me too - site opinions please

sineadw

www.gigshots.ie

Its a bit rough around the edges (bloody Firefox won't align the name box for example ). Anyone have any pointers?

ttcomet

I like this layout a lot it is very clean and professional looking.

"including portraiture and promo shots as well as live venue photography", There is to my eye only one type of photo showing on the pages the live venue stuff, maybe make links for the portraits and promo shoots.

Fill in lots of meta tags/keywords it will increase your chances of getting picked up properly by google/yahoo etc.

Change the title of the page to "Gigshots.ie". I think it looks better with the capital first letter.

If you are going to link to your Flickr page I would recommend you take out the personnel photos. Or maybe set up a separate profile for the professional end of things on Flickr. The same with myspace just be careful what a prospective client sees about you.

I know I made a few points here but they are all very small points, I think the site is excellent overall.

Hugh_C

Call me old fashioned but I'd like to know more about you as a potential customer, an ABOUT page wouldn't go amiss, where you're based, if you'll travel etc etc. Some of the thumbnails are difficult to make out at that size and format. And I don't like being told to change my browser or its capabilities to read a site.

Enough of the criticism, otherwise it's great, cool domain name and will scale well once you populate it with other genres.

good luck!

\hugh

thebaz

yeah i like it -- did you use jalbum ?

thats what i used


www.barrydelaney.ie

PixelTrawler

First of all good first effort

I think you are mixing up java and javascript.
You are using the lightview script to power the gallery - all just standard javascript and nothing to do with the Java language...

So its pointless pointing people to java.com to download the latest sun java
(unless theres a java applet somewhere on the site i didnt spot...)

Also "best viewed in firefox"... (FF is probably more popular amoung boards users but its only about 15% of the general population - whether you like it or not, it has to look well in IE - you shouldnt give the impression they are missing out on some of the experience of your site because they have the "wrong" browser)

Check your code errors - it'll help on this front

You should be able to get the site to work pretty much identical in IE, FF, Safari and Opera at least. The design is simple, should no reason it cant work well in these browsers - You're about 99% covered then

Design is plain but ok... thumbnails could be a bit bigger, or perhaps a subtle border is needed (you can apply with a style sheet) - they all seem to jumble up a bit...

You need a bigger title too - it needs to stand out more.

Theres just something a bit drab and uninteresting about the colour scheme - lots of blacks and greys and b&w shots make for site that doesnt jump off the screen.

Your shots are great but I dont think this site is showing them off to their best... its sort of holding them back

Click on your flickr link and compare the two sites - the shots seem more vibrant on flickr as the site design lifts the shots instead of working against them

Great domain name by the way - did you register it as a business name to get the .ie?

I dont want to come across as harsh but i think a few tweaks to the colours and some attention to the gallery layout could really lift things

sineadw

Thanks for all the brilliant feedback guys - its really appreciated. I built the thing in an all-nighter last night and by afternoon today my brain was mush. So yep - everything here's really helped me out. I'll get stuck in again tomorrow...

@ttcomet - D'oh - forgot the meta tags - will sort out the SEO tomorrow.. I want to keep up the link to Myspace as that's where I have most contact with bands. I might take the flickr link down...hmmm... And you're right - I'll stick a few portrait shots up tomorrow.

@hugh - Thanks It took me about an hour to write the few lines about myself that are up there (for someone who never shuts up I find it hard to write about myself ) but yep - I'll put something more personal up. My sister said exactly the same thing. I do intend to have a link to a more general photo blog as this really isn't a commercial venture for me. Maybe that'd make it feel more personal? And yep - the firefox thing is going tomorrow too. I wrote that at 4.30 this morning in a desperate attempt to fill space :rolleyes:

@Baz - I went for lightview in the end as I thought the default navigation system was a little friendlier. Oh and I messaged you on Myspace

@solyad - thanks! First off - I swear I *do* know the difference between Java and Javascript I have no idea why I wrote that. 4am dementia probably. I'll get rid of it tomorrow - thanks for the nod. I haven't got around to validating yet, its something I hate for some reason. I did originally have a thin grey border around each thumbnail but it was displaying as a thick blue one in IE as they're linked images. In the end I gave up and stuck a border: none in the css. I'm a bit rusty with css - you know a fix for that? As for overall design I agree - its too conservative. Its a problem I have with design that I err on the side of caution. I did originally have a larger title at the top of the page but it threw the symmetry off. I might widen the left div tomorrow and make it a little more prominent. Any suggestions as to colour scheme would again be greatly appreciated.

