We've added a price line under the video thumbnails on your videos page on your FASO website.

It shows the price to buy the video or the word "Free" if the video is free.  This further helps buyers distinguish between paid or free videos.  In the future this line may be expanded with other options such as "rent" or "members only" depending on the direction of further enhancements to FASO's Video offering.

Here's an example of what this looks like from Michael Holter's website: https://www.michaelholter.com/...

FASO Now supports adding streaming video to your website.

This feature only works on our latest generation of templates.  The templates that the video feature works on are the ones listed on this page:  https://www.faso.com/templates.html

You may add unlimited Youtube Videos or you may upload video directly.  Direct uploaded video is charges as follows:

Intro Plan - $.02/Video minutes/month
(So if you uploaded a 60 minute video it would add $1.20 to your monthly bill.  Remember, Youtube Videos are free because they remain hosted and served by Youtube)

Silver Plan - 60 video minutes included, additional video $.02/Video minutes/month

Gold Plan - 120 video minutes included, additional video $.02/Video Minutes/month

Platinum Plan - 300 video minutes included, additional video $.02/Video Minutes/month

If you offer a streaming video for sale there is a 6% transaction fee on paid Videos to FASO to cover additional bandwidth, support, and other charges.  This fee is being waived for the time being.


Why did we build hosted Video?

YouTube, for example, seems like a great option for hosting free videos you might want to offer because it's free to use and they promise to help you reach a big audience.

But, with Youtube, you end up having to deal with pesky ads and other annoying videos that that play after your video is over. And that audience that they promised you never magically materializes. It actually takes a lot of work on your part to grow a following.

Vimeo, on the other hand, has no pesky ads but it costs money that you probably can't afford right now.  And if you want to sell paid videos, this complicated platform gets even more complicate really fast.

FASO Video feature solves all these challenges for you by:

Making it ridiculously easy to upload videos. It's just as easy as uploading an artwork to FASO.

Automatically creating and adding pages for your free videos to your FASO website, just like we do for artworks, exhibits, and workshops.

Making it super easy to place your free videos anywhere you want, including any page on your FASO artist website, in your new newsletters, and even on other websites.

Creating sales pages for your paid videos where you can add a trailer and sales copy.

Creating password-protected pages for your paid videos where your students can watch the ones that they've purchased.

Paid videos also work seamlessly with our built-in Shopping Cart, which automatically sends the
purchaser a link to their paid video and their password to access it. This gives you one less thing to have to worry about.

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Here is how you upload and manage videos on your website:

1.  Click "Video" in the toolbar of your FASO Account

2. Upload a video or add an existing Youtube Video

3.  To add the "Video" category to your front end site you add it from the Navigation bar editor:

4.Here's an example of the Video category on one of our customer's website:

5.  And here's what the page where your site visitor actually watches the video looks like:

Quick Link:

https://data.fineartstudioonline.com/home/faso/streams/video/

We've offered a built in "View in Room" feature for FASO websites (Silver and up) for several years.

We have rolled out an improvement that makes the "View in Room" feature mobile friendly.

Here is how a room now looks on an iPhone X in portrait mode:

Here is how the same screen looks with the "Room Options" controls open:

We have upgraded the "View in Room" feature to have some intelligence in matching the first room shown to the size of the painting.  Previously we defaulted all artworks to the same room which had the side effect of making smaller artworks look very tiny on the "wall".  This upgrade addresses that.

Here's an example of a room that will be shown for smaller works less than 12" on their longest dimension:

Here's the default room for pieces smaller than 20":

Smaller than 30":

Smaller than 40":

Larger than 40":

We are considering adding one more room for very large pieces (say larger than 60") although the also work well in the large Conference room shown above.

Please note - your site visitor can change rooms and see your piece(s) in any of the rooms we offer, this change affects the first room they see when launching the "View in Room" feature.

We've removed the BETA moniker off the "Automatically mark originals sold"  commerce setting.   This feature is now production ready.

This feature will automatically mark original works sold when a customer purchases them through your FASO website. 

FASO Now has an improved built-in way for you to set your own custom site logo. This allows you to upload a .jpg or .png  file to replace your site's heading text with a custom logo.  

The new version supports transparent .png files and will not resize the image that you upload giving you much easier and finer control over the size and shape of your custom logo.

To access this feature click on "Design", then "Advanced", then "Site Logo".

Site Logo Screen - Ready for Logo Upload:

Site Logo Screen with Logo Uploaded:

Custom Logo Showing on Website:

FASO Now has a built-in way for you to set your own custom browser icon.  This allows you to upload a .ico, .png (or supported but not recommended a .gif or .jpg) file to replace the built in browser icon.  Previously customizing your browser icon required assistance from FASO Support.

To access this feature click on "Design", then "Advanced", then "Browser Icon".

Browser Icon Upload Screen:

Browser Icon Screen showing custom icon:

FASO Website using custom browser icon:

Our "View in Room" Feature has recently started supporting framed views if you upload a framed view of your artwork.  Learn more about that here.

Our initial implementation of this feature assumed a framed size of 3", which was just an average.  However, that could lead to dimensions that were slightly wrong in the room viewer.  

We now give you the option to provide the OUTSIDE FRAMED SIZE of your painting to make the room viewer more accurate.  (We will also most likely use these dimensions in the future to calculate shipping costs).

Under "Advanced Commerce" in the artwork record you now have two fields, shown below, to provide the outside frame size of your artwork:

As a reminder, the "View in Room" with a frame displayed looks like the following (obviously with YOUR Frame and your art):

For years we've had a forum for users to post questions and get help from one another as well as from FASO support staff members who monitored the forum.  In practice, however, as most people have moved their online screen time to social media, there was very little engagement in our forum.  It was mostly people asking questions, which one of our staff members would answer.  That was fine, but it wasn't really a community.  As of today we have retired the old forum.  It is no longer available.   We've replaced it with two improved and better options outlined below.

We now offer two true communities on Facebook.  We have a "FASO Community and Support" group for you to ask your technical and other questions and interact with other FASO users.  Our support team has members who monitor this group and who will jump in as needed to provide answers or clarifications.  

Our other Facebook group is called "Art Marketing Mastermind" and is VERY active with over 2,000 members sharing great marketing ideas, tips and success stories.  Our marketing team also monitors this group, makes announcements and provides ideas.

We encourage you to take advantage of both groups!

Here are convenient links to both:

Art Marketing Mastermind Facebook Group:  https://facebook.com/groups/ar...

FASO Community and Support Facebook Group:  https://facebook.com/groups/fa...

A few weeks ago we announced support for workshops and classes that are online only (eg taught over Zoom).

We are now excited to announce that, as a part of FASO Gold and higher memberships, not only can you add online only workshops to your website, but we will promote those workshops for you to over 65,000 artists in our FineArtViews newsletter.   Every Wednesday we promote online only workshops and classes.