to insert an image
2. Click on the Insert/Edit Image icon (2nd row of icons, image of a little tree, 3rd from the right)
3. In the pop-up, click on the folder icon, then click on Upload in the new pop-up and, finally, click on Browse to find the image (in your computer hard drive) that you want to show on your homepage.
4. Double click on the image file name and then (below the field in the pop-up) click on the Upload button. The image is now added to your Website Pages image library and you can use it on the homepage.
5. Close the Upload pop-up window
6. Click on the image.
7. Click on Insert.
8. The image is now placed on your homepage textbox. If it’s too big, click on the image and then grab a corner to resize it while maintaining the same proportions.
9. Click on Save. You are done..

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