Website Opinions

[Johnboy2978]

Hey John, thanks for the input. Yeah, I used Word. Didn't even think of Frontpage but I think I have that as well on my pc. And no, I didn't consider a table. I might give that a try. That's the one thing I really hate about computers, is that you can make something run perfect on the machine you are on, then it runs completely different on another.

Is the flash intro taking an inordinate amount of time? Also does it give you warning about active x controls and such when you first bring up the site?

 

[zedin]

For me at least after you click enter and go to http://countsphotography.poijoy.com/Home.mht all I get is the raw source text. Not sure if others are getting this as well but it happened with firefox on a mac.

 

[Inverness Photographic]

No I get no warnings but it is more than 10 seconds before anything appears. Know it doesn't sound a lot but most of your visitors will have left by then. Can you display an message to say "Into Loading" with one of those count thingys and an option to skip to "Home Page".

 

[Inverness Photographic]

Oh another one why save it as .mht, I have never heard of that before that may cause some issues. Save as .htm or .html.

 

[Johnboy2978]

John, I did those pages in Word and save them as a single web page file, primarily b/c this is the first time I've ever played around with trying to make a site and have been doing it trial and error. By doing it as a single page file, I didn't have to worry about where I needed to put all those other image files, etc. to make it work.

 

[niccig]

zedin, I got the same result when trying to enter the page(after the main page). This was the message:

This document is a Single File Web Page, also known as a Web Archive file. If you are seeing this message, your browser or editor doesn't support Web Archive files. Please download a browser that supports Web Archive, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.

I am also using firefox on mac. Unfortunately I don't think IE is available for mac anymore. I also agree the images in the flash intro are really pixelated. Are they being resized automatically by some program, or did you create new versions of the image (resized in photoshop/gimp to be the appropriate size)? When I let jalbum resize my images, they looked like crap, but were much better when I made a low-res duplicate.

 

[Johnboy2978]

Well I guess I created something that is only available for windows OS systems with IE then. Looks like there are quite a few variables involved in making something universal. Initially the flash pics looked a little pixelated for some shots when I viewed it, then I re did some of them and that looked passable on my machine. I don't know.

 

[Johnboy2978]

Ok, last time...I just converted everything to .html instead of the .mht stuff from MS word. Can you guys take ooooooone more look and see what you think.

I'm going to add one more thing which is an option for dialup/slow connection v. broadband. For now though,
broadband -> http://www.countsphotography.poijoy.com/
dialup/slow -> http://www.countsphotography.poijoy.com/Homepage.htm

Thanks guys. Hopefully this will straighten out my issues with my links being all over the place as well as the firefox users not being able to access it.

 

[PhotoAddict]

Hi, Johnboy2978. I'm new to this forum but saw your thread and thought I could give you a good idea.

A couple of weeks ago I visited the DEMO Conference and saw a very interesting demonstration of a website tool called SiteKreator - may see it here http://www.demo.com/demonstrators/demo2006fall/79964.php. This builder is generally a combination of a web hosting platform and website tool (which is very very beginner-friendly, I tell you). I gave it a try at their booth and it seemed vey easy, hardly any chance to get something wrong.. I thought I would tell this to everyone in need of a website.

I have once worked with FrontPage, and this thing seems to be way way easier to use. Try it out if you wish - they have free personal accounts (but check if the free offer is still valid).

 

[toastydeath]

Hey. I've coded (not just html, but php for the database backend and other neat stuff) many webpages. I hope you'll take some advice on your webpage from a business perspective, and from someone who has done this before with a minor background in it. Some of this may sound harsh, but please keep your sucess in mind.

I reccomend www.w3schools.com. Learn HTML and CSS, at the VERY least.

Do not use dreamweaver, frontpage, ms word, or any other "visual" editor. Professional webpages, the kind that cost 10k a page, are done by hand. Even if you don't have the background to make a 10k per page website, strive for the same level of professionalism. Doing it by hand also has the side-effect of keeping unprofessional fru-fru to a minimum. It's all too easily added in Dreamweaver.

A good text editor is necessary. Not a word processor, like MS Word. A text editor will autoindent, and help check syntax/missing quotes/missing brackets/ etc. It will color the various commands differently, so that in large documents, you can easily track what you are working on. Most editors also have an autocomplete feature to help with repetative commands. Personally, I use the Vim (www.vim.org) text editor for all my programming, database, and web development. It is way too much for a beginner (it requires about a month to learn to use it), but I suggest looking around for a text editor that features HTML and CSS as supported languages. The difference over notepad is almost immeasureable, especially when you start using an editor like Vim or Emacs. UltraEdit and Editpad are options as well, but I believe they both cost money. Vim and Emacs are free.

Lose the flash intro. It's not professional, even if it's neat and cool. Any serious buyers who are looking for someone are reviewing every aspect of your business to evaluate you, including how you represent yourself. You're dealing with the psychology of design here, in addition to what just looks cool to friends. Unfortunately, friends do not look at a webpage with the same critical eye high power buyers do.

Second, you need those section links on a plain menubar on the right or left, on EVERY SINGLE PAGE. They need to be able to quickly navagate anywhere on your website, without hitting back. This is made simpler if you understand some web scripting language like PHP, but it gets complicated.

