Questions & Answers

General Questions

What is ArtSites.us?
Is ArtSites.us ONLY for Artists?
What do I need to get started?
How easy is it to use ArtSites.us?
Can I try it out?
Can I change my website after I set it up?
Can I sell my work online?
How many images can I upload?
How much does it cost?
How do I pay and what payments are accepted?
Can a group of artists use a single account?
How can I protect images of my artwork online?

Domain Names

How does the included domain name work?
Who owns the domain name for my website?
Can I use a domain name that I already have?

Email

Is email included with an ArtSites.us subscription?
How should I use my email address?
Can you provide some examples of email address that I could use?
Can I send email from my new email address?
When Replying to Inquiry Requests from Your Website goes to "noreply"

Website Administration

I've made changes to my website but Google still has my old information. What else do I need to do?

General Questions

What is ArtSites.us?

ArtSites.us is an affordable, easy-to-use online tool that creates elegant and professional artist websites.

Is ArtSites.us ONLY for Artists?

No, ArtSites.us can be and is used by artisans, craftspeople, photographers, and other creative individuals. We also have several small businesses using our service, e.g. spas, B&Bs, yoga studios, florists, alternative medicine professionals, etc. If your services or products are best sold using images, then ArtSites.us will probably work for you.

What do I need to get started?

All you need is a computer with a web browser and a connection to the Internet. We also recommend that you have digital images of your artwork, a personal bio, and contact information. For more details, check out our Getting Started Guide.

How easy is it to use ArtSites.us?

If you can select options from a list or fill-in text for titles, descriptions, etc., you can use ArtSites.us. We have had artists set up professional websites in 30 minutes -- start to finish!

Can I try it out?

Of course! In fact, we recommend everyone sign up for our 10-Day Free Trial. During your trial period, you will have full access to all of our tools. Have fun! Experiment! If you like what you create, we will automatically transfer your artwork and web pages to your purchased website.

Can I change my website after I set it up?

Absolutely! We have designed ArtSites.us to be extremely dynamic and flexible. All of your data, i.e. images, titles, text, etc. are kept separate from your design. So, if we introduce a new layout that you prefer or if you simply want to change the look of your website, select a new layout and/or color scheme and all of your existing text and images will automatically be formatted with the new look. Want to rename, reorder or add galleries or images, go ahead. Change whatever you want, whenever you want!

Can I sell my work online?

ArtSites has a number of features that allow the artist to sell original works as well as prints in a selection of sizes. This can be integrated into the artist's PayPal account for easy management of the sale.

How many images can I upload?

We want artists to fully showcase all their art. So, we have no preset limits on uploaded images or the number of galleries. We will try to accommodate all legitimate image needs.

How much does it cost?

We have a simple pricing model: $150 per year - No setup fees! For more details, see our Pricing page.

How do I pay and what payments are accepted?

We use PayPal for our credit card payments. We accept all major credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover), as well as direct PayPal payments.
Please note you do NOT have to have a PayPal account to pay.

For annual payments only, we do accept cheques made out to Lustrio Media Inc. If you plan to send us a cheque, please contact us so we can give you the appropriate amount required, e.g., including taxes, additional domain names, etc.

Can a group of artists use a single account?

Yes. ArtSites.us is not specifically setup for this purpose but it is suitable for a small group of artists to showcase their works. Here's a list of artist groups and collectives using ArtSites. We do ask that any support requests come from a single individual within the group, i.e. the person managing or maintaining the website.

How can I protect images of my artwork online?

This is a fairly complex topic so we have created a whole article on the subject: Protecting Artistic Works on the Web


Domain Names

How does the included domain name work?

Each subscription to ArtSites.us includes a unique domain name. We will work with you to choose a suitable and available domain name for your website. Once chosen, we will register and setup your domain name and attach your website to that domain name.

Who owns the domain name for my website?

We register the domain name in your name at a major domain name registrar. If at some future time, you would like to take your domain name to another hosting provider, you may do so and we will facilitate whatever transfer is required.

