An eagerly awaited feature for Artfire right now the Maven team are testing a studio rearange feature so you can add new listings to the back of your studio, move things around to show your best work on your stores front page, keep certain items together and make the browsing experiance a lot easier for your customers.

There have been many requests for this so here is a sneek peek at what studio rearrange has to offer you.

Get Rearranging
When you go into studio rearrange page you see a slimmed down version of your studio hovering over the images you can select to move that product to any page in your studio (you may find it easier to have your actual studio open in a different tab or window so you can see the pages and find the right one you want to move to.)
You can also drag and drop the photos on the page to reorder that page.

When you are happy don't forget to save it. There is a radio button in the top right corner to enable the feature this will make sure that when you finalise the changes your studio will default to the custom order rather than newest listed.

Your Front Page
Now you have a nice arrangement showing as the first thing your customers see you are going to want to keep it like that. As long as you have this feature enabled any new items you list will be added to the back of your studio so you don't have to go and edit right away to keep your front page looking how you wanted it. To have new listings go to the front just disable the feature.

Really Simple
It really is so simple to use, the drag and drop interface makes things so easy you could be rearanging in your sleep.

This feature isn't available to everyone yet, the Mavens are still testing to clear out any bugs but it won't be long before you all get to try this out and have your listings in the order you want.
Please note that this is a pro only feature. If this is the thing you have been waiting for don't forget to grab an invitation to get the $12 rate from an existing pro member.

Kudos to the artfire team for bringing us this long awaited feature.

Every had too many questions and not know where to start looking? This is a big FAQ guide to questions I see alot of in the forums with links to where you can find more information.


How do I post Images in the forums?
With the new forums changes were made making the process simplier. If you got used to the old system it isn't that much different but you need to use the link feature to make the image clickable rather than doing it all in one window.
Kevin did a fantastic guide on posting images to the forums
There are a couple of things not mentioned. You can also use HTML to insert an image which also works in the quick reply. I have a HTML guide for those wanting to look further into it.
Also chrome and safari users can not resize images in the editor window One piece of advice is to upload the image resized to photobucket or flickr and add that image but link to the listing. however you can use HTML to make the image the size you want. 
Lets say I wanted to resize a 500x500px image to 250x250px for in the forums. The code for the image would then be
<img src="imageurlhere" height="250" width="250" />
You can chage the numbers to whatever size you want but remember to keep the image proportions.


Where can I promote my studio/items?
In the forums I started compling a list of places where you can promote your items and studio.
You can find the thread here if you have any you use but is not on the list please post a reply so it can be added and everyone can benifit from knowing.

How do I edit my signature in the forums?
To add a signature or edit it you will need to click on My Settings on the left side of the Chatterbox page. You will see a box there for your signature.
Pro members can use links in their signatures, basic members can only use text.
To add your signature just type in whatever you would like it to say and click on the Save button.
To add a link you need this code.
<a href="yourlinkhere">Name for Link</a>

This FAQ will grow as I see more to add. If you have a question you would like answering please don't hesitate to send me a message.

If you have ever wanted to make it easier for your customers to see your feedback or read feedback from your other sites you may want to consider adding a widget to your studio to display them.

Of course just copy and pasting a whole bunch of text into a widget would result in a very long box that would eventually just expand to far for everything to be read easily.

The solution is a simple piece of html called a marquee by adding the tag before you paste your text and ending it after the last word you will have a lovely box set to a certain size so it will never get to big and people can easily see your feedback.

Here's the code for a simple widget. Just add your testimonials and feedback inbetween the two tags if you want to space each entry just add two <br /> tags after each block of text.

<marquee  behavior=scroll direction=up scrollamount=1 height=200 width=150>

What a stunning necklace! Even brighter and more beautiful in person! I love the sparkly gold in the glass. Thanks for a wonderfully easy transaction and super fast shipping from the UK.

Absolutely gorgeous work from an amazingly wonderful seller! Thank you so very much! The jewelry is perfect!

More Feedback Goes Here

</marquee>

 

This method can be used for other things too, if you have anything that you would prefer to scroll then the marquee will work. You can add other html between the tags so you can have links or images. Something you may want to do with your feedback is add a link after each one to your shop that the feedback came from if you have multiple shops.

 

Don't like the way it scrolls? there are other options changing the direction to say left, right or down will make the text move in that direction. If you use left or right do not add <br /> tags between the text blocks or you won't get to see some.

Speed it up by changing the scroll amount and you can change the size of the marquee by editing the width or height properties. Remember the max width for a sidebar widget in your studio is 150px and the max width for a bottom widget is 815px. Height will depend on how much space you want to take up.

 

Have fun creating your scrolling widgets.

This guide is for those that aren't to code savvy the basics needed to write your own widgets for your artfire studio.

 

If you would like to use your own images make links or link images to your other sites or parts of your studio there are two main tags you need to know the first is an "a" tag used for links and mailto the other is an "img" tag for images.

 

The A tag

To make a link all you need it the following code <a href=""> </a> The "" are used to denote the link you want to link too and the  space between the > < is where you put the text you want the link to read.

 

eg: <a href="http://www.scarlet-impressions.com">Scarlet Impressions Handcrafted Jewellery</a>

Will result in Scarlet Impressions Handcrafted Jewellery 

 

It is worth noting that whatever you type for the link to display as is what is read by google and other search engines. So choose something that is associated with the link to help ranings.

 

The img tag

To add an image the code is <img src="" />  The "" denotes the image url. This can be found by right clicking on an image, selecting properties and copying the link where it says location. Make sure you get all of the code since it will scroll across. The url will end with .jpg or .png

 

eg: <img src="http://i585.photobucket.com/albums/ss297/Scarlet-Impressions/Journal%20Images/Signature-1.png" />  

Is the code used to add my signature to my blog posts.

 

Advanced img options

There are more options that can be added to an img tag that will change certain things. If you are adding an image to your artfire studio widgets you will need to use the border property.

 

eg: <img src="" border="0"/>

0 means there won't be any border arround you image, the greater the number the larger the border. Default is black.

To give an image some text so that google can "read" your image an alt tag is needed

 

eg: <img src="" border="0" alt="Scarlet Impressions Signature."/> 

As with the link the words written can be used to help your ranking in search engines.

 

Linking Images.

To get image and link to work together it is just a matter of placing the image where link text would have gone.

 

eg: <a href=" "><img src=" " border="0" alt=" " /></a>

 

Hope this has helped a few people with the basics of HTML.
See you next time

After a recent discussion in the forums it was descovered that non account buyers had no way of contacting the artisan since the contact button took you to the login page if they were not logged in.

After looking for a contact form widget that was compatable with our studios I couldn't find one and ended up making a small button that could be added to the studio widget space and take the person to thier email client with the sellers email address prefilled in the To: section of the email.

The code for the button is simple and all that is needed is for the seller to add in their email address 

<a href="mailto:ENTER%20YOUR%20EMAIL"><img src="http://i585.photobucket.com/albums/ss297/Scarlet-Impressions/Images%20for%20Forums/PifEmailButton.jpg" border="0" alt="send me an email" /></a>

Simply change "ENTER%20YOUR%20EMAIL" for your email address and copy and past the code into your left side widget to display on your blog page or right side widget to display on all your studio pages.

When done save the widget and you will have a button in your studio that looks like this:

 

To use your own image simply create on in any image editing software programme with a maximum width of 150 px and upload it to a file sharing site like photobucket or flickr change the code in " " where the img src tag is to the image location for your hosted image and it will display your image.

 

If you need help with this you can contact me either useing the contact artisan or email me button in my studio or blog.