How Do I Post My Art? [Archive] - Steppin Out Forums

webmaster

01-27-2006, 08:33 AM

Dear Kimberly:

Thanks for the note and welcome to the Steppin Out Global Village! ;-) It's a pleasure to welcome you as a registered member.

My name is Greg Platt. I'm the Webmaster of the site.

I gather from your note that you're looking for a place to post your artwork. But when I tried to look you up in our local phone book to call and answer that question, I could not find you listed there. If you'd be willing to send me your number, I'd be glad to call you and answer any questions you may have.

But the short answer is there are at least three different ways for you to post images on our site. Two of those options are free and one costs a bit of money. The "not free" (but real low cost) option would also get you your very own world wide web domain name of something like www.kimberlyz.com (http://www.kimberlyz.com/) or www.zuidemagraphic.com (http://www.zuidemagraphic.com/) and a small personal artist's site hosted on our Steppin Out web server. To see examples of how this works, take a look at the following sites: www.juliahopeprice.com (http://www.juliahopeprice.com/), www.ivagreiner.com (http://www.ivagreiner.com/), www.bosqueart.com (http://www.bosqueart.com/) or even www.plattlabs.com (http://www.plattlabs.com/).

Each of those sites and the gallery associated with them are what we call "Cameo Sites". You can learn more about Steppin' Out's Cameo Sites at www.cameosite.com (http://www.cameosite.com/). The cost to you for such a site, which also includes a 12-month classified ad in the paper edition of Steppin Out that will also feature your domain name, is just $275 for a full year. The package price includes your domain name, the site setup, the website home page the gallery, and the online and paper ad in Steppin Out for a full year. It's designed specifically for artists and is by FAR the best bundled advertising deal we offer. I highly recommend it. Several artists around the state have already jumped onboard with that package. If you can provide us ready-to-use images in digital format, then we handle the entire setup and domain licensing for you and the classified ad in Steppin Out is included as part of the package price.

Now, let's talk about the free image posting options...

I'm assuming of course, that you have images in digital form already from either your digital camera or a scanner and that you have some way to downsize them to reasonable dimensions... something like 75 dots per inch and no more than 900 pixels in any one dimension should work fine. My personal suggestion is to keep your images smaller than that. On the web an image that’s about 450 pixels on a side and 75 pixels per inch looks just great. Our attached file size limit for most images is 900 x 900 pixels or 500k per image. In typical photo dimensions and resolutions of say 150dpi, that's roughly 6" on a side. But our forums also impose a maximum size of uploaded files limit on you of about 2mb. Once you hit that 2mb threshold, the forums will not allow you to upload any more images. If you have no way to resize your images, please email them to me and I can quickly resize them all for you in a single batch and send you back copies for uploading. It will only take me a minute to do that.

You can attach up to 6 images (3 at a time) to any forum message you post. (I've added three sample attachments to the bottom of this message just so you can see how attachments look and work in a forum message. Look at the bottom of this message to see those attachments. Click on each attachment to see how it acts when it displays.

You can also see several attachments to another thread if you look at the post about the Alto Artists tour that one of our reporters made recently in the Alto Community forum. That post has six images attached PLUS it links to a private gallery containing 40 images that our reporter created in our gallery section and later linked to that post. But you are limited to 6 attached images per post. To do that, just enter our forums section and choose the forum where you'd like to post your images in (but not one of our site wide forums or our news forums, please. Those are reserved for messages aimed at all site visitors or to news articles only.) I'd suggest any of the 35 Mew Mexico community forms listed near the bottom of the forum list.

To visit our forums, go to the site at SONewMex.com. Once there, check to make sure you're logged-in on the first page you see. Look at the upper right corner of the screen in the orange box just below the "Email Us" image. If it says "Welcome, Kimberly" in that box, or something like that, you're already logged in. If it says, "user name and password" in that box, you need to login before proceeding. You cannot post in our forums until AFTER you login.

Next find and click the "forums" link in the "main menu" box on the left side of your screen near the top. That will take you to our forums section.

