V2 All Set Up? Share Some How To Tips For Others!

Great idea for a thread.

I look forward to reading what the talented artists have to say; but the best way to learn is to look closely and play around with the settings.

Then go back and play around some more. We all have a different vision.

I've visited every site posted in the previous threads and some of the custom slides are really well done.

◕‿◕

🌎 Michel
📷 travel-pics.pixels.com

There's a whole thread here that's got lots of information on it.

https://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=4636182

I'll go first. This is how to use the Announcements Bar (across the top of your V2 website) for a place to put your contact link and subscribe link for your email list.

NOTE: This looks complicated, but it is pretty simple. I've just broken it down into very little steps to make it easier to follow.

1. Select the V2 website from the "Behind the Scenes" page (you'll find that by hovering over your name near the top-right).
2. Hover over Edit (to the left of your name) and click on Edit Website Apperance.
3. Read the INSTRUCTIONS (they'll provide some navigation tips).
4. Click on Announcements Bar found in the menu on the left side.
5. Turn on the Announcements Bar by choosing Yes from the Display: dropdown.
6. In the Message field, enter the text I've pasted below, EXCEPT replace [ and ] with < and >.

[a href="https://susan-molnar.pixels.com/contact.html"] CONTACT THE ARTIST [a href=" https://susan-molnar.pixels.com/subscribewebsiteemaillist.html"]SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER    

7. After pasting in the text, go to every place you see my website address (https://susan-molnar.pixels.com) and put your website address in there instead.
8. Where I've used all caps (CONTACT THE ARTIST and SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER), change this text to whatever you want your contact links to be labeled.
9. Play around with the text styles, colors, etc. If you don't like the text size, style, or color, it will be easy to change later.
10. Unless you want your text in the Announcements Bar to be underlined, select No from the Link Style Underline drop-down.
11. BE SURE TO CLICK APPLY CHANGES before you leave this page.
12. Once you've applied the changes, if it seems like the two links are too close together, you can add space between them by editing again and entering an ampersand (&) followed by nbsp; you need the semi-colon at the end.

Every time you type that, it inserts one space. So if you want to have several spaces between the two words, you'll have to enter that several times. Note that you do need the semi-colon after each instance of it. Here's how mine looks on the edit page:



13. BE SURE TO CLICK APPLY CHANGES anytime you come back and make more changes.

If you have questions, post them here. I'll check frequently and answer what I can. Here's my site where you can see my Announcements Bar.
http://susan-molnar.pixels.com

Gill, this is slightly different. It is one person explaining step by step how they achieved a look. With a link to that.

As Susan rightly pointed out, some people are too shy to come and ask, or not savvy enough to understand or to get through a dozen posts. In here you can share one aspect of a change you made and how you did it.

One per post

My Logo

I created a small logo, 200 pixels x 60 pixels. It had to be clear and concise so I did what I could to incorporate who I was and what I did

I created this very easily in a free photo editor called Photoscape

Log into your premium site
Go to Website Appearance
Header

Choose Logo and upload your new image

Apply Changes to save

https://isabella-shores.pixels.com

Photoscape:
http://x.photoscape.org/

The thing with download sites is you have to avoid all the other 'Start Download' ads.

Is there an html expert here who can tell me how to enter html text in a post and have it display instead of doing what the code says? I googled it and tried replacing all the < and > symbols with ampersand lt; and ampersand gt; but it didn't work. It would be so much easier to explain what to do when html is involved if I could have it display exactly like a person would type it in.

Thanks.

This forum won't allow raw code to be entered. It's an option on some forums but this forum does not have it. You either need to break the code when you paste it or screenshot it.

Some forums allow raw code to be pasted with BB code tags ie: [code][/code].

Cheers

_______________________________
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🅳🅸🅶🅸🆃🅰🅻🅰🆁🆃🅿🆁🅾🆂.🅲🅾🅼

& l t ;
& g t ;

Remove the spaces.

If you do that and edit the post the < and > will be in place, so you need to add back the

& l t ;
& g t ;

without the spaces.

Nevermind. It looks like we are stuck with breaking the code or screenshotting it.

