Need some testers..

dazftw

I got my website hosted again under blacknight and was wondering would some peeps mind check it for loading times and any other problems *cough* scrolling *cough*.. It should only take a minute or two.

Last time it was with godaddy and some people on here said it was taking awhile to load everything.

Also do I seem up my own arse in the contact me page? I asked my girlfriend to write some truthful about me cause I felt stupid doing it

Thanks guys.

EDIT: suppose it would be handy to give everyone the link darren.. http://www.darrencarlinphotography.com/ haha

pixbyjohn

Link ?

nilhg

Loads and scrolls fine for me, I think you could look through some of the bio again (though I think she likes you:D), it should be digital and film cameras for example.

DotOrg

some constructive criticism

splash page, no need for it, it really doesn't serve any purpose, it's very 2001
"A resolutiton of 1024 x 768 or more is recommended" - nobody will change their resolution to view your website, nor will it put them off, if they don't have that resolution


http://www.darrencarlinphotography.com/main.html - this page NEEDS a photo

your blog is a totally different style to the website, would be nice if they were the same.
also, you blog needs a clear link back to the homepage of your website

the copyright notice simply needs to be
© Darren Carlin 2009
but do it in the same font as the links for some consistancy

in your contact page, use paragraphs, align the text to the left and don't use the third person, would read better if you use 'I'

I'd also prefer a nicer font for that text, plus a picture on the page

change your contact e-mail to something@darrencarlinphotography.com rather thana gmail account to appear a little more professional

In general, you need to decide who your target market is for the website. Is it meant as a gallery for people to view and enjoy. Is a site for skaters to contact you and hire you to shoot them or shoot for skating mags?


Hope some of that is useful to letting you know what some people might think

PS: love the photos, they're by far, the strongest part of the website

pixbyjohn

Loads and scrolls for me .
some nice photos.
Good luck,
John

ThOnda

Too many pictures being downloaded at the same time = slow browsing. The main window is too small on my home screen.
The background looks a little plain white. But that could be due resolution of my screen.
Pictures are great though, once I have a chance to see them.

dazftw

DotOrg wrote: »

some constructive criticism

splash page, no need for it, it really doesn't serve any purpose, it's very 2001
"A resolutiton of 1024 x 768 or more is recommended" - nobody will change their resolution to view your website, nor will it put them off, if they don't have that resolution


http://www.darrencarlinphotography.com/main.html - this page NEEDS a photo

your blog is a totally different style to the website, would be nice if they were the same.
also, you blog needs a clear link back to the homepage of your website

the copyright notice simply needs to be
© Darren Carlin 2009
but do it in the same font as the links for some consistancy

in your contact page, use paragraphs, align the text to the left and don't use the third person, would read better if you use 'I'

I'd also prefer a nicer font for that text, plus a picture on the page

change your contact e-mail to something@darrencarlinphotography.com rather thana gmail account to appear a little more professional

In general, you need to decide who your target market is for the website. Is it meant as a gallery for people to view and enjoy. Is a site for skaters to contact you and hire you to shoot them or shoot for skating mags?


Hope some of that is useful to letting you know what some people might think

PS: love the photos, they're by far, the strongest part of the website

Thanks! Appreciate all that! I have plans to fix nearly everything you've mentioned!

democrates

+1 on DotOrg's suggestions.

I'd turn the contact page into the home page, that's where your sales pitch should be, is your age relevant? That should have your best photo to grab attention - not the fence, maybe try laura2 but larger to fill the 950px width and have the text on the grey area to her right.
You could also decrease the font size but increase the line height for the paragraphs DotOrg suggested.

I'd put "Gallery: " before the three sections, attention spans are tiny and while some curious people might click to see what's there many others will be "don't know don't care" and bug out.

The container looks good but they really irk me in practise: on clicking a gallery, page up/down on the keyboard don't work nor the mouse scroller, I've got to look and figure out how to navigate which is something I shouldn't have to think about. Even then mouse wheel scrolling is a repetitive pain, and using page up/down as I prefer usually leaves half images so I've to use up/down arrows to view a full image.

Personally I'd just have them down a long page for now so it's easy to use, later or as the gallery expands you can use thumbs/pager etc for convenience, I'd try to have it that clicking a thumbnail shows a full image and no scrolling is required.

Nice shots btw, keep it up !

joeKel73

Just a quick note - the scrollbars look a bit ugly in the design - you can get scripts to redesign the scrollbars and make them part of the design. (eg from quick google: http://www.hesido.com/web.php?page=customscrollbar ).... just make sure it's one that works across different browsers!

pwd

I also found the container/scrollbars annoying. In particular, I found I had to use the two scrollbars interchangeably to see all the photos. Agree that thumbnails would be a big improvement.

Tallon

I like it's simplicity, but lose the black box

DaireQuinlan

Ditto on a lot of the objections above. Roll the splash screen and the initial home screen into one. There HAS to be an image on the first screen you hit. Use proper text, not images, for the text on the site, it looks better. And definately get rid of the whole scrolly thing. Just have a long column of images that extend for as long as need be down. Use the container scrollbar, don't put scrollbars on the page. Have some sort of keyboard shortcuts ALA the boston big picture. However I'd MAYBE make the images smaller and click into a bigger version (flash or div popup) although I think they actually work as they are at the moment, not withstanding the long load times.

dazftw

Right guys, thanks for the replies! I was thinking about re-doing the whole thing the other night.. looks im about to start :rolleyes:

Ill have to look up how to do it all with thumbnails and stuff so it'll be awhile before I have a new one made.

dazftw

I dunno why im bumping this as ive only started but heres the general layout/idea..



The menus at the top will underline like before
The thumbnails will glow when the cursor is hovering over them
When clicked they will pop up like in lightbox

When you click another menu from the top 3 on the left all the thumbs will slide across like as if you were using an iphone..

The blog maybe be put into the site and may not.. I havn't come that far yet.. Im creating this all in flash so I really don't know if I can even do it..

Contact me will have a question submit kinda thing.. with some text.

As for a "home" page I think I will leave it the background with all the menus/text and just one simple image! There will be no way back to this page.. IMO it will be better than just coming straight to the gallery parts.

The dimensions will be 1000 x 700 & with this design there should zero scrolling

Any opinions?

Time for bed :rolleyes:

DaireQuinlan

That's looking as though it could be considerably better. But please god do not use the word 'vernacular' as one of your gallery titles
I'd rethink the wording or grouping of the seperate galleries altogether. I don't know exactly how I WOULD do it, so this is the worst kind of criticism without any constructive comment, but I never like it when I see a site with pictures arranged into neat little generalised categories like that. A lot of my faved sites might have a 'general' or 'new work' but a the rest would be divided into the results of distinct projects the photog had embarked on.

chevron

If your looking for thumb nail view why not have a look at
www.dunnephotography.com
Its one im working on at the moment.
it uses simple viewer for the gallery. which is free software (with a paid option of course.)

Ricky91t

Loads really quick for me,I am on a quicker than normal connection though,Looks great and everything scrools ok..

Also there's 15 XHTML errors on the home page..Didn't check css or any other pages.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.darrencarlinphotography.com%2Fmain.html&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0