New site for review...

Saruman

I have just done a first draft for a photography site.
There was an existing site, similar to what i uploaded but not very polished and very bad and jagged graphics and text etc.

http://www.penderphotography.com/

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.
Im waiting to hear back from the client now.
Im obviously not a professional designer, I was just asked to do one by my wife's friend.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Design critique aside, I think the compression on the sample photos is way too high.
That "About Us" link makes no sense... it's one person isn't it?
You'd better hope the client doesn't use IE6... since it doesn't support transparency for PNGs (view it in IE6, the menus are a mess). :eek: You could just convert them to gifs with a solid black background, I'm not sure why there's a need for transparency there in the first place.

Saruman

I know what you mean about "about us", but thats what was there on the previous site so i need to hear from client first before i change it. I would like to change it to "About Sonia" and make it more personal.
Also agree with the compression, alas there is a reason! Space! They were much larger originally but i could not upload them. Im not sure how much web server space she has yet but its obviously not a lot. I got the whole site down just over a megabyte in size. I can look at that again, such as hosting the images offsite or changing provider once i hear back from her.

The menu's though... they were fine in IE7, since i do not have IE 6 handy i could not check. I checked on firefox, safari and IE7 and it was fine. I can convert without much issue.
Thanks Donkey

Saruman

OK i altered the PNG's and took off transparency. It looks fine now in IE6 from what i can tell. I had to term on to a customers server to view with IE6 so i did not spend too much time testing.
The other stuff i need to wait for feedback from Sonia.

If anyone has any other suggestions then do not hesitate to let me know.
This is a stop gap before i re-develop it down the road and add in E-commerce, private pages for her clients to view/buy their own photo's etc.
I might make a flash version of the site too.
Thanks

Liam Byrne

If you view the site at 800x600 you have to scroll to see the menu - that's a complete no-no!

Page headers should match the content - at the moment the "Commercial" gallery has a header of "Gorgeous Wedding Photography".

The Flash gallery is included in a way that triggers the "Click to activate and use this control" issue; search on Google for this to find a simple script that counteracts this well-known issue.

Mouse pointer doesn't indicate that thumbnails are clickable; minor issue, given that they rollover, but still not the norm.

Image captioning is within Flash and therefore won't help with the search engine rankings.

Change the footer font to match the rest of the site, and make it a little more unobtrusive since it stands out more than the text on the page.

zardette

Hi there,

I love the way the site is easy on the eye and clutter free nice one

Why did you not include a contact form ?

If the client side browser does not have flash installed there is a big white gap which doesn't look too good ....

Maybe have a static image if the user has no flash player installed?

How are you marketing your page and what do you hope to achieve with the site?

Are you analyzing the traffic ?

Its a page that doesn't provide any information other than a few lines about the photographer maybe adding some links or giving some useful information always makes a site more popular and gives the client a better web presence.

What are you using to upload the pictures into the flash movie i.e can the site be easily extended.

Hope this helps!

Z

Bob the Builder

[IMG]file:///C:/Users/NEVILL%7E1/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg[/IMG]Nice website OP,

just a few points. When the screen of my LCD screen on my laptop is tilted, a small difference in the color becomes apparent in the logo background.

The background of your page is #000000 (Solid Black)
The background of your logo is #010101 (Black, but slightly grey)

Not something important, just fix it in your own time

also(see attatched image), the menu runs off the page which is slightly annoying because I have to scroll down to catch the end of it. and my screen isn't that small either...

maybe you should consider inserting analytics scripts into your website so as the website owner may be able to see who's looking at what, at what time. not important, but it's just a nice addon.

there are no alt tags on your images(from what i can see). Google loves these, and your target audience(wedding couples), will be using google to find you...

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css21&warning=0&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.penderphotography.com%2Fportfolio.htm

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.penderphotography.com%2Fportfolio.htm

Keep up the good work OP.

CuLT

Liam Byrne wrote: »

If you view the site at 800x600 you have to scroll to see the menu - that's a complete no-no!

This hasn't been relevant for quite some time, the number of users with an 800x600 resolution is so small as to be negligible these days.

For example, the number of boards.ie users who have a resolution of 800x600 is less than 3%, anything lower is usually a mobile phone.

Saruman

All good comments thanks.
Google analytics have been used, I have just not inserted into the new version of the site yet. On my to do list.
Im not bothered about 800x600 so much as Cult said, no one uses it and if they do then almost every website will have the same problem scrolling so they will just think its normal
Like i said, this is a quick redevelopment and i will be doing it again, adding more content and personalised login pages for her clients when she is ready. Thats a few months down the line and i need to sort out the hosting first so i can actually upload more content.

The alt tags on images again are on the to do list.

The flash images can be changed easily without flash at all, simpleviewer is handy it takes normal images and inserts them on the fly into the swf file. If you right click on the swf image you can view the normal image. So i just upload more pics and update a database file with the new image names. When i get more space i will upload better quality images as well as new ones. I also need caption s from the photographer for each image.

