What is CGPortfolio?
CGPortfolio allows artists to store, display and organize their artwork, as well as network with friends and colleagues. By having artwork hosted on the CGSociety, artists are able to leverage on the immense marketing engine that the CGSociety provides.
http://portfolio.cgsociety.org
CGPortfolio Features video
Here’s a video showing off some of the cool features of the CGPortfolio - the networking, Google Earth integration, favorites, etc.
http://media.cgnetworks.com/cgs/cgportfolio/
Getting Started
To sign up for a CGPortfolio you must first be logged into the CGSociety.
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[li]Once you are logged in, visit the page: http://portfolio.cgsociety.org/manage/login_register.php
[/li][li]You will be provided with your own personal domain. E.g. http://username.cgsociety.org Domains may only consist of alpha-numeric characters and hyphens. Because of this unique feature, you may be asked to change your username accordingly.
[/li][li]Once your are logged in, you will see the personal details page. Fill in details as appropriate. We require at least your full name, country of residence and an email address. Once you have filled this page, click “Save Details”.
[/li][li]You will now be shown details of your account, verify that your details are correct and click “Create Portfolio” to activate your portfolio.
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Congratulations! your portfolio is now active!
Viewing Your Portfolio
You can view your portfolio at the http://your-user-name.cgsociety.org (replace your-user-name with your CGTalk username).
You’ll be shown your summary page which displays various statistics about your portfolio. You can return to this page at any time by clicking the “Manage My Portfolio” link in the currently logged in user box at the upper right of portfolio.
To the left of the screen you will notice a menu allowing you to navigate between various management tasks within your portfolio.
CGPortfolio Animations
CGSociety members are given 50 megs of video hosting space, for details on how to access this please read the help file at Help:CGUploader
Your Custom Page Banner, Portfolio Cover Art and Personal Details Image
On the “Portfolio Settings” page you can upload a banner image (900x165 pixels) which will be shown when users are visiting your pages. If you choose not to upload a banner the default gray and black banner will be displayed.
You can also upload a custom Portfolio Cover Art (175x175 pixels), this will be used to identify your portfolio throughout the CGPortfolio site. If you don’t upload an image here your avatar from CGTalk will be used in it’s place.
On the “Personal Details” page, you are given the option to upload a personal details image (155x155 pixels) this is ideal for a portrait of yourself, as it will be displayed on your about page.
Networking with Other Artists
Whilst you are visiting another user’s portfolio page, you are given the ability to connect to them in two ways.
[ul][li]Favorites - if a user is not already part of your favorites list, to the left of the screen you will see a red box labeled “favorites” clicking the “add to favorites” button will add the user to your favorites list, allowing you to choose to receive email updates when they add new images, or post to their blog.
[/li][li]Network - you can also ask a user to join your network, whilst viewing their page, an orange box labeled “Portfolio Network” should be visible. If someone is not part of your network, you may send them a request to join your network, fill in a message, and click the “send invitation”. They will be notified of your request and be given the choice to accept or deny the request. If you are viewing the page of someone who has sent you an invitation that you have not accepted, this box will allow you to accept or deny their request.
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Joining someone’s network means that you can choose to display a link to their portfolio at the bottom of your portfolio pages, and provides users a way to surf between users. It also allows you to see relationships between users using Google earth.
Guestbook
The Guestbook feature allows other users to post public messages to you. On the Guestbook Management page, you are given the option of hiding individual message, and also given the choice to require all new posts to require your moderation before they are displayed.
Google Earth Integration
It is possible to see where artists are situated around the world using Google earth. To see where other users are located around the world, first install Google earth from http://earth.google.com/ Once installed, to add us to the map, go to Add => Network Link set the name field to “CGSociety” and the location field to http://portfolio.cgsociety.org/google_earth.kml and click ok. Now you can see where Portfolio members are on the globe, and who they’re networked to.
To set up your own network link, visit http://local.google.com/ and manually locate your house (don’t use search); For most people, it works best if you work in satellite view, once you find your house, click the link to this page button and copy the URL it shows - this gets pasted into the Google URL field. If you use the search function to find your house, you need to move the view around a bit. To protect your anonymity, you may wish to center your view on something other than your house, perhaps a local post office. Also, make sure that you use http://local.google.com and not http://maps.google.com which for some reason provides co-ordinates in a different format.
If you open up the folder, you can see a list of the portfolios, at the bottom of the list, is another folder for network links. You can turn this on or off to show or hide the user networks.
