New Blog Tutorial

Congratulations on signing up for your free blog with CGYArt.ca! This blog will not only provide you with a professional online presence, but you receive many FREE benefits as well!

For starters, the team behind CGYArt are devoted to leveraging the web site, and thus your blog, to your city and beyond. That means free traffic and exposure for your work. What could be better? How about special plugins and user friendly ways to connect your audience with your creations?

When you visit your blog for the first time be certain to visit the THEMES option located in the APPEARANCE section. By default all new blogs will be provided the generic intro theme, you'll want to find something a bit more reflective of your personal tastes. Choose from over 100 different themes and start customizing!

We're still playing with the degree of customization, but we want our artists to have as much freedom to create a unique for their blogs. To do that, please attempt to make the changes you wish (some computer skills might be required) and what you can't accomplish do us a favour and email us at request@cgyart.ca with your questions.

All blogs start off with a 'Welcome' post and that should be deleted. To start and end posts you should go to the left navigation in your administration panel and click 'add new' or 'edit'. Through the edit option you can delete the existing page, and 'add new' will permit you to post a new blog. This is the main place where you'll add content to your blog site for others to see and read.

You'll also have a default sidebar with additional your visitors probably don't need to see (called 'Meta' or 'Admin'.) The easiest way to change your sidebar with your plugins or things you want folks to see is to click Appearance and then widgets. Not all themes have this easy access point to change the look of your sidebar, but most should, email us if you can't edit your sidebar to make it look unique and erase the default options.

Another place you'll want to check out is the PLUGINS section where you have various different functions at your fingertips. By default most are 'inactive' and need to be activated in order to be used. We don't have every plugin available so if you require a special plugin to showcase your materials then let us know and we'll have it uploaded. You'll want to take advantage of the various plugins such as the SEO plugin which will help set your blog up for maximum web exposure, and perhaps a select number of photography or video plugins to help showcase your art.

Another final aspect you may want to do is get some free analytics to see who hangs out on your web site. Sign up with Google Analytics, send us the code, and we'll place it on your blog.

Remember, without your feedback we can't improve!

That's all we have for now, this tutorial is always a work in progress to check back often and drop us a line with some thoughts.

- Ro from CGYArt.ca