Again, great comments guys. I have not done much website design since the 90's so im having to learn the new formats like css etc as i go along. Gone are the days of simple html in notepad
Im teaching myself flash at the moment too.

I was thinking of getting digiwebs €99 a year 10 domain package, the one they are giving 2 free a week on boards. Good advertising strategy! If i do not get it free i might just buy it. No space issues then and i will have full control of the hosting. If i do any other sites i can host it on that server then.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Saruman wrote: »

Gone are the days of simple html in notepad

Lies. I still use notepad (well notepad++ for its tabbed MDI and sytax highlighting)
It's actually easier to write your html by hand these days, since you're not trying to manage a whole shítload of nested tables, font tags and spacer gifs(!)... html is far more readable now if you're doing it right.
The only thing to learn is CSS... which can require a major shift in thinking as to how you go about laying out a page.

Liam Byrne

CuLT wrote: »

This hasn't been relevant for quite some time, the number of users with an 800x600 resolution is so small as to be negligible these days.

For example, the number of boards.ie users who have a resolution of 800x600 is less than 3%, anything lower is usually a mobile phone.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

14% ?? Not a huge amount, I agree, but not negligible, and remember that even on larger screens someone may not have their browser full-screen.

If it were a major design issue for a web app, I'd say fine, but if it's simply a case of ensuring that the menu is top/left/both, then I'd consider allowing for it - nevf mentioned that it had caused problems for them too.

Remember that it's NOT just a case that "they'll have the same problem on other websites".....scrolling for CONTENT is OK, but scrolling to access the MENU/SITE NAVIGATION is off-putting.

Saruman

Im going to get around the menu problem by adding a floating menu on the right hand side. That way it will not matter.

Lies. I still use notepad (well notepad++ for its tabbed MDI and sytax highlighting)
It's actually easier to write your html by hand these days, since you're not trying to manage a whole shítload of nested tables, font tags and spacer gifs(!)... html is far more readable now if you're doing it right.
The only thing to learn is CSS... which can require a major shift in thinking as to how you go about laying out a page.

Actually i meant gone are the days of basic the HTML pages i started with in the 90's. Now there is javascript, css, PHP and all kinds of other languages on websites. Flash too. I started in notepad, before WYSIWYG editors were out

MacAonghusa

I disagree somewhat about 800*600. I wouldn't go out of my way to force my site down to that resolution but I wouldn't discount it totally. I have a tech site and there is still a significant number of visitors using that resolution.


About your site though...

- the first thing that struck me is that I need to scroll but I don't really see why I should need to consider the minimal amount of content. My suggestion would be to reduce the size of the main image but increase it's clarity ... it is a photography site afterall.

- why is "Photography" far more pronounced than "Sonia Pender"?

- the three left links ... personally I'd keep it simple by moving them up to the top left and put them the right way around or else put them across the top. I definitely shouldn't need to scroll to find them and tilt my head to read them.

- this issue of the links is worse on sub pages like portfolio.htm, it actually becomes annoying. Sorry to sound so harsh.

- the gallery is a little low IMO, i'd move it up an inch or two

I haven't read the other posts so I apologise if I have just repeated what someone else said.
checked in Firefox 2/WinXP.

MacAonghusa

Saruman wrote: »

I started in notepad, before WYSIWYG editors were out

So did you stop after WYSIWYG editors came out?
No point getting into a discussion on it now but there's a lot to be said for writing your own code. many of the best designers still code everything by hand.

Saruman

MacAonghusa wrote: »

So did you stop after WYSIWYG editors came out?
No point getting into a discussion on it now but there's a lot to be said for writing your own code. many of the best designers still code everything by hand.

No i kept going when WYSIWYG came out, Javascript started to appear etc... I stopped in 99 or so as i did not have time.

I agree with everyone on everything they are saying. As i said, i redid the site in the same format as the previous one. Now i have the go ahead to change the layout i can do it properly. The reason i redid it in this temp version is the last one, i think they designed with frontpage :eek:
It did not work in firefox at all. And even in IE it looked pretty rubbish.

When i re-do the new version a few months down the road i might look for more pointers.

squibs

I'm seeing about 1.5% at 800*600, declining every month.

I thought the text-on-it's-side navigation didn't work at all - it is difficult to read, and obtuse for no good reason. You seem to have enough room for a more conventional nav system.

Saruman

squibs wrote: »

I thought the text-on-it's-side navigation didn't work at all - it is difficult to read, and obtuse for no good reason. You seem to have enough room for a more conventional nav system.

I agree, i do not like it and it will not be like that on the redesign.

Duckjob

I'm on 1280 x 800 and can only see half the links without scrolling down.

That's on FF2 with no fancy toolbars etc. installed.

squibs wrote:

I thought the text-on-it's-side navigation didn't work at all - it is difficult to read, and obtuse for no good reason. You seem to have enough room for a more conventional nav system.

Agree with this, as the main navigation of the site it's far to obscure for the user to understand and get at.

MacAonghusa

I think he's got the point now about the links