New DPW Member: Getting Started Guide

Welcome to DPW!

This is a quick guide on how to set yourself up in DPW, now that you have registered and joined. We recommend printing this guide to have for easy reference.

IMPORTANT: The member-only admin pages of DPW work best in the latest versions of Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.

Also Check out the Membership Guide

Be sure to check out the more thorough Membership Guide you can access at anytime from your Artist Tools menu on your

my Paintworks and DPW Gallery pages.

Now, let's get started!

First, go to your "my paintworks" to so you can set up your account and add your art to your DPW Gallery website.

1. Sign in, if you have already registered and joined DPW. If you haven't, register first and then join DPW.

2. Click on the my paintworks link that appears at the top left of the site when you are signed in.

3. You will be taken to your my paintworks tabs where you can manage your DPW account, upload and manage your artwork, create auctions and PayPal links, and view your traffic statistics.

IMPORTANT: If you don't see these tabs, but only see two tabs - my Auctions and Account Info - this is because you have registered with DPW, you haven't yet joined as a member. No worries - you can join DPW here.

Task 1. Enter your blog and RSS feed URLs (skip if you don't have a blog)

The feed URL allows blog integration, which allows DPW to pull in your painting information from your blog posts. This works if your first image in your posts are of your painting and are at least 600 pixels tall or wide.

If you don't have a blog, no worries, just skip this task.

1. First, go to where you enter your blog and feed URLs.

Click on the Account Info & Bio tab on your my paintworks page, and then click on the Blog, Social, & Tracking Setup tab in the Account Info & Bio page that opens.

2. Enter your blog URL (skip this if you do not have a blog)

This will show up in DPW so buyers can go to your blog from DPW.

3. Enter your blog feed URL (skip this if you do not have a blog)

Do this only if you want DPW to automatically or on demand pull paintings from your blog posts every night.

If you don't, then leave this blank. No worries, as you will see later, it is easy to manually add new paintings to DPW.

When you enter or change your feed URL, DPW will do a quick test and let you and David at DPW know if there are any issues with your feed and DPW. Most often, the error is you entered your feed URL incorrectly.

So, what is a blog feed URL?

An important feature of a blog is it publishes what is called a feed that other software, such as DPW, can read. The format of your feed URL depends on your blog provider.

Here are the feed URL formats for the following blog providers:

1. Google Blogger (Blogspot)

Go to your blog, scroll to the bottom and find the Subscribe to... link at the bottom of the page:

This will take you to a page with your blog's feed. The URL for this page is your feed URL.

If the page does not say there is an error with your feed, simply select and copy the entire URL of the page (in the browser's address field up at the top) and paste it into the Feed URL field in the Account Info & Bio page.

If there is no Subscribe to... link on your blog, generally your feed URL is simply your blog URL with /feeds/posts/default added to the end:

For Example https://carolmarine.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

2. FineArtStudiosOnline.com

For FASO blogs, you need to go to your blog and click on the Follow this blog link directly below the square orange and white button in the upper left hand corner of your blog.

This will take you to a new page, which is your feed. Select and copy the URL in your browser's address field. This is the feed URL to paste or enter into DPW.

The feed URL will look something like:

https://data.fineartstudioonline.com/rssfeed.asp?id=6064

3. Wordpress

Generally a Wordpress blog feed URL is formed by simply adding /feed to the end of your Wordpress blog URL.

For example:

https://janabouc.wordpress.com/feed/

If your blog is not one of the above types, please contact your blog provider to determine your blog feed URL.

Task 2. Enter your bio information

There are two places where you can set and update your bio photo and text that appears on your The Artist page of your new DPW Gallery website:

1. From the Admin Tools menu at the top-left of your DPW Gallery Website.

To go to your DPW Gallery website, just click the my Gallery link that appears when you are signed in, up at the top of the DPW home page.

2. Or, from the Your Bio Image & Text tab on your Account Info & Bio page.

Once you have the Bio Image & Info form open, you can:

Step 1. Upload a bio photo

Browse for and select a bio photo of yourself. Not too big or too small - about 400 pixels tall or wide. Your photo will upload later, when you click the Save button at the bottom of the form (you may have to scroll down).

