Community Help

Welcome to YOUR online community!

The forums here are for you to use – to ask questions, post information, upload images, and communicate with other artists. To get you started, there are some things you need to know.

Logging into the Forums

To Log In, enter your first initial-last name in “member login” and member ID number in “password.” For example, John Smith would log in as “jsmith” under “Member Login”, and would enter his member ID number under “Password.” Your membership ID number is on your membership card, and on correspondence you receive from the Guild. You will need a functioning email address once you're logged in to participate on the Guild forums as this is how the Guild tracks whether your membership is current. Once you’ve logged into the forums, you can visit your profile page to reset your password to something you’ll remember more easily. Can’t find your member ID number? Give us a call at (212) 791-3400, and we’ll figure it out.

Still can’t log in? There could be a few reasons:

• Your email address is non-functional, or you didn’t provide the National office with one. Check with the National office to be sure we have your latest email address on file.
• You don’t have an email address. You can register for a free email account through many major providers, such as Google, Yahoo, and AOL. (For a list of free email providers, click here.) Remember to send us your new email address!
• You asked the Guild to remove your email address from our records. Please resend us your email address, and indicate if you do not want to receive Guild emails. (Understand that you will not receive email alerts and announcements on advocacy issues and member benefits. Also be assured that we do NOT sell or release our member email addresses.)
• You registered for membership with the Guild with only one name. Try logging in with the first initial of the single name under which you registered.

If you still can’t figure out why you can’t log on, send us an email. We’ll troubleshoot whatever database glitch that’s preventing you from logging on. (Ah, technology!)

Customize your Profile

Once you’re logged into the Community Forums, you’ll see a red menu bar towards the top of the page. Clicking onto “Profile” in the red menu bar (the second-to-last link) will permit you to customize your settings. You’ll be taken to the “Essentials” screen, where you can change your password, specify your email address, and set your time zone so that posts on the message boards will reflect your local time. You’ll also see a log of all the posts you’ve made.

There are a number of sublinks to the left. Have fun exploring them! The “Personal” page permits you to enter in your name, location, company name and website URL. “Messaging” lets you enter in your data for instant messaging through the forum. “Personality” lets you express just that; you can upload an avatar (or a small image to represent yourself), or compose a signature that will appear at the end of each of your posts. “Display” permits you to decide if you want to display your signature, avatar, etc. on your posts. And “Privacy” lets you decide whether or not your email address will be displayed on your posts, whether you can receive email from the forums, etc.

Please note: the avatar you upload under “Personality” will also appear as your public icon on the Guild Portfolio page! Please choose an appropriate image, and size it to 90 x 90 pixels. Don’t forget to click the “Use avatar” box to be sure your avatar is displayed!

Explore the Forums

Clicking onto “Index” will take you to the list of forums or chatboards. The forums are organized into broad categories, ranging from Artist Advocacy to Anything but Art. Clicking onto the name of a forum will take you to the list of posts within that forum. You can either read an existing post, by clicking onto the name of that post, or you can post a new topic within the forum, by clicking onto “Post New Topic” (above the forum). Feel free to respond to an existing post: right below the post, you’ll see a field with “Quick Post” at the top. Type your response into the field, and hit the “Submit” button right underneath. Your response will appear underneath the original post. You can edit your post or delete it by clicking onto the links at the bottom of the post.

Want to quote a post? Click onto the “quote” link at the bottom of the post. A copy of the post will appear in in a new field, and you can enter your message underneath. When you click “Submit”, the quotes post will appear properly indented and attributed, with your message appended underneath.

Want to be notified of posts to a particular thread? You can subscribe to a topic. Just hit the “Subscribe” link at the bottom of the post. You’ll then receive emails notifications when new posts appear on this thread.

You can also search the forums for key words, or track posts made by other users. Clicking onto “Search” on the red menubar will take you to a page where you can enter in keywords to search, and narrow your search to specific forums or a particular author. The “User” page permits you to view all posts made by a particular user.

Instructions for formatting text within a post (making it bold, colored, italics, or underlined) can be found by clicking onto the “BBCode” link at the bottom of the post field. A second window will open, with instructions on the correct tags to insert into your message to properly format your text. You can also post online images and links within your post by clicking onto the “[img] tag” link, or insert emoticons by clicking onto the “smilies” link. Remember that in each case, you're adding code instructions to your message to format it, insert a link or image, or show an emoticon. Read the instructions carefully, and insert the text exactly as is shown.

The Member Portfolios

Members who’ve submitted to the Guild office their website or online portfolio URLs are listed in our Member Portfolios section, visible to the public and utilized by art buyers. Full Guild members are listed in the up to three portfolio disciplines under which they joined the Guild, and Associate/Student members are listed in their own category. Additionally, Artists Reps are listed in their own category. If you are not listed in the Member Portfolio section and would like to be listed, please send your website URL and company name to the National Office. Be sure to include your disciplines, if you did not do so upon joining the Guild. Give us a couple weeks to upload the new member directory to the site; once that’s done, you’ll be listed.

If you’re listed in the portfolio section, you can add or change your avatar, add or change your company name, etc. through your member profile cockpit in the Community Forums (see above). If you do not have a company name, you will be listed by your first and last names. Please note: names are alphabetized by first name on the portfolio pages. If you would prefer to be listed by your last name first, go into your member profile cockpit, click onto “Personal”, and in your company name field, enter in your “last name, first name” and click submit. (For example, Joan Smith would enter in Smith, Joan.)

Your Rights and Responsibilities

Remember that these forums are an online community; conduct yourself as you would in any public forum. That means be professional and polite in your communication with fellow artists. While debate and discourse is encouraged, please refrain from personal attacks or inappropriate language. Offensive posts will be removed by the forum’s moderator, and (of course) repeat violators will be banned from a forum.

If you have been subjected to a personal attack within the forums, or come across an abusive post, report it by clicking onto the “Report” link at the bottom of the post.