When you get to that page, you'll see there is a LONG list of forums available. The first group of forums you'll see is our "Site wide Forums". This section of forums is intended for messages that all visitors should probably see and read. If you look at the description of the Site wide Forums section that appears in the gray bar above those forums you'll see that many of these forums are only open for Steppin Out Staff to Post in.

For example, the first Forum you'll see in the list is our "Announcements" Forum. If you read the brief description of that forum, you'll see that Only Steppin Out Staff can post there. The next Forum below that is our "Advertising and Classifieds Policies, Deadlines and Rates" forum. Like the "Announcements" and once again, only Steppin Out Staff can post there. The third Forum is titled "Art and Entertainment News". It is also only open to our staff for postings. And so on... However, the "How Do I...", "I Need HELP! (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6)" and "Member Polls (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=93)" forums are open for ANY visitor to post in. The same thing is true for the "Visitor Comments and Feedback (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=148)" forum, the "Questions for Our Staff (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=92)" forum, the "Suggestions & Great Ideas... (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7)" Forum, and the "Bug Reports, Problems & Tech Support... (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=8)" Forum.

Below the "Bug Reports, Problems & Tech Support... (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=8)" Forum is our section of statewide news forums. That section includes a dozen forums covering such topics as "Antiques and Collectibles (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=72)", "Antiques and Collectibles (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=72)", "Artists, Studios and Galleries (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=54)" and so forth. If you read the description of any of those forums, you'll realize any message you post there will NOT be displayed until someone from our website or editorial/news staff reviews and approves them. The reason for that is simple. All posts in our news forums once approved are immediately passed through our news wire service to all radio stations, newspapers and other publications around the state that access and use our arts and entertainment news services.

You'll also notice that many of our forums have a blue highlighted phrase or message title on the right side of the forum line. That is the most recent posting in that forum. Each forum COULD have thousands of postings. But what shows on the right is only link to the most recent posting. To see the complete list of threads in each forum, just click on the Blue link on the left side of the forum that also represents the forum name.

Invest a minute and take a close look at the "Announcements" forum. If you click on the blue word "Announcements" The forum will open up and you'll see there have been five announcements posted in that forum since it was opened a few months ago. The first is, "Accolades for Roger Landes and Randal Bay's CD (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111)" The prior announcement was titled "Happy Holidays! Count Your Blessings! (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106)". The next older announcement was titled, "Artisans Wanted (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95)" and so forth.

Each title on the left in this context represents one message "thread". The title is the subject of that thread. And the title could cover dozens of messages posted on that topic. If you look over on the right side of that each message thread's line, you'll see a column that tells you how many replies that thread has received and how many times it has bee viewed since it was posted. To read any of the announcements, just click the announcement’s title and the forum message will be opened up for you to read.

To exit from the announcements forum and return to the main forums list, you can use your back button to go back one page, or you can click the "Forums" list in the "main menu" box on the left again, or if you look near the top of the page in the first yellow block you'll see a series of links that say:

http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/themes/rogue/misc/navbits_start.gif (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4#) Steppin Out Forums (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/index.php?) > Sitewide Forums (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1) http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/themes/rogue/misc/navbits_finallink.gif (http://www.steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4) Announcements

And you can just click on Steppin Out Forums to return back to the forums list.

As you scroll on down the forums list, you'll quickly realize that each blue link listed on the left in a single orange and yellow row of the list represents a single forum. We presently have about 60 active forums. Each Forum is similar and each one can contain an unlimited number of messages or message "threads" related to the topic of the forum. A message "thread" represents a single original message and all responses that may have been posted to that message. Most of our site-wide forums are limited to postings by our staff and some others require our staff to review and approve all members’ posts before the posted message will appear. There is a brief description under each forum's title that explains how postings are handled for that particular forum.

Scrolling on down the list, you'll see that our next Forums Section is titled "Worthy Causes". Today that section only has two active forums listed. This list could of course grow in the future.

The fourth forums section is titled "Community Information & Event Forums (http://steppinoutnewmexico.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=10)". If you look close at this section, you'll see that we've provided one forum there for each major community in New Mexico to post and share articles about its upcoming events and happenings. If you read the descriptions of these forums, you'll see that messages posted in our community forums are displayed immediately. They do NOT require staff review and approval before they will appear. You'll also see that the cities are listed in alphabetical order. So, the list begins with a forum for Albuquerque, then one for Alamogordo, one for Alto, one for Artesia, one for Belen and so forth.