Standardize your color scheme with CSS. Pick a mild background color, pick a mild menu color. Also, make your page width about 800 pixels wide, with everything left-aligned. Having page width set at 100%, center align is not good. If you add lots of content content or a right menu, you can experement with making your page wider than 800 px.

You want to drop the link page - it has nothing to do with you, as a business. If you want to make it a hobby or personal website, keep the links. If you're selling something, you don't want them clicking on links.

Add more sections and content. You need to be able to "fill out" the webpage, so that it does not look sparse. But keep in mind, don't add fluff or random things that will detract from the webpage. This is the singlemost difficult part of creating a webpage for someone who doesn't have a background in the area. I suggest adding a "contact" page, instead of just an email link. I would fill out your bio more, with a heavier emphasis on photography. A verbal description of your style and what you believe your strengths to be, with selected images to illiustrate your points. In the gallery, I would choose one picture from a particular set - you have the entire set up. You don't need a vast gallery of everything you've done, because that's too much information. You need a selection of images, ready to view in a short thumbnail page, of what you consider to be the best pictures of your best sets. Below that thumbnail grid, you can add a link to your complete gallery, if you choose. Think up other sections to add.

I know many professional photographers have websites that break these rules. Many businesses have websites that break these rules. They may have hired a web designer who knows what they are doing, and can bend the "rules of design" without detracting from the page itself. Don't use them as justification to make mistakes. Just because they're a world-renowed photographer doesn't make them a world-renowed web developer and designer.

 

[fmw]

I agree with toasty except in the area of using Dreamweaver. This saves time and can produce any look you can produce by hand. If not, you can simply make a page with Dreamweaver and then edit it by hand. Coding everything by hand is just unnecessary, time consuming and expensive. I'm a web developer and use it all the time. So do all the web developers I know. The sites have a direct impact on my personal income so I can assure I wouldn't use Dreamweaver if I could make more money doing it some other way.

He mentions that a good text editor is necessary. The most popular one is - you guessed it - Dreamweaver.

I underscore the comment on using Flash. I think it should be banned from the internet. Talk about a waste of resources and peoples' time.

I make my living in e-commerce. I sell products through web sites and have done so for 8 years. Customers are the same as they are in a store - impatient. They come to our sites not to be entertained. They come to shop. In your case they come to evaluate your work. Let them get into the site easily and get to where they want to go easily and get out easily. Make it look attractive and professional. That usually means simple. How efficiently and easily the site works is actually more important than how it looks.

The faster the site runs, the better. I constantly work on speeding up our sites. Don't make the customer wait while a 500K image loads. Reduce the file size. Our product shots are usually 4" wide and 20 to 30 K in size. That's enough to let them know how the product looks. May avatar above is only 6K. It's pretty small but you can see that I'm posed with a view camera and you get somewhat of an idea of what I look like. The faster the sites are, the more we sell. The faster your site is, the more of it people will view.

Good luck.

 

[Johnboy2978]

Hey guys, I really appreciate all these comments and will definately keep them in mind when I make this a business one day.

 

[toastydeath]

For his particular purpose, I can see using a product like Dreamweaver. And in many places, Dreamweaver/Frontpage are all someone is looking for.

But to restate: I don't know (and I know quite a few, since I have computer science schooling and worked in IT) any high quality, professional web designers and developers who use anything except vim or emacs. A couple use less common editors - but they all use high power, professional text editors.

Dreamweaver will get you to a certain point, but past that, you hit a wall in terms of ability to express precicely what you want. In camera terms, it's the difference between the Nikon D70 and D200. A professional photographer can use both, and get great results. But they're going to prefer the functionality of the better tool. So it is with web developers.

Clearly, there is a huge market for Dreamweaver-level results and low learning curve. They're acceptable. It gets the job done, with a minimum learning curve. But it isn't a professional web designer or developer tool, and I don't know anyone who does it for a living who would call it professional. Espcially since Vim and Emacs are free, and are easily the best tools to do the job.

It's not that you can't do a good, basic HTML/CSS page on Dreamweaver. It's the rest of that you lose, in scripting languages, fast fine tuning, global server side editing, and all the tactile control over the code you get by using a good text editor. Fundimentally, HTML is not a visual language. It's still a markup language - a written one. Once someone makes the commitment to go to text and truly learn HTML, CSS, and PHP, they don't turn back. There's no reason to go to back something that gets in the way.

 

[Swiss]

Ok, I haven't read all the comments here (too many), so if I say something, that has already been said, I'm sorry. Few tips I can give you as a graphic designer: Make sure all the pages fit together. Right now, one can't tell, they all belong to the same portfolio as you're using different colors, different fonts and font sizes and different layouts. Also one has to use the back button to get back to the navigation, which is a bit complicated. Would look nicer if you used jpg links instead of underlined text links. And last but not least: Myself, I'm using a wide screen and the text on your website goes from the far left to the far right. It would be better to use a table to keep text in blocks and center the whole table in the middle of the browser window. Few things you can do, even if you're not a pro. Hope that helps.