I was nominated as Blog Ambassador by the Tutors at the start of the second year of the BA Fine Art (Hons) at Coleg Menai.
During the year I have helped many people, not only with issues they have with their Blog’s but also Photoshop issues and Premiere Pro issues too.
Reflecting back on the time spent on this activity, I would estimate between 1 and 3 hours per week for the duration of the second year.
The main issues arising with the Blog tend to be around the use of images. Typical Questions have been:
How do I get more space on DropBox?
I have been asked about increasing space on DropBox. You can earn additional space quite easily by doing simple activities such as Following DropBox on Twitter or Liking their Facebook Page. I advised people to look at the following links:
Get 2GB of Dropbox space in less than 5 minutes
If you are one of the people who have just 2GB of available space, here’s a quick solution for you to almost double it. After you have created a Dropbox account and downloaded the desktop client visit this page and follow these steps:
- Complete the “Get Started” tour – 250MB
- Connect your Facebook account – 125MB
- Connect your Twitter account – 125MB
- Follow Dropbox on Twitter – 125MB
- Write a short text why you love Dropbox – 125MB
Download Mailbox for iOS or Android and connect it with Gmail and Dropbox – 1GB- Download the Dropbox app for iOS or Android and complete the mobile “Get Started” tour
How do I get a Google Drive Account?
I have been asked a lot why I use Google Drive, and basically for each Google Mail account you get a whopping 15GB storage space. My advice is shown below.
Most people don’t realise that they actually already have a Google Mail Account. Your college email is actually a Google Mail Account. This means you have 15GB storage linked to your college email address.
- Sign in to your college email using the Google Sign In page.
- Select Google Drive to open your Google Drive.
- Click New to Create a New Folder.
- Drag New Files into the Google Drive Space.
Why have I used up all the space on my Blog?
This is generally as a result of using too high quality images on the Blog. The recommendation is to ensure that images that are placed on the Blog have a resolution less than 96dpi to ensure the best use of the space on the blog.
If images have been taken using a camera, they will be too large and the resolution will need to be reduced using Photoshop. If possible, take images for the blog using a phone. The iPhone typically saves images at 96dpi making them perfect to place on a blog.
I can’t see my images on my Blog Page?
This is a bit of a glitch with WordPress and in my experience, it generally happens when there is a lot of images on a page and the wifi is slow – this happens a lot in college. It is just that the images are taking a long time to load.
Basically you will see the image as a box with the edit button and the delete button showing – see below. If you click the edit button, you will see that the images are still there, there are just not displayed in the edit page. If you open the blog as though you were viewing it, you will see that the images are actually still there.
How do I free up space on my blog?
This was a recent request and is a difficult one to address. Generally, you run of space on a blog due to using high quality images or video in your blog. The suggestions I made are below.
Host your videos online to reduce space used on the blog.
- Remove any videos that have been loaded into the blog.
- Upload your videos to either YouTube or Vimeo.
- Create Links in your Blog Posts or Pages to the videos online.
- Link the video’
Reduce the Size of Images.
- For large images, create a local copy of the image.
- Use Photoshop to reduce the resolution to 96dpi
- Use Photoshop to reduce the size of the image.
- Upload the new smaller image to the blog.
- Delete the larger image from the blog.
- Do this for all images taken with your camera.
- Moving forward, if possible take lower quality images with a phone for the blog, or alternatively reduce the resolution of your images prior to adding them to your blog.
Upgrade your subscription to WordPress.
The free version of your WordPress site gives you 3GB of space which may not be enough for your requirements. There are several other WordPress options.
- Personal: £2.50 per month gives you 6GB of storage space.
- Premium: £7.08 per month gives you 13GB of storage space.
You can pay for these plans annully which does reduce the price a bit.
Create a new WordPress Blog Site for each year of your education. This way you get 9GB of storage space for free. Make sure you give the Tutors the address for the new site.
- Select My Sites, Switch Site to open the Sites page.
- Select Add New Site to create an additional site for each year.
How do I organise content on a page?
You can divide the content on any page or blog post up by including page breaks in the content.
At the point where you would like the page break, press Alt+Shift+P on the keyboard to create the page break.
When you have page breaks in a page, the page numbers are displayed at the bottom of the page.
How do I organise menu’s on my blog?
I was asked this question on numerous occasions. It is really important to organise your menus, particularly as you progress into the second and third year. The pages can become difficult to manage and navigate.
- From the Site page, select Themes, Customize to open the Customizer.
- Click Menus to display the available menus.
- Click Add a Menu to create a new menu.
- Type the Menu Name and Click Create Menu
- You can then select the menu to modify the pages and navigation order.
- At the bottom of the page click Add Items to add new items to the menu.
- Select Reorder menu to reorder the pages in your menus.
- Look at shesafineartist.blog if you want to see examples of a menu structure.
How do I create a Blurb Book?
I have been asked several times about creating Blurb books. I directed people to the following Tutorials and in several cases, gave training on the use of the Blurb software.
I need a Blurb Book in a Hurry, what do I do?
I have given several people the advice below relating to acquiring digital books in a hurry.
There is another alternative to Blurb and this is a company called Yophoto.
Yophoto have an application to download, just like Blurb, or alternatively you can create your book online.
Yophoto have an express delivery option and can deliver before 1pm the next day if an order is placed before noon. Without exception when I have used this service, the book has been on my doorstep as promised.
I have purchased several books by Yophoto and all but I was pristine. In the case of the 1 which wasn’t, the spine hadn’t been attached correctly, I emailed Yophoto and they responded immediately – a new book was in the post the next day and I kept the less than pristine book too – Excellent Customer Service.
The only downside to Yoophoto is that it doesn’t have a Store like blurb does, so if you plan to sell your books, you need to find an alternative method. For college purposes, this shouldn’t really be an issue.
How do I host a Video on Youtube?
I have given several people training on how to host a video on Youtube. My advice is below:
Firstly you need to create a YouTube Channel. You can use your College Email Account to do this.
Upload your videos to the YouTube Channel. Once uploaded you will be provided with a URL for your video, which you can then link to in your blog.
Be aware of copyrighted material, YouTube check all uploaded videos for this.
She's a Fine Artist 
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