My suggestion is that you choose the forum for the city or town that is closest to where you live and post one or more messages there along with 3 to 6 images of the art you create or the things you have available to sell that you'd like to have featured on our site. To post a message in a forum, just open it up by clicking the forum's title and post a new message there by clicking on the "new thread" button that appears near the top left corner of the forum.

Once you click the "New Thread" button, you'll be taken to the message entry screen. There you can enter a title for your message and a message up to 40,000 characters in length. That's roughly 20 pages of text. Hopefully, your message won't be longer than 20 pages! ;-)

When you finish entering your message, scroll down a bit further on the page and you'll find a "Manage Attachments Button". Click that button and a pop-up appears that contains three slots for you to upload images into. To attach a single image to your post, just click the browse button next to one of these lines and find the image on your PC in the window that appears. Once you find and open the image, click the upload button in the window to send it to our forums software. Then repeat the process for the next image and the next, and the next, and so forth until you've attached and uploaded your six images.

After you finish the upload process, close the uploads window and return to your message. You'll see the images you uploaded listed in the manage attachments section below your message. Now, before LEAVING this screen, be SURE to click the save button below your message to store it on our server. That's all there is to it!

That's the first free image upload method.

The second upload method is even easier and it's MUCH faster too. On that screen you can upload up to a dozen images at once.

Look in the main menu block on the top left side of your screen again and click on the galleries button. When you arrive on our Galleries home page look carefully on the right side of the first light gray bar that appears near the top of your screen. That bar contains several links including, "Home", "Search", "Profile", and "Upload Photos". As a registered Steppin' Out You have a ready-made photo gallery where you can upload personal photos. So, when you click the "Upload Photos" link, you'll be taken to a page where you can select and upload up to 12 images at a time. You can even provide a standard title and caption for all the images you upload on that page if you want to. Just find and select any images you want to upload on your PC's hard disk. The galleries impose the same image size limits as our forums do when it comes to the size of individual images you can upload. So no uploaded image should ever exceed 900x900 pixels. Of course, you're also limited as to the total size of all your uploads too. So be careful not to share too many images of your family cat with the members of the site. :-)

When you click the Upload Photos Link, you'll be taken to the gallery uploads page. All images you upload will be automatically placed in a personal gallery associated with your username. Just use the browse button to search for an image you want to upload on your hard drive then click the "Open" button in the file upload window to add that image to the list of uploads. You can easily repeat this up to 12 times per upload. When you are done selecting images to upload, scroll down and enter a title and description that applies to all images and mark whatever options you want to be applied to your uploaded images on the bottom of the page. Then click the Upload/Submit button and wait a minute or two Once the upload is completed, you'll be taken to a preview page where you'll be invited to provide individual titles and descriptions for each image as and to provide a list of keywords under which that image should be found when other users are searching for images to view. You can fill in all three fields for each image or provide none of them for any image. That's entirely up to you. I know it might take a while to provide such information for a dozen images. My suggestion is to provide all three fields for each image and try to use any words you think someone might search for and find your images under in at least one of the three fields. That way, you maximize the likelihood of someone finding your images.

Once your images are uploaded this way, you won't be able to see them in your gallery until after they have been reviewed and approved by our staff. But we're generally pretty quick to do that. SO with any luck at all, your images should be available and visible to all members of our site within 48 hours.

To see just how the member gallery image library works, go back to our gallery page and take a close look at the Member Galleries section. It's the very first gallery section listed on our gallery page and appears just below the "recent images" display at the top of the gallery section.

One you've managed to post your first forum message and have successfully upload images in both the forums and our galleries, write back to me and I'll write a little tutorial for you on how to link direct to your image gallery from your forum posts like I did in the article on the Alto Artist's tour in the Alto Community Forum!

Now that you know the two easiest free ways to upload images to our site, go give it a try yourself. After the first time, you'll understand just how easy it is to do!

I hope little tutorial this helps...

Have fun!

Best Professional Regards,

Greg Platt
Webmaster, Steppin Out New Mexico SONewMex.com

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