These tags won't work either...



Cheers

...

For the mobile version of the custom slides, upload a square crop so that the image is not cut off. Go to Homepage, then click on the slides tab. Add a slide, and then for slide type click on custom. Then upload your custom slides for both desktop and mobile.

https://jessicajenney.com/

For my sliders, I chose longer images to work with, noting the space in the center and above going around the compositions were open.

That way, I could add my framed image and text creatively. Then pare down the size of the rectangular slider to a square and add framed image and text again to work the mobile slider.

I went darker on the text for mobile.

I kept to cool images, so the effect would be uniform. I kept to lighter colors so the art would be an accent piece. Focus shifts to the art. I kept to my layout instead of worrying about potential client layouts to fit in the art within their rooms, because there is no knowing what the clients would have for paint and decor.

I have to add, the background room images go from cool to warm depending on where the natural light source is coming from in the image.


Dave Bridburg
https://Bridburg.com

Just curious, Dave.

Why do you have your pictures sitting on the floor or table and not hanging on the wall?

◕‿◕

🌎 Michel
📷 travel-pics.pixels.com

SLIDE PAGE DEFINITIONS
This post will help familiarize you with the controls on the slide set-up pages. Later, I'll post another one that will walk you through setting up slides using your artwork and the default backgrounds FAA has provided. Click on the image here to make it larger if it's hard to read. If you have questions, let me know. Here's my website:

https://susan-molnar.pixels.com

Susan,

Nevermind, I see you have fixed the image. ;) It may be a tad bit large for mobile but if you are happy so am I. You can trim the dimensions a bit if the code if you like.

Cheers

Don Northrup, yeah, I noticed you absolutely can't see much of that image on a phone!! However, I don't know what size I should use. I wanted to make sure it was readable... What would you suggest? Thanks!

I usually make my images around 700-800 pixels wide. The way you have embedded it we can click it to make it larger. Just multiply each dimension by say .75 to keep it the same aspect ratio.

Cheers

Edit: Looking good now.

_______________________________
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🅳🅸🅶🅸🆃🅰🅻🅰🆁🆃🅿🆁🅾🆂.🅲🅾🅼

This Post has got me started working on my Pixel site appearance. When woking on my Sliders, I can not see all of the display. It cuts off on the right side at the Apply tab. I am using Windows 7. Can someone tell me how to fix it so I can see all of the display?

Jerry,

It sounds like the resolution of your screen may be less than 1200 pixels horizontally. Is that the case? If it is you can use a tablet or a phone (not so fun) which will load the mobile version. If you can increase the resolution of your monitor to something more than 1200px (say 1280x720 or more) then you should be able to see the entire apply button. Another option would be to change the user agent using Chrome developer tools, but that can be a little more complicated.

