You can view all of the main page
and the My Pages of Members, their
blogs, photos, and videos and all the videos,
upcoming events that lists upcoming events
and shows, the times tables, etc.

The following instructions are for those who
have become a FULL MEMBER  $20/year or more.

There are 3 types of instructions below.

(1) The first are written instructions, broken down into a few sections that will give you what they need to get started. Particularly how to create your  Own My Page, set up your  blog, add photos, videos, and arrange the elements of your My Page so that you can best reflect who you are and what you are interested in, and this can include items you have for sale or services you offer. We suggest you copy these instructions to a word file and print them out from there.

(2) After that, there are 2 Videos that will walk you through the site.

(3) And after there are 12-14 graphics that will also help clarify how to se the site. Many people will just need the instructions, but if you are having some difficulty you may want may want to look at both the videos and the graphic representations.

FIRST, HERE ARE THE WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS.

A. Signing In and Choosing Settings ( takes about 10-20 minutes)

1. Sign Into the Site on the right hand side of the page or at the top right
2. On the box on the right hand side of the page Click on “Settings
3. On the left hand side of the page that comes up do the following

Profile You will be on Profile – Upload a picture of yourself or something that represents you. 
You don’t want to have just that gray silhouette.

4. Click on Privacy – choose your initial privacy settings – everything can be changed, choose your initial settings for visibility and moderation
5. Click on Email – pick your initial settings - everything can be changed
6. Click on My Page – put your cursor on and click Appearance and pick your color scheme or leave as is, or choose a different style for your page, and upload some type of picture so you are just not that gray silhouette
7. Click on Connections – if you Twitter – you may want to connect your Page To Twitter

B. Enriching You’re My Page ( Takes about an hour or more depending on what you want)

1. Click on My Page at the Navigation Bar at the top
That will take you to your own My Page and then follow the following instructions.

IF YOU ARE NOT SELLING

You will still want to tell about yourself, and you should tell about yourself for several different reasons. For one, this community can be a great way for you to meet like minded people, form collaborations, find resources, new friends,, network etc, so if you are just a name and a gray silhouette you really aren’t opening a door for friendly connections, and may even appear a bit scary. A second reason, is that in today’s social networking era, just being a gray silhouette is interpreted as a person who doesn’t care, or is lazy, or is jut looking for what they can get because they didn’t take the time or effort to tell people about themselves.

It’s pretty easy to flush out a My Page that represents you, by doing a

few simple things.

1. Add a picture of yourself or something that represents you, by going back to the settings we talked about above, and add a picture of you, or something that represents you, by uploading it from your computer.

2. From the navigation bar across the top OF ANY PAGE, click on blogs, and then click on add a blog, and type in a paragraph or two telling people about yourself. ( You can also paste it in from other sources such as a word file, web page, etc) Then click publish and it will be added to YOUR MY PAGE. Anytime you want to add a blog, just follow these same steps.

3. You can add some pictures by going to photos and uploading pictures. Go to photos in the Navigation bar on any page, click on add, and add a photo from your computer..  When you do this, there are 2 other things you should do. You should add a tag to each photo, that includes at least your last name. You can add other descriptors such as a title for those particular group of photos (Cape Cod, New Year’s, Winterton,), date, etc. Just put a comma between each set of descriptors. Second, we recommend putting groups of photos into Albums. This is easy to do, by just clicking on Photos in the Navigation bar, then clicking on my albums and clicking on Add an album. You can also put in a description of what that album is about, etc

4. You can also add other videos or your own videos. If it is a video already posted somewhere else, just click on the videos navigation tab, copy the code from where you have found it, and paste it into the empty box under videos.
If it is your own video, the best way to do this is add it to YOU TUBE and then download them to your My Page in the same way you added photos. Suggested length of videos is no more than 10 minutes and one to four minute videos are suggested, given people’s attention span.

5. Last, you can arrange your page, and even change its appearance, and colors. You can drag and arrange the items on you’re My Page, by putting your cursor on the Heading of the Blog, Videos, Photos, Profile, etc, Cross Arrows will appear and you can drag it to where you want it. You can also change the appearance of your page, there are several style variations and many colors you can choose by clicking on settings in the box in the right hand corner of the main page, and then clicking on My Page, then click on appearance


IF YOU ARE SELLING

For starters, you can follow the same steps above but also read the following information and directions for additional possibilities. You do want to tell people about you and your work, and a blog is a good way to do that. And there are different ways to tell about yourself and show your work for sale.

