Managing your profile
Using the members’ gallery
1. Your new Account
When a new account has been opened for you we will send you an email with login details. To begin using the account, click the link in the email, go to the at login screen at http://www.hastingsartsforum.co.uk/wp-login.php
or the members’ gallery page and click “Log in”.
Once logged in you should be looking at the page where you edit your profile. In the top left hand corner there is a menu. The important links on here are “Your Profile” and “Your Gallery”
On this page (“Your Profile”) you can add points of contact and write a bit about yourself. These details will all be available on the website so choose wisely what you want displayed!
When you’ve made changes, don’t forget to click “Update Profile” before moving on.
You can check on your updated profile by clicking “Visit Site” at the top of the page.
*Tip: Right or Control click and open in either a new tab or window for easy access to the profile pages.
Clicking “Your Gallery” in the menu takes you to the image uploading page. You can upload 3 images at a time.
Maximum accepted sizes are 2 Megabytes and 2 megapixels. The upload limit is set to 20 images. This means you will need to prepare your images before uploading them and make sure they fall within these limits. More on that below.
Once your images are uploaded they will be added to the list beneath the upload panel. You can then choose which one is the default or front image, delete images and choose a profile picture or “Avatar”. You can’t yet rearrange by “drag and drop” but this is likely to be a future upgrade.
When you’ve made changes, don’t forget to click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page before moving on.
The “Tools” page offers “Gears”, a way to speed up the loading times of the website on your computer. It isn’t essential and may only benefit those with a very slow internet connection. If you’re unsure, don’t bother with it.
2. Preparing your materials
It’s recommended that you type your profile statement directly into the browser if possible. WordPress does appear to allow pasting text from MS Word but we haven’t tested it very widely. If it appears to mess up the best thing is to type it in direct.
When you prepare images for the web take these settings into consideration:
• Resolution 72dpi (sometimes called ppi) – This is the resolution of most computer screens.
• Maximum dimensions in pixels, images no bigger than 800 x 800 pixels are perfectly adequate for web browser display. Images this size will upload quickly and display well. They are also less likely to be “ripped off” by passers by.
• JPG Compression. Export your images to JPG with about 80% compression for good results that don’t look like mosaics.
• other image formats like GIF, TIFF and PNG are unsuitable, stick with JPG.
Image editing software is freely available, you don’t need expert knowledge or Photoshop to do these tasks. The following are recommended.
Windows – Picasa is a photo management software and includes some useful image editing tools – FREE!
Mac – Mac OS 10.4 – 10.6 has a much improved Preview that includes cropping and exporting abilities.
Graphic converter is free to download but starts up with a 10 second message to buy (very cheap though)
Seashore is free and for Mac
http://seashore.sourceforge.net/download.php
Linux
The Gimp is comparable to Photoshop and free
Picasa also runs on Linux
http://picasa.google.co.uk/linux/
Not forgetting photoshop.com – a free online photo editor that works in the browser. Requires the latest Flash Plugin installed
3. If you forget your password
At the login screen there is a link “Forgotten your password?”. Click the link and submit your email address (this must be the address you registered with), you will receive instructions via email to reset the password on your account.
4. Problems
If you run into problems or have any questions let us know and we can help sort it out. The Hastings Arts Forum website is now entirely run by volunteer members and we are slowly building up a Tech support team. If you want to help with this please of course get in touch too!
Some rules
To use the facility you must have a valid email address.
You must be a paid up member of Hastings Arts Forum to open an account on the site.
Material uploaded to will be checked and moderated in accordance with our terms and conditions for acceptable use. If any material is considered offensive or exploitative, Hastings Arts Forum reserves the right to remove it and/or the user’s profile if necessary. Please see the terms and conditions page on our website for further details.
The members’ gallery is a facility for members to showcase their work and offers a point of contact to the world. It is not intended as a sales area or classified index.
You must read and digest the instructions given here. If images and text are uploaded that are too bulky and lead to poor performance of the website, Hastings Arts Forum reserves the right to remove them.
The limit for images is currently 20 and for text, 500 words.