Cheers

_______________________________
ᗪOᑎ ᑎOᖇTᕼᑌᑭ
🅳🅸🅶🅸🆃🅰🅻🅰🆁🆃🅿🆁🅾🆂.🅲🅾🅼

THE VALUE OF PAINTING MAY BE INNER PEACE (Written in the summer...)
I started a new painting yesterday and it makes me happy. It calms me like nothing else can, that is, besides being hugged by my husband or one of our children.
I was suddenly inspired to paint something that had never occurred to me to paint. It is going to be a little zany and wild with color. So far, I love it!
For 3 hours yesterday, I had no sense of time, was not aware of the temperature in the room and was happy, relaxed and in tune with my painting and with my furry kitty who was either on the couch beside me or just outside the door, sitting in the sun, near me. No TV, no loud sounds, just blissful peace! This is what painting can do for me.
Our sunroom (my studio) sits on the West side of the house. Even though there was a door opened 3" or 4 " on either end of the room it is already getting quite warm. That wonderful sun we have at this 5000 foot level is very powerful! I was, so, into my painting, that I was not even aware that the room was getting quite warm until Bruce walked in and asked if I was "ready to go". "Ready to go?" "Hey, (he say's,) that looks wild!"
I have gorgeous views from my studio, too, of the beautiful High Sierra Mountains. Beauty is everywhere.
I have done photography considerably longer than I have painted. I have thousands of beautiful photos. Many that are so superb they never need to be enhanced by a computer. Others, just a tweak of HDR makes them stand out a little better, but then I must tell the viewer what I have done to the photo, otherwise I would not feel honest.
I have toyed with other photos to give them "other" looks but this still does not make my photo a painting and a print should never be sold with the untruth that it is a painting! Though I get joy and, yes, peace, working on the photos, still, nothing compares to the solitude one enjoys while doing a painting. Particularly when there is something soft and furry, near by, who actually approves, unconditionally.
Be proud of your Photos, and sell them as a photo that has been digitally altered in a "painterly" program. Then, state clearly what it is. Be honest and sell! Be proud and Good LUCK!
There is nothing to be ashamed of in that. It is beautiful and many buyers prefer it that way!
For me, each time I view one of my paintings, or a photo that I have made into a 20"x30" print, I find JOY! Whatever the medium, if I have created it, gives me a great satisfaction and awe. "I actually did that?" or sometimes, "How did I do that?" Phyllis Kaltenbach, 84 years old and doing FINE! Be honest and proud of what you have accomplished!

Phyllis

This is totally the wrong thread. You have to open your own thread to put things in and not take over other peoples.

This thread is for the new sites and what people are doing with them

Thanks

Abbie
-------------------
Community & Technical Support Manager
Shopify/Pixels Representative

I don't have a how-to tip but have a how-to question. I'd like to know how to line up images, videos, and links horizontally. When I add them it always does it vertically which is okay but not what I want. Sometimes it will do two but if I add a third it goes down and usually in an odd place. I know basic html but don't remember how to do this.

Don, my computer resolution is set to 1680x1050. But I do see where my Display is set to 150%, so maybe I will change that to 125% and see if that helps... Thank for your help.....

RE-USE YOUR CUSTOM SLIDES:
I found a couple of marketing uses for the custom slides I created for my FAA Artist Website. Both are Facebook uses, but I'm sure you can come up with other ways to re-use your custom slides.

The first re-use was on my Facebook Fan Page. You may or may not know that FB has provided a Cover Photo option to upload up to 5 slides for your Cover Photo. Since I used Photoshop to create all my AW custom slides, it was easy to edit them for FB. All I had to do was remove the call to action button and replace it with my logo. I did this for a bunch of my AW custom slides, and plan to swap them out on FB every once in a while. The only downside to FB's Cover Photo slides is that they don't auto-rotate. The viewer has to click the arrows on each side to cycle through them.

Click the first link below to see the first slide on my FB page. Click the second link to go to my FB Fan Page where you can see all 5 slides.

https://www.screencast.com/t/FBdKlrlRWyZI
https://www.facebook.com/susanmolnarphotography

The second re-use was on my personal Facebook Page. There, FB has not given us an option to create slides for your Cover Photo, but I change my Cover Photo daily to one of my images from my AW site. Whenever the image I choose for my Cover Photo happens to also be an image for which I have a custom slide, I post that custom slide image right after I change my Cover Photo, with a message saying this is how that image could look framed and hung on your walls.

Click the link below to see a screenshot from my personal FB page.

https://www.screencast.com/t/418siFMU

If you've found other marketing uses for your custom slides, I'd love to hear about them!

Susan
https://Susan-Molnar.pixels.com

Susan Wiedmann, Glad I could help! I took a quick peek at your site and discovered we have a lot in common in terms of the subjects of a lot of our photography. I see you are in California where I lived the first 40 years of my life. I'm now in southwest Florida. Love your photos!

Susan Molnar
https://Susan-Molnar.pixels.com

I just uploaded the square images... I didn't know how that worked with iPhones and the two choices.

This is my updated AWS with a new slide.

https://chuck-staley.pixels.com/

Just a note for those that would like an image only link... add Images at the end of your link.

To go to a specific page: chuck-staley.pixels.com/images.html?page=5

Just a suggestion for some....

I put my images below, because on a smartphone they appear in a quasi Instagram way.

