The Artist.Computer Manual

Getting Started

The first thing to do before you do anything with Artist.Computer is to make some artwork. Once you have done that part, the rest of the things you need to do are relatively simple.

Make a Site. When you log in to your account, you'll find . . . not much. Unless you've already been invited to join someone's site, we'll walk you through creating your first site. Artist.Computer Sites are websites where you can showcase artwork. You could make one Site for all your work, or you could make a Site for a specific project, or for a one-off series of work. One imagines that one could make a Site for one piece of artwork, but you would have to really like that piece of work enough for the Site to really be worthwhile.

Your Domain. When you first add your Site, you'll give it a subdomain, which will compose the URL for your Site, like https://subdomain.artist.computer. You can add your custom domain later (with a paid account).

Your Content

Once you have a Site, you can start adding content to it. Of primary interest:

Artworks and Projects. Somewhat self explainatorially, Artworks are for pieces of artwork, and Projects are for collections of Artwork. Each Project will have its own page on your Site where related artwork will be shown in the style of your choosing, as determined on the Project Settings screen.

• Grid: The artwork will be displayed in a standard grid, all lined up nicely. They'll be small to make room for being lined up side-by-side, so when people click them, they'll open up larger in a lightbox.
• List: The artworks will be listed in a list, one after the other. They'll be larger than in the grid.
• Masonry: The artworks will be displayed in a masonry layout, where they're all different sizes and fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. This is good for when you have a mix of portrait and landscape images.
• Salon: The artwork will be displayed in a salon-style layout, where they're sort of splattered in all different sizes in a sort of dynamic, somewhat natural layout. This is good for when you have a lot of artwork and you want people to see it and be like, “Wow, there's so much work.”