1. One way is by using a blog and adding pictures of you, your work, and talking about your work, etc.

For example, Charlotte Blanchard’s’s Blog tells about her, her work, shows her work and also has it for sale. If you do it this way, when you are adding pictures to your blog, you need to choose Options, then click on right or left for the picture and choose word wrap, If the picture is large and fills the frame, and you want it smaller, you will need to reduce it from 300 to lets say 160 ( in that same option box.). You also should check the box that says link to full size so that if you reduce the size it will expand to full size if someone clicks on it.

Note that when you are working in your blog entry box , there will be 2 tabs at the top. One marked Rich Text - ( where you will be adding the picture choosing size of type, bold etc) and then an HTML tab. MAJOR TIP – It’s actually easier if you put in the wording FIRST into the html tab box, then put your cursor where you want the picture to be in the html box, AND then click on the Rich text tab where you can upload the image. Then while still in the rich text box you can make further edits and changes to the size of the words, bold, etc

The if you click back in the html box, you’ll see your wording and the html code. You’ll see things like a carrot then a br than another carrot which means paragraph break, or a b which means bold. If you see a lot of br's in a row that means you have done multiple paragraph breaks and you’ll have a lot of spacing between wording or pictures. Take a few of those br's out and see what it does. ( it will remove the extra paragraph breaks.) Essentially, if you experiment a bit more, you’ll become more comfortable and fluent in creating better looking blogs, etc.

The one time when you absolutely have to use the HTML box is when you are pasting in code that represents a Video. For example, if you take some embed code from a YOU Tube Video, just paste it into the blog. Then click on publish and it will be there. You always have to click on publish to save any content that you have added.

A good example of using a blog post to show and sell your work is Charlotte Blanchard’s Blog.

In her blog the picture of her and her paintings are different sizes and the words wrap in between http://www.cnyartists.com/profiles/blogs/charlotte-blanchard-wishful\

Another example of using a blog to show and sell your work is Mary Beth Hewitt’s blog post of her stained glass, where the words do not wrap around the picture, but each piece is shown full size. (Please note, we the editors have made some alterations in the site, so the wording is not consistently sized yet, something we will attend to shortly. ) That blog example of full sized pictures can be seen at
http://cnyartists.com/profiles/blogs/mary-beth-hewitt


2. A second way to show and sell is to put your work in an Album, add a description, other wording size, price, ordering information or a link to your own site or etsy site if you have either. There are several ways to do this, here’s one way. First, add the pictures of what you want to sell and tag the photos with your last name, the name of that series of work ,etc, separating the tags by commas. Then click on Add an Album. ( This is under Photos). You will then be moving photos from the box on the left ( Photos, My Photos, etc) by dragging them ( copying them) to the box on the right for that one album. Give that album a name, put in a descrption.

A Very Good Example of this was done by Cynthia Cameron’s and is on her My Page and which you will also find featured on the site at
http://www.cnyartists.com/photo/albums/jewelry-for-sale-from-cynthia


** Note that in both of these different examples, by Charlotte Blanchard and Cynthia Cameron, each also links to a third site where a customer can purchase. You can also add a link to an outside site such as Etsy, or your own web page, or another site where the transaction can take place, OR you can have the customer contact you directly, or both. You can sell as much as you want, for $7 a month.

CONNECT WITH PEOPLE FOR FRIENDSHIPS, NETWORKING, COLLABORATION, ETC

You are in control of who you want to connect with, and you start that connection by asking someone you want to be a friend with by clicking on the Ask to Be A Friend message under their picture on their My Page, which you can get to in several ways. For example, by clicking on their picture in Latest activities Activities , or by clicking on Members in the navigation bar and finding them there, clicking on their name or picture there and then clicking on Add as a Friend which is under their picture. From then on you can email them privately by clicking on the Send a Message under their picture.

Once they accept your friend connection , you will be able to send them a private message, and they will be able to communicate privately with you.

