Arlo | Revisions Blog

Portfolio Spotlights on Artlog.com

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:46:34 +0000

Each week Artlog, the art & cultural events directory we run, spotlights an Arlo/Artists portfolio site and presents an interview with the artist. This week we chatted with photographer Michael Santarpia.

Check out previous interviews: Bryan Natinsky, Christina Martinelli, Erica Leone, Fawad Khan, James Frank Tribble & Tracey Frances Mancenido, Joe Stevens, Jon Feinstein, Rachel Hulin, Robert Josiah Bingaman, Seth Wulsin, Sky Kim and Steven B. Smith

Contest: Open Source Your Custom Themes

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:48:55 +0000

Thanks to all the designers, artists and photographers who have signed up for accounts on Arlo/Artists. It’s been exciting these past few months to see folks use the system to manage and present their work. Many of you are using the standard themes we designed (and continue to design) but quite a few of you all have also taken the time to build great-looking custom themes for yourselves.

So we’d like to try to spur a little sharing within the Arlo community. If you have built a custom theme – or build one in the future – and are interested in open sourcing and making it available with the community, get in touch with us through the support email address in your administrative section. We are going to be selecting one new user-created theme each month (initially) and adding it to the themes database. The creators of these themes will get full credit for their work, shout outs on our blog, Facebook & Twitter, a free year on Arlo/Artists ($100 value) and an additional honorarium of $500.

Oh and if you want a headstart on creating your own custom themes, don’t forget to check out the support docs and the current standard theme templates over on GitHub.

And we're back

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:51:40 +0000

We’ve completed this morning’s scheduled technological upgrades on Arlo/Artists without a hitch. This work paves the way for us to roll out several exciting new features and our official Arlo/Artists launch on Monday. Stay tuned here and on Twitter for more updates.

Scheduled server upgrades

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:24:26 +0000

This is a quick note to let Arlo/Artists users know that sites will be offline for 10-15 minutes beginning at 11am Friday morning while we perform a scheduled server upgrades.

Announcing Video & Sound Support

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:30:21 +0000

I’m stoked to announce that all Arlo/Artists users can now upload sound and video files (up to 100 megabytes per video) to their portfolios. Thanks to everybody who helped us proof the system.

Video compression can still feel a bit like black magic. So I am going to update the support docs this afternoon with the new template methods for folks building their own custom sites and additional tips for preparing video files for upload.

All the standard non-flash themes have been updated for video support. The flash-based themes are scheduled to be updated shortly and I am putting finishing touches on a pair of themes specifically for sound-based portfolios.

The release of sound and video support also prompts a change in pricing for Arlo/Artists. Well, not exactly a change of pricing as a year on Arlo/Artists still costs just $100, but we’ve eliminated any restrictions on uploads and users can now manage all their work with unlimited still images, sounds and videos.

New Support Docs & Video Beta

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:36:31 +0000

We’ve just launched the new Arlo Support site. It’s a knowledge base with a growing list of walkthroughs & how-tos and full documentation of the Arlo/Artists Blueprints API, which is major news as it now gives folks the tools to build their own completely custom Arlo/Artists themes.

I’ve also put the code for existing default blueprints up on Github for folks who’d like to dive in and learn from/work from those existing themes.

Lastly for now, we are also running some tests of the video system we’ve built. You can see some quick examples in the blog on my personal site. So if you want to help us with the load testing, give feedback and get a jump on working video into your portfolios, drop us a line through the support email address in your dashboards.

Integration w/Facebook Connect

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:04:38 +0000

The first couple weeks for Arlo/Artists have been great. We’ve had lots of signups and new folks trying the system out. We’ve added small refinements, new themes and theme variations on a nearly nightly basis. I am hard at work writing up the documentation to reveal a bit more about the templating system; by and large that documentation should be live this afternoon.

As part of the documentation process, we’re producing brief videos to walk through useful Arlo/Artists features.

In a commit last week, I set up logging into Arlo/Artists through Facebook Connect. It’s pretty useful for folks who are loathe to have to keep track of yet another email/password combo. OpenID login is in the works, but we figured that most everybody at this point has a FB account and so this might be useful for a wider audience initially.

These videos are fairly informal – really just informational and not particularly sexy, but they get the point across and being that I’ve been told I have a face for radio and a voice for the printed page, I try to keep them mercifully short.

(Soft) Launched

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:20:32 +0000

This is just a quick note to say that after several months of development, Arlo/Artists is officially live. It’s a good feeling, we’re proud of the product & stoked to see where it goes from here. Thanks to all the alpha & beta testers who helped us get this far.

We are rolling out revisions to the admin interface and additional themes through the week’s end with a full launch coming on Monday. More soon!

Out with the temporary & in with the temporary

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:19:44 +0000

Well, hello there. We’ve just replaced the single page email notification signup form previously residing at http://arlosites.com/ with this similarly cursory several page introduction to Arlo. It’s a jumbled mess of information and I am pumped!

We still have enormous amounts of polishing to do, documentation to finish writing and information to properly organize, but it is a start and really the first public glance at the interface and functionality that undergirds Arlo/Artists. Screencasts and such to follow soon.

This is going to be a big weekend for us as we start the final phase of pre-release testing on Arlo/Artists. So, grab the RSS feed, follow us on twitter or just check back when you get a chance to stay up on new developments.

[Artists/Announcements] Tap. Tap. Is this thing on? Final rounds of pre-release testing starting this weekend. Stoked!

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:06:43 +0000

Tap. Tap. Is this thing on? Final rounds of pre-release testing starting this weekend. Stoked!

Welcome to Revisions!

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:51:56 +0000

Hey, folks, this the inaugural post for our product blog, Revisions! This is largely a place for periodic announcements, case studies, tips & tricks related to the various Arlo apps. We may also post notes about broader issues related to web software from time to time.

Definitely leave feedback here as you’d like. Your comments and ideas really help us improve these apps and to tailor to them to your real-world uses. Formal support requests, tho, should go through official channels.

Welcome & thanks for reading.