Dave Bridburg
https://Bridburg.com

David, I didn't understand. You put your images below what??

Thanks,
Susan
https://Susan-Molnar.pixels.com

In order to have a true homepage I only have slider and bio and no collections or images on the home page.

Otherwise, if you have more than one page of collections and you click on next page for collections you don't get back to the first page of collections.

Whats an AWS?
Whats a slide? 35mm or 120

Jessica, until I read what you wrote above, I didn't understand what people in the Version 2 Discussions meant by Collections getting "stuck" on page 2 when they try to get back to the Homepage.

Susan Molnar: What I just wrote applied to your collections as well. I don't have the knowledge to do so but might there be some sort of individual manual fix to this issue?

There Is No Place Like Home - as the old saying goes!

EDIT: I deleted a misconception I had about the Collections in the menu bar under Search.

 

Appreciate your expert guidance in editing, Susan, thanks very much.

Case in point -- your large red-numbered graphic detailing the Slide graphics parameters (the controls on the slide set-up pages) is spot on -- helped me determine key dimensions aspects I'd overlooked.

@ Louis -- AWS = Artist Website. Slide seems to have become the contemporary term for images in general.

I recently had a submission to prepare & jpg/stills were still referrred to as 'slides' in the program description.

Hi Susan,

I mean at the end or the bottom.

Dave

Dup

Susan Wiedmann, The bug with Collections getting stuck was submitted three months ago. I just now posted asking Abbie if she know the status and whether there was a work-around. I'll let you know if I hear from her.

Carmen Hathaway, glad to help and you're very welcome!

Susan
https://Susan-Molnar.pixels.com

The only workaround so far is not to put collections or images on the home page.

Re The Collection Bug:
If I go to anyone's V2 homepage that has collections and I scroll down and click "View All" (not "Next") and then I click on any collection in subsequent pages, I can get back to the homepage by clicking the artist's name or their "home" button. The Collection-Sticking Bug happens only when "Next" is clicked - which buyers might tend to do since it is there.

All you computer-programming experts here: Should this be hard to fix?

Susan,

The NEXT button is like the search in the forum. The fair assumption is that people want to return to where they left off during a search.

I am beginning to side with people who want simply numbers and a return to an entirely set up home page. So the buyer needs to conduct a fresh search if they get up and leave for a cup of coffee or something.

Dave Bridburg
https://Bridburg.com

Can anyone tell me if there is a way to permanently set the 5 images for each collection that show on the front page of the premium site so they don't keep changing every time you upload a new image?

I had numbered the ones I want to show in Behind the Scenes, but they keep getting displaced by new uploads :(

Yes Michelle,

Go to FAA.com or Pixels.com, then go to collections or galleries. Next hit the edit button on the collection. Then select your image for a cover, and click submit. You have to click submit up top.

Dave Bridburg
https://Bridburg.com

Michelle, it can take days for the order of the collection grid to change. If you don't want to deal with it then you can select one image as the Collection logo.

Do you mean the only way is to have a single fixed image per collection rather than fix the 5 that I want to display for each collection (5 images are currently showing per collection)?

Jessica it is changing immediately though. I re-ordered the images earlier today for each collection, then started uploading some new work and that altered the order of the 5 images displayed in those collections straight away by adding the new work into the 5 image display.

Michelle and Jessica (and Abbie),

The "logo" setting in collections appears to only affect the single-thumbnail view of collections (.../galleries.html). For the other views, .../collections/name+of+collection (a.k.a. five-thumbnail view) and .../collectiongroups (a.k.a. six-thumbnail view), it appears to always use the numeric order of the images. Since newly added images are always placed in position 0, the most recently added images appear to always occupy the first five and six thumbnails in those two views.

If, after loading new images, you go in and set the order to what you want it to be, those five- and six- thumbnail views honor the order set, but still do NOT show the "logo" image as the first image (unless, of course, it is also set in position 0).

