Artdomain Art Marketing Blog

As promised, for anyone not already familiar with forums, here’s a run down on how to get started using the Artdomain Art Forum.

Ok, you can read the forum to your heart’s content, but as soon as you want to post (reply or create a topic) then you need to Register.  This is quite painless and totally free - simply click on the Register button near the top left of the page:

Then, once you’ve read and accepted the forum terms and conditions, you are taken to a brief registration form.  Here you create the user name that you want to use on the forum and also the password.  Next enter your email address, and in the confirm registration section, you have to type in the white box the same confirmation code (series of random letters) that you see in the brown box.  Now click on Submit and an email with a web link will be sent to your email address.

Check your email and click on the web link in the email message.  This confirms you are using a working email address.  You should receive a confirmation message in your browser window, to say that you have successfully verified your account, and that you can now log onto the forum.

Simply go to the Log in button (also marked in red in the picture above), click on it and log into the forum using the user name and password you have just set-up.  Easy!

Click through the Forums categories i.e. New Members /Art Discussions etc.  When you get to a category where you would like to post a topic, click on the ‘New Topic’ button to create a new post.

All posts require a Subject, then get typing your message as above.  There are further style option buttons like Bold (B), Italic (I), Underline (u), Quote (if you want to quote what someone has said in another post, this option helps you to visually differentiate who said what), Code (if you want to insert some html code into your post), List (gives you an indented list), and the other important one Img (which lets you insert an image into your post).  Please note that the images are not uploaded onto the Artdomain forum, but are simply linked to the web address where they are store i.e. Flicker, your web site, any image / photo hosting you have.  So you need to know the full web address of their location i.e. http://www….

If you want to insert a web link just start it with www and it will automatically become clickable.

The other options are the smileys, which you just click on to enter into a post, and the font colour (right hand side of post window) and font size.  The thing to do though is to get creating your post and when you want to see what it will look like when posted, simply click on the Preview button below your white posting window.  This way you can see exactly how it’s all going to look before you hit the Submit button.

Posting replies to other peoples posts is exactly the same process as above, except you are starting by clicking on the Post Reply button rather than the New Topic button to get started.

If you get half way through your post and have to leave, you can also choose the Save option beside the Preview and Submit buttons.  This will save a draft into your User Control Panel which you can access by the button of the same name near the top right of the forum (shown below).  Then click on the Manage Drafts link on the right hand side (again shown below in split screen view).

The User Control Panel has many options that you might like to explore and customise. One of the most frequently used options is the ability to automatically insert a signature to each post you do.  This is useful if you would like people to visit your art site, so each post promotes this link.  Simply go to the Profile link then choose Edit Signatures and enter the web address and any info you want into the white text box:

So that’s you - you can sign up to the forum, post new topics, reply to topics, and add your signature line to your posts.

In my next blog post I’ll give you some ideas on how to get the most out of the forum and how to customise more of the available options.

If you want to go ahead and get started - go directly to the Artdomain Art Forum …see you there!