More at: www.hardymarks.com
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More at: www.nunodecampos.com
More at: www.nunodecampos.com
Lauren will be one of the featured artists showing with Paradigm Gallery + Studio this weekend, Saturday July 30th from noon to six, at Philadelphia’s Magic Garden’s ART/GAGE: Celebrate Philly Creativity Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens (PMG) is excited to demonstrate its Philly pride on July 30 from NOON to 10:00PM with ART/GAGE: Celebrate Philly Creativity, PMG’s fourth-annual summer festival featuring music, dance, poetry, interactive activities, and live art. 
Iconic Philadelphian artist Isaiah Zagar has been creating his mosaic masterpieces throughout the city since 1968. His largest creation, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, serves the Philadelphia area as a visionary art environment, gallery, and arts center dedicated to making art accessible to the public. ART/GAGE will further embody PMG’s spirit of civic and cultural engagement by bringing a citywide selection of creative talent to South Street for PMG’s largest one-day event.
Attended by over 500 people, last year’s festival was hosted inside the expansive sculpture labyrinth and surrounding side streets. This year, the 1000 block of South Street will be closed off to traffic in order to accommodate more vendors, performers, participating community organizations, and a diverse audience, creating an exciting environment for a street fair that includes over 30 art and food vendors, paired with performances and demonstrations from local organizations. The anticipated audience is well over 1000 people.
See the performance schedule and get all of the information on the festival here:
http://www.philadelphiasmagicgardens.org/pages.php?ContentID=3&SubContentID=27#555
A recent discussion thread on the list serve for Philadelphia Area New Media Association raised questions about if there are any good HTML websites left out there? And even if schools should teach HTML editors such as Dreamweaver or BBedit to college students anymore. WordPress and blogging are replacing HTML based websites for businesses and art entrepreneurs viewing the template with it’s cut and paste simplicity as a means to establishing their presence on the web without hiring a designer. The Philly.SideArts website uses a WordPress template, my personal blog DoNArTNeWs is based on a really plain vanilla template called Kubrick. As a designer creating custom web pages for over 10 years I understand the lure of a quick drag and drop process to build a website and that hiring a designer is an expense to be cut. I have yet to understand the difference between Java and JavaScript, I don’t know my Perl from mySQL and for me CSS is the acronym for Confusing Scary & S#!+!!! But I do understand that a DIY solution may not be as simple as it seems if you don’t understand basic search engine optimization, navigation design and gathering visitor feedback. In my experience even the most sophisticated websites often do not show up high in Google search ranking because they lack the right stuff.
WordPress offers lots of cool looking templates but I found that the dashboard for many of the free ones usually does not include search engine optimization options for the meta tags Google searches for, meaning the developer must be creative in writing the blog so that search engines like Google find the important search terms relating to your business. I am always surprised when visiting an artists’ website and the title bar to their page says, “Home” or “Index” – unless your name is “Home”, there is little chance Google will find you. Many artists get their own name as their domain name, which is better than a clever made up name but then customers have to already know your name in order to find you on the Internet. If you sell abstract expressionist oil paintings in Philadelphia, then the title tag, description meta tag and the written content has to spell it out, described in words for Google and the lesser search engines to find your site. The Copyright Meta Tag is missing on many artists websites as well, this simple code helps protect your rights even if you forget to say it in writing on your website. Tip: Option G on your keyboard = ©. The free WordPress templates may not have these important search engine optimization options or even eCommerce capability but Thesis, a template that costs $87 for individuals at DIYThemes.com, includes superior seo capability even if your website does have a distinct WYSIWYG look that all the customization in the world won’t disguise. The WP eStore plug-in costs extra.
WordPress Thesis with WP eStore is offered as a DIY option to having a professional designer create your web site, there’s even a paid membership how-to web site called Build Your Own Business Website with an extensive series of step by step videos teaching how to build a business eCommerce website using the Thesis template from the ground up. BYOWebsite claims you can have a website up and running in 8 hours. And you can, if you are organized and ready to go with your product inventory broken into categories, individual products identified and named, written descriptions of each of your products, shipping and taxes determined, web ready images of your products prepared, thumbnail images for teasers designed, sizes, customization and options determined, search engine description exquisitely crafted, the all important pricing decided, return policy and guarantees written out, disclaimers and thank you page composed, and (ugh) your bio and resume up to date. Don’t forget the logo, Thesis has the option to put whatever you want at the top of the page, the first thing your visitor will see, as Tim Gunn says, “Make it work!”
In my opinion the Thesis template and WP eStore plug-in is not a web design solution for beginners, the developer needs to understand how to produce images for the web with Photoshop or equivalent, understand page hierarchy and site mapping, be well versed writing seo code assuring important search terms are prominent to search engines and be open to learning how to change CSS, use Firefox Firebug and edit HTML fixes. Even the BYOWebsite tutorials present Thesis with WP eStore as an intermediate project for designers with some experience. But if you follow the step by step videos you will learn how to develop your product categories and descriptions, how to layout your navigation, design product posts and pages and build an efficient shopping cart system that says to your visitor, “Art for sale!” and click here to Buy Now.
DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, Philly.SideArts
More at: Michael Borremans
More at: Michael Borremans
More at: Michael Borremans
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