Have I got this wrong?
Thanks,
Susan
https://Susan-Molnar.pixels.com

Reads correctly to me :-)

How do you create a transparent logo for the header so that it doesn't appear in its own "box?" I tried creating it as a transparency in Photoshop Elements 14, no problem, but then it appears in an opaque box on my AW header when I upload it. I tried Saving for Web as a png-8, and also tried saving it as a png file in Photoshop Elements. Same result with the box!

Thanks!

Hi Susan,

It should have worked as a PNG.

Did you delete a visible layer in the file?

Dave Bridburg
https://Bridburg.com

David, thanks for your reply. Today I started from scratch and it was totally transparent! Now I need to deal with the sizing - later!

Susan,

Don or Abbie have the actual max size numbers. I am not sure what they are.

I just wanted to fit in my long Gallery name.

Dave Bridburg
https://Bridburg.com

I was asked how to get a logo into the Collections description text. I had stumbled my way upon a way to do that when I first started working on my V2 setup and I'll share that, but the STEP 1 part is a very clunky way to get your logo image onto your AW site so it can be used for this purpose. There's probably a better way and if anyone here knows one, please share. Meanwhile, here's my clunky way:

STEP 1. UPLOAD YOUR LOGO IMAGE TO YOUR AW "IMAGES" PAGE
1. Under "Edit Website Appearance," go to the Header page.
2. On the Logo tab, select "Logo" from the Logo Type drop-down.
3. Below that drop-down, you'll see three links labeled View, Change, and Delete. Click on the Change link.
4. This opens the IMAGES page. This is the page where your headshot used on your page and possibly other images you've used are stored.
5. Upload your logo png file to this IMAGES page, using the Choose File button then the Upload button (both at the top of this page).
6. THIS IS THE CLUNKY PART: Click on the logo image you just uploaded (it will be at the bottom of the page). Doing that will place that logo image into the header of your AW site. That's not what we wanted, but it is my clunky way of getting the URL of that image so we can use it in your Collections description. We'll delete it from your header in a minute (at Step 11).
7. You should be back at the Logo tab. This time, click on the View link.
8. You will see your logo. Don't worry if the background looks black - if it is a png file with a transparent background, it will be fine when we get finished.
9. Now copy the address of this image that appears in the address bar of your browser. It will look something like this:
https://susan-molnar.pixels.com/images/artistwebsiteimages/271992-280-1554670297.png
10. I suggest you paste that somewhere where you can easily get to it if you need it again (like a note app, or text editor).
11. Now, assuming you didn't want that logo in the header area, change the Logo Type dropdown back to Text or change it back to however you had it set up before we started all this.

STEP 2. PASTE THE LOGO URL AND CREATE THE TEXT YOU WANT IN YOUR COLLECTIONS DESCRIPTION
These instructions will also work for the Artwork description and About text.
1. Back on your "Edit Website Appearance," page go to the Homepage page.
2. Click on the Collections tab.
3. Enter the URL you copied in Step 9 above into the "Section Text" field, then add the html brackets and code text exactly as it appears for the image URL in the screenshot below. Be sure to include everything starting with the angle brackets, the text img src, the equals sign, the quotes, etc., and ending with the code for width and height and closing angle bracket. The br inside angle brackets inserts a line break after the logo so that it is on a line of its own.
4. After entering the URL and formatting it in html, you can enter whatever text you want after that (as seen in the screenshot).
5. Once you save this and look at it, you may want to size your logo differently using the html for height and width you see in the screenshot. You'll want to keep the aspect ratio the same so it won't get stretched or squished and look funny.

This screenshot is for my Collections Description, and also contains html to change text sizes and colors in certain places, but I'm not an html expert and won't include instructions for that here.



HERE'S WHAT THE FINISHED COLLECTION DESCRIPTION WITH LOGO AND TEXT LOOKS LIKE ON MY SITE


I know this isn't the easiest set of instructions to follow. Let me know if you have questions and, again, if anyone knows a better way to embed a logo image, please share!

Susan
https://Susan-Molnar.pixels.com

Susan Molnar: Thanks very much for your generous time in writing the instructions for the Collections descriptions. As for some being "clunky," I disagree since I found them to be straightforward!

And thank you also to everyone else who has contributed their knowledge here!

Susan Wiedmann