Friday, January 28, 2011

Tutorial: Personalize Your ArtFire Collection Widget

The ArtFire Collection Widget is a great tool for embedding a collection on your web-site.

Have you ever noticed the link in the center of the Collection widget footer? If you click on the link, it returns a search of ArtFire items with that tag. Wouldn't it be great if you could relate that search to your Collection theme? Well, you can.

This example reads "Handmade Gifts" and clicking the link will take you to an ArtFire search for "Gifts".







But this collection happened to be a Texas ArtFire Guild collection and I prefer to have the link bring up a search of Texas ArtFire Guild Members items.

Instead of pasting the code directly to my blog post I paste it first to a NotePad document. Don't try to use a Word document because it will really mess things up.

This is what the last line of the original code for my collection widget looks like:





This is another example of what the last line of your widget code could look like:





All I need to do is replace the original search information: modules.php?name=gift_hub
with the search term I want to use which is:
texasartfire.

I also want to change the link title to display "More Selections from Texas ArtFire Guild". So I need to replace the words:
Handmade Gifts
with
More Selections from Texas ArtFire Guild

This is what the code looks like after I made my corrections:





And this is what the footer of the collection looks like.


If you want to see the link in action, check out my blog post "God Blessed Texas Collection".

I have several tutorials on my blog. Click here for the Tutorial list page.

I also take suggestions for Tutorial topics. You can leave your suggestion in the comments.

Time is ...

Time is Running Out....to enter our contest.

You don't have to be an artfire member to participate in the contest.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Yee Haw Happy New Year Yall!! Its our Contest time!!!!

Rose Pen Hand Turned and carved From JmMCoy

Earrings from TheGemmedGiraffe

Individualized carved key chain from CNewcomb

 
Contest 
As yall know, our guild is becoming more vibrant and active, so we thought we would do a little contest to set things off for the New Year.


Our Guild Roster

 
Our members are participating in a scavenger hunt of sorts and we have fabulous prizes for the winner!   It's a collection of products from some our talented and generous Texans.

The way this works is YOU have to find the six flags that flew over Texas in our rebellious past.  They are flying as a widget/flag in the front page of 6 shops out of all of our guild members.  See roster here.    You have to submit your answers to us by January 31st.


BUT they have to be in order and which shop is flying that particular flag  (ie  cctexan3  _____flag) IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.  So I reckon yall are going to learn a little Texas history while you are at it. 

Submissions should go to the Guildmaster in Artfire


We will keep them and  if there are more than one correct answer, we will randomize the submissions and let the computer draw the winner.


Please feel free to blog about this in your own blogs and twitters and facebook, we love attention!  let us know who you are and we will try to follow yall in kind.



We wish you a Happy and Prosperous New Year!  God Bless Texas!!




lampwork and black beaded cha cha bracelet from cctexan3
Hemp Dog Collar from SonoraKays

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Update on our Texas Contest for January

Final touches are being made for the contest!!

we need a widget maker badly! I cannot do widgets for the studios.  please email me via my artfire studio
http://www.cctexan2.artfire.com/   if you can be our superhero! thanks