Step 2. Set your phone number, bio email address, and website and Facebook URLs.

Step 3. Enter your bio text.

While you can format your text, it's a good idea to keep it simple and elegant - in-browser HTML editors are notoriously troublesome to use with complex formatting. So, it's best to keep it to bold, italic, lists, and of course, any links.

Don't Copy & Past in Content from Somewhere Else!

Avoid copying and pasting in content from a word processing program, such as Word, as this often pastes in spurious HTML that may break your DPW Gallery bio page.

Task 3. Set your default buy settings

The Buy Type is how your buyers buy your paintings in DPW and it can be different for each painting: for example, you can sell one painting through a DPW Auction, another by a DPW generated PayPal Buy it Now link, and yet another by other URL (Etsy, eBay, your website, a gallery, etc.) - it is completely up to you.

In DPW, the Buy Type is determined by each painting's Buy URL, which you set in your Art Tracking grid, where you upload and manage your paintings.

One of the many examples of Buy URLs in the painting pop-up:

The Buy Type and Buy URL columns for paintings in your Art Tracking grid:

So far so good, however you need to tell DPW what to do when you haven't specified a Buy URL for a given painting.

Step 1. Click on the Default Settings tab of the Account Info & Bio page.

Step 2. Set your Default Buy Type

This is done by setting the Default Buy Type, which you select in the Buy Settings section of your Account Info & Bio page (see the screenshot above):

Select Email Me in the drop-down list if you want the buyer to send you a secure email through DPW. This is the most common setting.
Select URL in the drop-down list if, by default, you want to send buyers to a specific web page, such as an Etsy or eBay store, your blog or website, a gallery's website, etc. If so, select URL from the drop down list and then enter the URL in the Default Buy Url field.
Select Blog Post in the drop-down list if you want the buyer to go to your blog post from which the painting was pulled. This only works for art that is pulled by DPW from your blog feed, which must be set up correctly as described in Task 1 above. If you do select this option, and you have a painting that was manually uploaded and not pulled from your blog, and there is no specific Buy URL for the painting, then the Buy Type for that painting will default to Email me.

All that said, always set a Buy Type for each Work!

Keep in mind, the default is used only when you don't specify a Buy Type by setting the Buy URL for a painting. In general, it is best to specify a specific Buy URL for each painting, so your buyers can go to an eBay or DPW auction, PayPal Buy it Now page, etc. (you will see how to do that below).

Task 4. Set Up your PayPal Checkout

To be able to use DPW Auctions or DPW generated PayPal links (seeTask 5) to sell your work in DPW, you have to set up your PayPal Express Checkout. No worries - this is free, quick, and easy to do.

IMPORTANT: Before you set up your PayPal Checkout, please be sure you have a free Business level PayPal account - a Personal account will not work.

Once your PayPal Checkout is set up, DPW will be able to collect payments from buyers for your artwork, put the money directly into your PayPal account, mark your work as sold and paid, and pull in the buyer's name, email address, and shipping address from PayPal without any data entry on your part!

Click here to read about and to set up your PayPal Checkout.

Task 5. Add your Art to your DPW Gallery Website

There are two ways to Add your Art to your DPW Gallery website:

1. Automatically Pull your Art in from your Blog Posts

If you have a blog, to which you post your paintings one per post, and you entered your blog's feed URL in Task 1 above, then DPW will pull in your paintings from your blog's RSS feed, automatically at midnight central time each night, or on-demand whenever you want.

DPW can pull from standards-compliant blog feeds, such Google's Blogger, Fine Art Studios Online, and most properly configured Wordpress blogs, however DPW cannot guarantee to be able to pull from other blogs.

At any time, you can have DPW pull your latest post by clicking on the Pull Post button above your Art Tracking grid.

