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 Slideshow Option for Member Sites |
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For those members who did not open our email announcement earlier this summer (most of you, alas), there is now a slideshow option for the individual sites. Log in to your main admin page, then click on the "Art Work" button, then on My Galleries (upper right hand corner), and then choose a Gallery (or Add a new Gallery). When opening the gallery page (click “Edit"), you will see "Display Artwork as a Slideshow" in the upper left hand corner. Click on the check box to choose that option and then click the Add to Gallery checkbox below each image.
You can choose from a variety of different effects and speeds. It is VERY simple to use, so have some fun with it. It can illustrate different works, or your studio or your methodology. Here for example is the link to a jeweler who created a "Process" slideshow.
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New Member Site Designs |
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In July, we introduced our new member site designs, the latest in a series. Members can see these designs by clicking on the "Themes" button in their main Admin page. They can then click on the drop-down menu and preview the "Theme B" designs.
The biggest change is the up to 36 thumbnail images which can show on each gallery page. This is especially useful for members with a lot of images. Visitors may not want to scroll through multiple pages, this design will offer speed and convenience of viewing..
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Customize Your Site Design |
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We will be working this month on the programming to allow members to customize the design of their sites. They will be able to select a skin, fonts, and background colors. This should be live in 3-4 weeks. Many members have told us they wanted to see this capability, so we will work to provide it.
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First Seven Portals Launched |
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Artspan launched its first seven Portals, which are:
Photography www.artspan.com/photography
Sculpture www.artspan.com/sculpture
Painting www.artspan.com/painting
Ceramics www.artspan.com/ceramics
Fiber Arts www.artspan.com/fiber_arts
Jewelry www.artspan.com/jewelry
Portraiture www.portraiture.com
Note the URL of the Portraiture portal, www.portraiture.com, which practically guarantees a high search engine ranking for that term. We had this domain stockpiled for a number of years and are happy to put it to work. Yahoo already ranks us #1 for ‘portraiture,” so this should prove beneficial for our portrait artists. We are not dependant on a good domain name - all portals pages should rank well for the category they cover as they will have a lot of relevant content and links.
These portals are in beta, and they do need some additional content, but you can see where we are going. We want to provide the content and resources that are of real interest to anyone interested in the contemporary visual arts. Especially collectors!
Coming up are glass art, landscape/plein air, watercolors, pastels, still life/florals, figurative painting and abstract painting. These are the first of dozens of genre, subgenre, medium and regional portals we will post and continue to update. It is a major undertaking and we believe it will lead to additional site traffic to member sites.
To help our Portals effort, we are pleased to announce that Brett Downey is joining our staff. She is taking a leave of absence from New York University Fine Arts Program where she will graduate in 2008. She has a broad range of expertise, ranging from ceramics to contemporary Chinese art, and is a talented writer. Artspan is fortunate to have her services.
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Coming: Video and Widgets |
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We want to provide an easy way for you to upload video to your sites, and hope to provide that by the end of September.
We have also scheduled work on giving members the capability of adding widgets to Artspan sites. A widget is anything that can be embedded in a web page by placement of a small snippet of code. You can use a widget to add non-static content to your site. Widgets can be written in HTML, but also in JavaScript, Flash and other scripting languages that will run when the page is called. Widgets are now commonplace and are used by bloggers, social network users, auction sites and others.
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Take a Look at Signature Canvas Trial Offer |
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