redone website..

dazftw

http://www.darrencarlinphoto.com

Ive been redoing it the last few weeks but finally got around to finishing it today! Im going for a really simple easy to view layout. All you have to do is click a max of 6 times and do some scrolling to see everything. Its done with CSS & HTML for all you nerds. If it takes awhile to load its cause ive got an american host.. gotta find an irish one now cause it expires in a few days!

Anyways what do you think?










god I hate making websites...

forbairt

ok ... its fine but ... (and this is going to be critical ... I'm coming at this as a webdesigner/user not as a photographer)


1: dump the splash screen its not doing you any favours...
2: I've got scrolling going on all over the place
3: user better url / page names in terms of SEO its awful
4: too many images .. all your navigation elements ..
5: no alt / title attributes given to you images / anchors (links) .. means google doesn't know what its seeing
6: images are 200kB in size are quite big ... so erm ... its not so much your host and it being in the us ... it may be a crap host and in the US and it will affect latency but those images need to be resized .. check out the "lightbox" effect and maybe a jquery plugin that will sort that for you


apart from those points ... I don't like having a big long list / page of images that I have to scroll down through

Ricky91t

Netbook:does not compute!:eek:

I have to scroll to the right just so i can scroll up and down on the images

But I quite like the site nice and simple and displays your work well,The splash page(especially on the US server) is not good as it loads slow..

dazftw

forbairt wrote: »

ok ... its fine but ... (and this is going to be critical ... I'm coming at this as a webdesigner/user not as a photographer)


1: dump the splash screen its not doing you any favours...
2: I've got scrolling going on all over the place
3: user better url / page names in terms of SEO its awful
4: too many images .. all your navigation elements ..
5: no alt / title attributes given to you images / anchors (links) .. means google doesn't know what its seeing
6: images are 200kB in size are quite big ... so erm ... its not so much your host and it being in the us ... it may be a crap host and in the US and it will affect latency but those images need to be resized .. check out the "lightbox" effect and maybe a jquery plugin that will sort that for you


apart from those points ... I don't like having a big long list / page of images that I have to scroll down through

1. I just like the idea of a splash page!
2. Do you have to scroll across way as well as down? (ive got a 30" 2560X1600) I think I have it set to 1026 wide in the css that could be it the actual box is I think 967px wide..
3. Come again haha? is that the names of the pages? action people contact etc? I should have them renamed to come up on search engines better?
4. What do you mean? Im using 14 images.. total for the layout and nav coming to a total of 96.2kb is that to much?
5. full on lost on that..
6. Used light box on my last layout/design.. everyone else uses it so I just left it! The photos come to a total of 7.15mb whats a good size to bring em down to..

Yeah you hate scrolling and I hate clicking.. haha

thanks for the feedback though its really appreciated

Ricky91t wrote: »

Netbook:does not compute!:eek:

I have to scroll to the right just so i can scroll up and down on the images

But I quite like the site nice and simple and displays your work well,The splash page(especially on the US server) is not good as it loads slow..

Yeah I reckon I have the width set wrong ill got have a look.. damn my high res..


Thanks guys!

forbairt

dazftw wrote: »

1. I just like the idea of a splash page!
2. Do you have to scroll across way as well as down? (ive got a 30" 2560X1600) I think I have it set to 1026 wide in the css that could be it the actual box is I think 967px wide..
3. Come again haha? is that the names of the pages? action people contact etc? I should have them renamed to come up on search engines better?
4. What do you mean? Im using 14 images.. total for the layout and nav coming to a total of 96.2kb is that to much?
5. full on lost on that..
6. Used light box on my last layout/design.. everyone else uses it so I just left it! The photos come to a total of 7.15mb whats a good size to bring em down to..

1: yeah but not great in terms of search engines finding you (again it all boils down to what you want) ... if its a hobby site go for it .. if its professional steer clear
2: yeah.. most users have 1024 or more .. ( I can pull up some stats on generic public from some sites I manage if you want) .. as such you need to design and develop for that or greater .. flexible width is a bit of a bitch to deal with but can be very nice
3: yeah the names of the pages .. event-photography .. portrait-photography .. and so on
4: yeah I'm not a fan of navigation images ... google doesn't really know what they are unless you're using alt tags ... erm Alternative text to display in case the image isn't there ... of course this doesn't matter for most humans but for google its quite important
5: .. can't remember what this point was and too lazy to open up a new window to see again
6: there are alternatives to lightbox ... carousels .. and so on

I guess ultimately you'd want a usability study ... though I remember a lot that mentioned people don't like scrolling ...

dazftw

forbairt wrote: »

1: yeah but not great in terms of search engines finding you (again it all boils down to what you want) ... if its a hobby site go for it .. if its professional steer clear
2: yeah.. most users have 1024 or more .. ( I can pull up some stats on generic public from some sites I manage if you want) .. as such you need to design and develop for that or greater .. flexible width is a bit of a bitch to deal with but can be very nice
3: yeah the names of the pages .. event-photography .. portrait-photography .. and so on
4: yeah I'm not a fan of navigation images ... google doesn't really know what they are unless you're using alt tags ... erm Alternative text to display in case the image isn't there ... of course this doesn't matter for most humans but for google its quite important
5: .. can't remember what this point was and too lazy to open up a new window to see again
6: there are alternatives to lightbox ... carousels .. and so on

I guess ultimately you'd want a usability study ... though I remember a lot that mentioned people don't like scrolling ...