Oh and the domain name I love I was surprised at the ease I got it with TBH. Its just a portfolio site (and always will be) so I didn't have to provide a company number or anything, but they never asked me for anything to prove what I was doing with it - I just sent a link to my flickr and a short note and they seemed happy with that. Result

Again, thanks all! I'm going to bed to sleep for a week

RoryW

Looks well, agree with comment re a brief "about" section.

Telephone/Mobile number for contacting you ?
Consider also a Skypein number that can be accessed from anywhere, has voicemail, and is still "local"

I would suggest you drop the link to flickr on the gigshots.ie webpage as flickr has non gigshot related photos on it and I always think that a link from a "professional" website to a flickr site lessens the professionalism of the professional site.

I suggest that you register the business name gigshots.ie with the companies office as well
see http://www.cro.ie/ena/business-registration-business-name.aspx for details

Hugh_C

sineadw wrote: »

Oh and the domain name I love I was surprised at the ease I got it with TBH.

Who/what is tbh? Or who did you register it with?

YogiBear

Some really cool shots Sinead!! Well done!

Creamy Goodness

really nice website.

one thing i would suggest though is a contact form that would email you instead of a mailto: link.

mailto is generally frowned upon due to it alienating potential customers who use web based mail clients

Fenster

Sinead, this might help you straighten out your website's issues:

W3C validation

It doesn't look bad at all. My biggest gripe is that none of the links to galleries have an informative tooltip.

JanneG

I think the best way for you to get rid of the blue border or the link decoration as it would be called is to use the following in CSS:

img { border: none; }

Hopefully that will work for you.

Otherwise you can go down the more drastic route of getting rid of all link decoration through adding the following to your CSS:

A:link {text-decoration: none;}
A:visited {text-decoration: none;}
A:active {text-decoration: none;}
A:hover {text-decoration: none;}

Other than that I will agree with previous posters comments. Page look nice but could do with some tweaking

Balfey1972

nice and clean. works well. just add a little more about you etc as previously mentioned.

paudie

Hugh TBH is "to be honest" not a company.

Can't believe you didn't have to register a company, by the way the CRO doesn't let you register a name that has .ie at the end of it. You'd have to register gigshots, but if your hosting company doesn't need it then don't bother I'd say, wish I'd none that before I went all official.

Oh yeah like the site, just what others said above really.

sineadw

Right! I think I've covered everything? I managed to fix the css (haven't checked it in Opera or Safari yet) and did a bit of tweaking with the design. Its also valid, and I put the meta stuff in. Still not sure about the design though? Any ideas?

I also put a bit more text in, and some portrait shots I haven't got around to a contact form page yet. I'll do that tomorrow hopefully. Opinions?

And thanks again to everyone for your help

http://www.gigshots.ie

Hugh_C

paudie wrote: »

Hugh TBH is "to be honest" not a company

Yeah, that's what I thought, it's just the way the original sentence was written. I must have been on crack or something ...



Sinead, like the new look, always liked that selfie with the blue eyes. Like the red - certainly an improvement.

PixelTrawler

Much nicer! About safari and opera... generally if you get it right in IE and FF, it should be okay in the others... (generally!)

By the way its bang on in Opera 9.5, just checked

mikeanywhere

I like the simplistic approach Sinead, very nice and somewhat different to others out there.

Well done! :cool:

Buzz Lightyear

Well done Sinead. The site looks much better after a bit of sleep .
It's much punchier with the hyperlinked frames and the tones and sizes of the images work very well.

One thing I would do to stop yourself getting spammed is to remove the mailto link. You'd be amazed at the amount of spam this one piece of text will give you. I'd either do a contact me sheet which with a bit of css could be semi see through over your maind page, or I'd textualise the link e.g sinead [at] gigshots [dot] ie.

Very well done.

JanneG

Solyad wrote: »

By the way its bang on in Opera 9.5, just checked

I can tell you the same goes for Safari

sineadw

Thanks all Still a bit of work to be done, but I'm happy for the time being. And my personal holy grail of cross-browser compatability - yay! Although I think I'll be dreaming in CSS for a month...