AVA - Association for Visual Arts - Chattanooga Tennessee: Artist Directory Help Page

Artist Directory Help Page

OPENING A DIRECTORY ACCOUNT

If you are interested in utilizing the AVA Artist Directory, contact Katie Boerema at 423.265.4282 - 103. An account will be created for you and you will be given a temporary password for login. Only current AVA members can create profiles on the directory.
Profiles will remain active after a membership lapse for 1 month, after which they will be inactivated. If you renew your membership after a lapse, please contact us, and we will reactivate your directory profile.

ACCESSING YOUR ACCOUNT

To access your directory account, go to:

www.avarts.org/login

The login page will look identical to the image at right. Enter your email address and password (a temporary password will be provided prior to your first login) and click "Log In".

EDITING YOUR PROFILE INFO

Once logged in, click "Profile" to edit your name, email address, phone number, street address (this will not be visible to the public), or web address. See image at right. Your name should be entered with the surname first, followed by a comma and first name. You can also change your password here. If you are logging in for the first time, you should change your password immediately.
Make sure you save your changes before moving on to another section.

EDITING LISTINGS

To edit a listing that already exists, click "Listings" and find the listing you want to make changes to. Then click "Edit."

At any time, you can adjust the medium and category of your art with the drop-down menus. In most cases, when the information from the old artist directory was transferred to our new system, we did not assign a medium or category for you. In such instances, the Medium / Category defaulted to Design / Architecture (the first options on the menus). You should check this first thing and make sure it is set to what you want.

The starting price is your minimum--the lowest price that you will sell artwork for. It's fine to leave this field blank if you aren't sure. If you don't enter a value, when people view your page it will say: "Contact Seller."

Your description can be edited in the window on the lower left. The editor supports basic text and a few simple HTML tags. To learn how to format your description and make it more interesting, CLICK HERE. You can enter as much text as you want.

Make sure you save your changes before logging out.

CREATING NEW LISTINGS

Listings allow you to add content to your artist directory page. The public will not be able to see any of your information unless you create a listing. If you do artwork that falls into more than one media category, you should create a listing for each type (one for paintings, one for sculpture, etc.). On each listing you can upload an unlimited number of pictures, write a description, and post resumes, price lists, or other documents.

Click "Listings" and "Add Listing" to create a listing for a particular pair of media categories. The listing window will look just like the image at right.
Choose medium and category options from the menus.
Enter a starting (minimum) price for the artwork you intend to include in your set or leave this field blank.
Enter your description. There is no limit on length. AVA does not edit or proofread descriptions or artist statements. You are solely responsible for the content on your profile and listings.
Upload as many photos as you like (jpg format) by clicking "Browse" and selecting a photo from your computer. Upload will begin automatically. Photos larger than 1000 pixels will be automatically resized by our web system. When upload is complete, you will see a thumbnail for that picture. Repeat for additional photos. Click the "Remove" link if you would like to delete one of your photos from the listing.
You can upload PDFs and other types of documents, such as info sheets, press releases, and resumes, with the "Upload Documents" option.
You can create as many listings as you want (which is useful if your work falls into multiple categories).
Make sure you save your changes before logging out.

USING HTML TAGS TO FORMAT YOUR DESCRIPTION FIELD

The description field on the Artist Directory works differently than a page in a word processing program. Rather than formatting with regular keystrokes, you'll need to use some basic HTML tags to make your description look the way you want it to. Tags? Won't that be difficult?? No. It's actually fairly simple. Read on to find out how to do it.

Suppose you want to divide your description into paragraphs with blank lines in between. Just hitting Return/Enter a couple of times won't do the trick. Instead, you will need to use the HTML paragraph tag. All HTML tags have a start tag and an end tag. The start tag precedes the text you want it to affect, while the end tag follows it. Below is a list of HTML tags you can use in the description field of your Artist Directory page. For each tag, the sample code is in red. The way it would actually appear when viewed is immediately below that. Try it out! View a sample listing at www.avarts.org/directorysample for page formatting ideas!

PARAGRAPH TAG
Creates a blank line before and after content

This is paragraph 1.
This is paragraph 2.

This is paragraph 1.

This is paragraph 2.

BOLD TAG
Makes text bold

Bold Text

Bold Text

ITALICS TAG
Converts text to italics

Italic Text

Italic Text

UNDERLINE TAG
Underlines text

Underlined Text

Underlined Text

SUPERSCRIPT TAG
Makes text superscript

Regular TextSuperscript Text

Regular Text^{Superscript Text}

SUBSCRIPT TAG
Makes text subscript

Regular TextSubscript Text

Regular Text_{Subscript Text}

HYPERLINK TAG
Sends a viewer to the Web site address you designate when they click on a piece of text

It works like this. The tag begins with <a href= which means hyperlink reference. Next is the Web address, in quotations--the place you want people to visit. The target= property tells the browser to open a new window or tab for the linked Web site. The information is finalized with >. After that, we have the actual text people will click on to visit your link. The tag concludes with </a>.

<a href="http://www.google.com/" target="_blank">The text a person clicks on goes here.</a>

The text a person clicks on goes here.

EMAIL LINK TAG
Sends an email to the email address you designate

Here's the breakdown. The tag begins with <a href= which stands for hyperlink reference. Then we have the action mailto: and the email address all enclosed in quotation marks. This information is finalized with the > symbol. Next is the actual text people will see and click on to initiate their email. The text is followed by the closing tag for a hyperlink </a>.

<a href="mailto:bobo@bigtop.com">Email Bobo the Clown here!</a>

Email Bobo the Clown here!

UNORDERED LIST
Creates a bulleted list of items

<ul>
<li>Watercolor</li>
<li>Oil</li>
<li>Graphite</li>
</ul>

Watercolor
Oil
Graphite

IMAGE TAG
Posts an image from elsewhere on the Web to your page

Here's how it works. The tag begins with <img src= which stands for image source. Next is the address of the image enclosed in quotation marks. Web addresses always begin with http://. Following this are the dimensions of the image with pixel values in quotations. Last is the alt property, which you can think of as a descriptive label. In most browsers, the alt label will appear when a person moves their mouse over the image. Like all tags, this one ends with >.

A crazy monkey!!

EMBED A YOUTUBE VIDEO
Posts a video from YouTube on your page

To do this, go to YouTube and find the video you want to post on your Artist Directory page. On the right, immediately under the description of the YouTube video, is a field that says "Embed." To the right of this field is a little button shaped like a cog. Click on it.
Choose the colors of your YouTube player from the options.
Check the "Show Border" option.
Click on the Embed field and copy the contents. You can do this by holding down the Control key on your PC and the letter C at the same time (or Command C on a Mac).
Go to your Artist Directory description field, click where you want to insert the video, and paste in what you just copied. You can do this by holding down the Control key on your PC and the letter V at the same time (or Command V on a Mac).
The embed code copied from YouTube will look something like this:

Because the description field is somewhat narrow, you should make sure the width of your embedded video is no more than 300 pixels. You can adjust this in the code by changing the width value to 300 or less. The height can be adjusted in the same way. The final product will look something like the video below.