Photoshop tip: How to make a seamless pattern from a photo.

How to make a custom seamless pattern. This technique is great for creating patterns for web banners and backgrounds. You can use any image to do this. I’m going to use a beads by Patricia Frantz. Read more

You need to be on the web! This site can help.

Weather you have a website, or not I found an online resource that can help you out.  Wix.com provides you a  flash website  with a ton of bells and whisltes for FREE. When I found it i had to try it. Im not going talk about how to use it because the Wix.com provides videos that are way more helpfull than I would be.

Click here to view the videos.

I slapped together a quick example. You can see it if you click on the “Wix Gallery” Page. I just scratched the surface of what it can do.

You don’t have to use it to just create web pages. You can create elements for your current blog or website. You can create small “Widget” size elements to post on your blog or site. The default size is 300px x400px for a widget. But if you go to “Settings” at the top of your work area you can re-size the Wix to fit any dimension you want.

I think this is a fun and versatile online tool.

How Wordpress can help you: Part 2

I hope you got your free account at www.wordpress.com because here is the second part showing you how wordpress can help you. I’ll show you the basics of wordpress so you can get your website.

Back end:

Once you get your account, sign in to view your back end of your website. Here, all your tools are organized and easily accessed. From here you can make a new posts, pages, upload media, change themes, widgets and links. You can also change your settings for users, passwords, and account settings.

Post:

WordPress is commonly used as blogging software. Under the Post menu, you can edit existing posts, add new posts and change the tags and categories. The purpose of tags and categories is to help organize your posts. This will make it easier for your readers to search your articles.

Pages:

Pages are separate from the posts. They are static and commonly used for info that doesn’t change much like a contact page or about me page.

If you go to “Attributes” menu on the right you can change the attributes of the page.

The Attributes page explains how it works:

“You can arrange your pages in hierarchies, for example you could have an “About me” page that has “Life Story” and “My Dog” pages under it. There are no limits to how deeply nested you can make pages.”

Media:

You can upload your photos, audio files, and videos. You can use wordpress for podcasts. It automatically creates a RSS feed so people can subscribe and get notified when you update your posts. Unfortunately the free wordpress accounts only allow image uploads.  For a small fee they will allow you to post audio files for a pod cast. But if you are hosting WordPress you can post anything you like on it.

If you want to post an images on your site you have some choices how you can do it.

1. You can post an image with out a link.
2. You can make the image have a link that  to the image file.
3. You can make the image go to a page with information you wrote about the image.
4. You can adjust the image size, position, and create a gallery

Themes:

A great thing about wordpress is the amount of themes you can use and how easy it is to switch back and forth. To view your themes go to the Appearance menu on the left. Click themes and it will give you a list of themes you have access to and if you have a free account you can browse through a list of themes.

Themes come in many different designs, colors and layouts. Try them out and find the one you like.

Widgits and Plugins:

Do you have a Flicker account? Do you sell on Etsy? Do you want to link to other websites?  Well there is a widget or plugin to put those on your site. Widgets are add-ons to wordpress that perform a certain function. There are thousands of them you can put on your site. Some are better than others, but they make it so you can have great features on your website with out having to write code. Just another way to customize your page. It’s as easy as dragging the widgets from the middle area to the side column on the right.

Tricks:

For those of you that don’t plan on blogging that much WordPress can still work for you. If you just want a more traditional static website to show off your work and use as a hub of all your online stores like Ebay, Etsy  and Artfire, I can show you an easy trick for that.

First go to the Pages menu. Create a new page and call it Home and another called Blog.

Go to the Settings menu on the bottom left. Click “Reading” to pull up the  reading option page.

Default set-up for Reading is to have the post page be the front page of your site. You can switch the front page to be a static page by clicking the option of “Static page”. Choose  Home as front page and Blog as post page. Now when some on goes to your sight they will see a more traditional looking website.

Construction of the pages and posts:

When creating the pages and post you will be using wordpresses “Wysiwyg” (Pronounced Wiz-E-Wig) It stands for “what you see is what you get”. There is a bar of tools above the work space. There you can add, edit  and format your text. You can also upload/insert media from it as well, like images.

When you are done with a page or post you are able to save as draft, preview it or publish it for all to see.

There is so much more I could write about WordPress. It is a great application.  I hope you enjoyed this blog. If you do create a wordpress website for your business or portfolio share it with us. Post a link in our comments to share with everybody.

Thanks and have a great day.

How Wordpress can help you: Part 1

How Wordpress can help you. Do you want a website but you don’t know where to start? Don’t feel bad a lot of artists are in the same boat. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good website. If you can use Microsoft word or Gmail, you have enough skills to create a professional looking website with word press. It is the easiest and most versatile Content Management System (CMS) that I have tried. Read more