INVITING NEW PEOPLE AND FRIENDS TO JOIN CNYARTISTS.COM

You can also easily invite other people you know to join our CNY Artists community. Just go to Invite in the navigation bar at the top of any page and click on invite. When they join, you’ll still have to invite them to be friends on the site, because that step is always necessary so you can choose who you want to be able to send private messages to on the site, choose collaborators on the site, etc


SENDING US FUTURE EVENT NOTICES FOR FREE LISTING IN OUR TIMES TABLE

You can send information about upcoming events by adding the information and pictures at the Add An Event area at the bottom left hand column on the Main Page. A senior editor will take that information, add the event to our times table, and selected events are chosen to be added to the center feature column. Advertising can be purchased for $25 a week ($50 a week for major institutions), and the Advertisement will run on the right hand side of every page. Senior editors also pick items for the weekly Art Blast and paid advertisers are guaranteed to be mentioned in the weekly Art Blast.


BECOMING A STRINGER, CORRESPONDENT, CONTRIBUTOR, ETC

If you are an aspiring writer, photographer, videographer, etc we are opening the door to you and giving you an opportunity to become published on the site. Go out and cover an event, put the pictures in an album and then add the words under each picture OR mix pictures and write up in a blog. You can do either of these by following either of the 2 methods described earlier here. Or go out and shoot some video and make it presentable and as long as it meets some level of quality we will put it on the site. If questions on any of this, call Peter at (315) 391-5115. ( This is part of our desire to open up New Opportunities for you and others. It’s an open roll call, a situation where you and your work won’t be turned down as long as it meets some level of quality. It’s an open opportunity, and only you can stand in your own way, because we are opening up the door of opportunity for all creators.)

Or, if you have something you want to write about, and your knowledgeable about that subject, and have the dependability and the ability to expound on that topic, we may even give you your own consistent column.

HOW TO MAKE PROGRESS

 Our recommendation is to run through these fundamentals to get a good orientation. If you would like, use the following 2 videos, and then the graphic screen shots to give you a different way to pick up some of the information that will help you connect in the community.

 And then have some practice bouncing around in our creative interactive community. Create a good My Page, connect with some people on the site, invite some other friends to join, by clicking on Invite in the navigation bar.


C. VIDEO TUTORIAL 1- a walk through video on getting started - Signing Up, Signing In and Choosing Settings - 5 minutes ACTIVATE

D. VIDEO TUTORIAL 2- Navigation Buttons& Creating Your Own"My Page" with words,pictures, videos, that can be just for you,your friends, or everyone ACTIVATE

E. SCREENCASTS TUTORIAL -In addition to the TUTORIALS take a look at the following SCREEN CASTS for graphic representations

The following are 14 screen casts which will help orient you as to how to Join the CNYArtists.com site; an overview of the navigation buttons, the content on the main page, and how to construct your own “My Page, where you can put words, pictures, videos that let people know about who you are and what you are interested in, etc. You will also find some links to video presentations, and some print tools. Using all 3 will quickly bring you up to understanding how to use the CNYArtists Interactive Community Site. Get Connected, Reap the Benefits.

1. Signing Up On the site http://screencast.com/t/MmM4NjlmOGM

2. Filling Out the membership application – user name, town you live in, what you are interested in, email and telephone numbers are optional http://screencast.com/t/MGMzM2Ez

3. Now choose settings for Privacy, email, connections, etc http://screencast.com/t/NmU5NjNmO

4. Profile Page - here's where you tell a bit about who you are, choose a user name, tell what you are interested in, etc http://screencast.com/t/ZWJhMmM3YmM

5. Choose privacy, who can see you profile, just members, just friends, anyone Also who can see your pictures, video, blog just you, just friends, everyone. http://screencast.com/t/YzFiNGM2MDI

6. Choose email and communication selections - when do you want to be notified and of what http://screencast.com/t/Y2NmYmQ3

7. Some other changes to your MY Page http://screencast.com/t/M2QzNjg1OWYt

8 Choose Connections - Choose to Twitter ? http://screencast.com/t/ZGU0ODk4NGEt

9. Note the navigation bar across the top http://screencast.com/t/ODE1ZTMwNW

10. Note some of the areas in the left column http://screencast.com/t/ZTI5YWRmN

11. Note more content areas in left column http://screencast.com/t/OGE1ZGE2

12. More content in left column http://screencast.com/t/OTUyNTVmZjkt

13. Setting up you’re My Page is easy http://screencast.com/t/NjYwYzIz

14. Sign Out and Signing Back In http://screencast.com/t/Y2RmNmU2Y