Can I use a domain name that I already have?

Yes. We will take the appropriate steps to transfer your domain name to our domain name registrar. We will minimize your need to be involved in this process as much as possible. The steps involved in transferring a domain vary considerably from registrar to registrar and often take up to a week to complete. In most cases, we can make arrangements for you domain name to work with your ArtSites.us website before the transfer is complete so that there will be no interruption in service.


Email

Is email included with an ArtSites.us subscription?

Your ArtSites.us subscription includes a small number of email addresses that will be forwarded to any email address you choose.

How should I use my email address?

Generally, you should provide your new email address to those that know you as an artist as well as on any publications or printed matter. For example, business cards, post cards, magazine articles, etc. You can even make this email address your primary email address for all purposes, professional or personal.

Can you provide some examples of email address that I could use?

If your name happened to be Jane Artist and you had chosen the domain name JaneArtist.com for your website, it would make sense for you to have the email address Jane@JaneArtist.com. You might also want the email address Info@JaneArtist.com that you could use on the contact page of your website. Keep in mind that the doesn't care what case you use use in email addresses

Can I send email from my new email address?

Yes you can! This can get a bit tricky and won't work with all email software but it should work with most. Most email software will allow you to set the email address on your outgoing independently from the incoming email configuration. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will allow outgoing email with an email addresses that is different from the one that they assigned to you. While we cannot provide explicit instructions for all email software, in general this change can be accomplished by putting your new email address into your email software's account configuration under "E-mail address". If you do this, make sure you make note of what was in that field before you change it. After making the change, send a test email to yourself to see that it gets through.

When Replying to Inquiry Requests from Your Website goes to "noreply"

You may have run into an issue where a inquiry request comes in from your website's contact page and replying to that message goes to noreply@ArtSites.ca instead of the email address provided by the inquiring person.

The short answer to how to deal with this is to make sure that the "To" field of your response goes to the inquirer's email address and not to the noreply@ArtSites.ca address.

To understand more about why this happens, read on.

Email messages have a "From" field which is the email address of the sender of the message.  Email messages also have a lesser know "Reply-To" field which is the email address that an email program should use when replying to a message.

Email messages that are generated from your contact page have to have a valid "From" field and it should be related to the website or service that is actually sending out the message as email.  We use the special email address  to indicate to the person that receives that message that they should not reply to this address.  If the person who leaves a message enters a valid email address, we put that into the "Reply-To" field.  So if an email program is following the rules associated with replying to an email message, that reply will be sent to the email address in the "Reply-To" field and thus the person who sent the comment.

You might ask, why don't we just put the inquirer's email address in the "From" field.  This will often mark a message as spam because it's not really coming from that person's email account.  It is really coming from an ArtSites account email account.  That's why we use noreply@ArtSites.ca.  If the email program fails to follow the reply protocol properly, we are hoping that people actually read the email address that they are sending to.  

Unfortunately most people don't notice this.  So, as a last resort, we forward any email sent to noreply@ArtSites.ca to our support system so that we can remind them about this issue and that they can then reply to the actual sender of the message.

I am not quite sure why some email programs (I think that Yahoo and Outlook both have this issue) do not honor the "Reply-To" field.  There may be a good anti-spammer reason to do this.  It does seem like it's something that they deliberately do and is not likely to be a bug.


Website Administration

I've made changes to my website but Google still has my old information. What else do I need to do?

Generally speaking, nothing. Google only updates information about your website every once in a while. The exact frequency is something that Google adjusts based on a lot of factors but it seems to be somewhere around a week. If you are in a hurry to get your updates into Google you can go to http://google.com/addurl/ and prompt Google to update your information. This may not get your changed information into Google any faster but it won't hurt.


As you can see, ArtSites.us is a simple, elegant and affordable way to showcase and easily manage your artwork online. Start now by signing up for our 10-Day Free Trial!

If you still have questions, please contact us at !

Company