2. Ive fudged it.. my nav bar is 1026px wide! I could cut it down but not now.. ive been on it all day and dont want to go near it again! If your using 1152 x 864 or more you should be good and wont have to side scroll..
3/4. I get you!
6. I had at 1st wanted to have the scroll boxes going horizontal but I couldn't get it working so I left it with vertical..

Ill try sort out everything in the next few days!


Do you know of anything I can put into the code to make it work in all resolutions? It buggin me now

forbairt

cool

its all just my "personal" with some "work" feedback thrown in so don't take offence ( I know its annoying as **** when people give feedback but its just something you've got to live with and say "feck it" :P take what you want out of it )

dazftw

forbairt wrote: »

cool

its all just my "personal" with some "work" feedback thrown in so don't take offence ( I know its annoying as **** when people give feedback but its just something you've got to live with and say "feck it" :P take what you want out of it )

Ah I know im always looking for feedback! Id rather people list the bad instead of the good.. so I know where to improve on!

forbairt

dazftw wrote: »

Do you know of anything I can put into the code to make it work in all resolutions? It buggin me now

Here is a breakdown of resolutions on one of my pretty general public sites

1. 1024x768 29.84%
2. 1280x800 27.35%
3. 1280x1024 11.78%
4. 1440x900 11.62%
5. 1680x1050 4.44%
6. 800x600 2.04%
7. 1152x864 1.94%
8. 1920x1200 128 1.81%
9. 1280x768 1.47%
10. 1366x768 1.27%

now you can start to think ... well it should work good at 1024 and 1280 yes ... thats making around 72 % of users ...

Now lets look at those with smaller ... and its 2 - 3 % ...

And the rest are pretty much a mixed bunch ...

your average home user is going to be what .. a photographer ? I hope not as photographers won't be looking to hire you ... that puts them into the 72 ish % bracket ... so therefore you should be designing towards your target audience ...

Of course if you want something that will scale nicely there are ways but it gets to be a bit of a nightmare. .. detect resolution and feed content based on that = multiple versions of images and so on

You could use flash but its not exactly that user friendly .. for the most part you don't find url links to certain parts of the flash presentation though people really should they just don't know how to do it and don't think about it

So what I do with most of my sites is ... design for 1024 ... at 1280 you've got a bit of padding but of course you can have a main body image which will expand and give the illusion of the page being bigger..

dazftw

Ive resized it and it works if I run the window maximized @ 1024 x 768 only one scroll bar like it should be.

Now time for bed very tired...

mrboswell

Displays fine at 1280x800 on my mac book in Safari and Firefox.

Nice simple site and easy to follow

Ricky91t

It's now working fine on my netbook

DaireQuinlan

Is this a site for professional purposes ? Or just a showcase of sorts ? I ask because, if its the first reason, you really ought to consider getting a professional designer look at it and perhaps do it up. Or grab one of the more popular gallery/blog templates and use it as a basis (layout and structure templates, not neccessarily the l&f).

One or two specific points ...

Drop the splash screen. Really ! I know it's been said several times but it bears repeating if you're intent on keeping it for some reason. Or alternatively find one snappy pro-photographers site that has a splash screen and an "enter here" link. I had one when I wrote my first web page, but that was in or around 1994 or so, things have moved on since then

I thought it was broken first when the main page loaded up. AFTER going to all the trouble of clicking through the entirely unnecessary splash screen, all I get is a boring page of text ? with image links for buttons (also not such a great idea) and your URL in the middle of the screen (I KNOW what your URL is at this stage ! I'm already AT the site )

There are a bunch more things that just seem off-kilter about it. The vertical scrollable galleries as mentioned above are another thing for example. Honestly, I'd get someone to do it for you, or slavishly copy at least the layout and general structure from another well established site.

-edit-
ha. I was going to point you off to Fajitas' site http://www.alhigginsphotography.com/ but i notice that

1. he has a splash screen. (although I do vaguely remember him being told to get rid of it aswell when he posted it up here first)
2. its in flash.

so all in all not the best basis for comparison.
-edit-

Cabaal

On both Firefox 3 and IE 6 I don't see a splash screen and the site just looks half finished...weird

From what I can view, the gallery is very slow loading and the way your images are displayed does nothing for them