DPW will pull in Buy URLs

DPW will pull in any Etsy or eBay URL, or PayPal URL or button from your posts and use that for the buy URL, also setting the buy type. You can also create DPW Auctions or DPW generated PayPal links for your artwork once it is in your Art Tracking Grid by clicking the icons in the left-most Task column of your grid.

How to format your Blog Posts for DPW Pulls

Read this article on how to format your blog post to include your painting's genre, media, size, and price so DPW can read them when it pulls in your paintings from your blog's feed.

2. Or, Manually Add your Art through your Art Tracking grid

Whether or not you have DPW pull from your blog, you can always, and very easily add your art through your Art Tracking Grid.

Introducing Your Art Tracking Grid

Your Art Tracking Grid is a spreadsheet-like interface of rows and columns for adding and managing your art portfolio in DPW. Each work of art in your grid is displayed in its own row with each piece of information about the work shown in columns.

Scroll to the Right

Be sure to scroll to the right to see all the available columns! The scroll bar is a the bottom of your grid.

Edit in Each Cell

It's easy to edit the information in your grid, just click in a grid cell, change the information there and either tab or click out of the cell to automatically save it.

Page through your Artwork

Your Art Tracking Grid shows a page of 50 works of art at a time. If you have more than 100 you need to use the paging controls under the left side of the grid to step through to the other pages.

To Add Art through your Grid follow these steps:

Step 1. As with all your DPW management tasks, be signed in, then click on the my paintworks link.

Step 2. Click the Art Tracking grid tab and then click the Add Art button to open the Add Art Wizard, which will step you through uploading one work of art, or the Bulk Add Art button, if you are a power user and want to upload more than one.

Please note the Bulk Add Art feature only uploads images, unlike the Add Art Wizard, which also allows you to enter information about your artwork.

If you use the Bulk Add Art feature, you will have to enter the rest of the information for your artwork, such as title, genre, media, size, etc. directly in the Art Tracking grid. Or you can edit a subset of your artworks' information in the Quick Edit window by clicking on the little pencil icon in the left-most column of the grid.

Read this article about how to prepare your images of your artwork to look their best in DPW.

Note: Enter in your prices!

The number one feedback from our buyers is if an artwork does not have a price then they simply move on to artwork that does. To sell well, you need to make buying easy for your buyers!

Setting up a DPW Auction or Generating a PayPal link

IMPORTANT: Before you set up a DPW Auction or generate a PayPal link to sell your work, you need to set up your PayPal Checkout as described in Task 4 above.

Regardless of how you get your paintings into DPW, you can easily and quickly set up a DPW Auction or generate a PayPal Buy it Now link for them either through the Add Art Wizard or the grid.

Setting up a DPW Auction through the Art Tracking Grid

Read this article to set up a DPW Auction for a painting.

Read this article on how to get the auction link to put in your blog post.

Generating PayPal Buy it Now links for your paintings through the Art Tracking Grid

If you don't wish to use DPW Auction and would rather have your buyers go directly to a Buy it Now PayPal page, then read this article.

What's Next?

Now you are set up in DPW. Buyers and fellow artists can read about you, and you are showing and selling your work!

Customize your DPW Gallery Website:

Click here to read about how to create categories to organize your artwork, change the font and color of your name at the top of your gallery, and point a custom domain name, such as www.myName.com to your gallery!

Get your DPW Gallery Widget:

Once you have added art to your DPW Gallery, the widget will rotate through the last 10 of your paintings, live from your gallery. Buyers will be able to see your paintings, titles, and prices, and click to go to DPW to easily buy them. To get it, simply go to your DPW Gallery page and click the my Gallery Widget link next to your name.

Be sure to refer to the help links in the Help section to the left of your Art Tracking grid and the Help link in the right-hand side of the top-most menu on the DPW site.

More good information to read:

How to Track your Buyers in your Art Tracking Grid

Read this article about how you can track your buyers in your Art Tracking grid, including assigning them to artwork, writing notes, and viewing which paintings they have purchased.

How to put a link/button to your artwork’s DPW page into your Blog Post

Read this article about how keep your blog and DPW working together with very little effort.