What do you think?

Benzino

Hey all,

This is my first php site, and as a result I went about it the wrong way design wise, I got the functionality of it working before i even considered the design of the site. But, it was my first time using php and mysql so I was excited and wanted to work on it first

Anyway, the site is http://www.pascalspics.net/

Design isn't one of my strong areas, so your advice and suggestions are appreciated. Feel free to beat me with a stick (metaphorically :P) if it's terrible.

P.S. I didn't make everything on the site, I am using some scripts developed my others for the likes of the star-rating functionality and highslide.

P.P.S. Im not sure about the layout of the homepage myself. As there is very little information to display, I just wanted to show the latest photos uploaded. Any suggestions here would be greatly appreciated.

ScumLord

I like it, simple, straight forward, easy to navigate and uncluttered. Could do with some added gloss maybe but other than that I think it's fine.

Bob_Harris

The hovering effect over the images on the front page is nice, but (depending on the users resolution or browser windows size) the images at the edge cause scroll bars to appear and disappear, which nudges the whole content of the page around.

Maybe the images along the right hand side and along the bottom could display their enlarged images in the opposite direction to prevent this from happening.

Eoin

Benzino wrote: »

I went about it the wrong way design wise, I got the functionality of it working before i even considered the design of the site

That's the right way around - "form follows function". Get the site to do what it should do, and then prettify it after! If that's your first PHP site, then well done.

Benzino

Bob_Harris wrote: »

The hovering effect over the images on the front page is nice, but (depending on the users resolution or browser windows size) the images at the edge cause scroll bars to appear and disappear, which nudges the whole content of the page around.

Maybe the images along the right hand side and along the bottom could display their enlarged images in the opposite direction to prevent this from happening.

Good suggestion. I have modified it so it doesn't cause any scollers to occur. It's not perfect, but does the job

By the way, I didn't write the code for the image preview (don't know jQuery ), but it's pretty cool and simple to use. I got it from http://cssglobe.com/post/1695/easiest-tooltip-and-image-preview-using-jquery

p

eoin wrote: »

That's the right way around - "form follows function". Get the site to do what it should do.

Truee, but in this case, it's not form follows function, it's form follows features. Design is not about making something pretty, it's about deciding what that form should actually be in the first place.

eoin wrote: »

, and then prettify it after! If that's your first PHP site, then well done.

Agreed, it's a great first site.


Regarding the design, overall it's not bad, but it is a very 'technical' design. It's clearly been designed the way you said. When you're learning that's fine but if I was to advise a way to design this site i'd do it this way.

The most important thing is to find out the goals of the site. I'd usually then put them in order of importance. e.g.
1. Sell more prints
2. Increase bookings
3. Showcase work

Now the site you have, I would say the main goal of it is to be an online gallery for the photographer, so he can send links to the uploaded galleries to his clients, since there's must be nearly a hundred albums there, but very little info about the photographer. I don't know if that is the goal or not, but very few photographers have a site like this one. What's there is more like flickr, rather than a portfolio. That may or may not be what was needed.

Have a read of this:
http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/7577
And also, take a look at this recent discussion about another person designing a photographers site, it will be interesting to contrast it with your own project.
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055792829

One small thing. Get rid of the 'Zoom: 83%' bit. Noone cares about that except you. It's of no relevance to your visitors. Since it's not a flexible side you should be resizing them all to the correct size on the server before ever seeing them on the site.

Well done though - overall it's a really great first site.

Eoin

p wrote: »

Truee, but in this case, it's not form follows function, it's form follows features. Design is not about making something pretty, it's about deciding what that form should actually be in the first place.

Good point. I don't mean to be flippant about good design - I know it's a lot more than pretty pictures! Just meant that I would start with the individual pieces of functionality first, and plug them into the design later on.

Benzino

p wrote: »

Now the site you have, I would say the main goal of it is to be an online gallery for the photographer, so he can send links to the uploaded galleries to his clients, since there's must be nearly a hundred albums there, but very little info about the photographer. I don't know if that is the goal or not, but very few photographers have a site like this one. What's there is more like flickr, rather than a portfolio. That may or may not be what was needed.

Thanks for the feedback!! Regarding the above, the site is for my dad (:D) whose hobby is taking pictures. It's not really a business, he just wanted a site for himself so that friends, family and the people in the local area could visit and view his pictures. Soon people were asking for prints and if he could take photos for them on certain occasions so he started charging to cover ink and travel expenses etc, hence the text in the home page.

It essentially is like flickr, he just preferred to have his own site. The site has been up since 2007, but the previous one was just html and javascript, which meant adding a new album involved creating html files and manually creating thumbnails (it's was as awful as it sounds). So I decided myself to learn php allowing my dad to upload the photos himself thru an admin area without having to creating pages and thumbnails etc.

p wrote: »

One small thing. Get rid of the 'Zoom: 83%' bit. Noone cares about that except you. It's of no relevance to your visitors. Since it's not a flexible side you should be resizing them all to the correct size on the server before ever seeing them on the site.

I had that in there in case the photo was too big (width size) to fit into the page. But now that you mention it, it's really not necessary as the photos usually fit into the page (and if they don't, they are just slightly too big).

I'll remove that now, thanks for the advice

p

Sounds like it fits the bill so and you haven't gone on too far a tangent.

If you're interesting in learning a bit more about design and usability and stuff like that, nothng can bit getting someone to try out the site and see what they make of it. Don't help them with anything, just observe them, see what makes sense and try viewing it through their eyes.

The biggest challenge in design is learning to thinking about projects and not just designing for yourself.

Again though, great site for a first timer, and looks like a great learning experience.


Check this out too, could be interesting for future projects:
http://960.gs/

Benzino

p wrote: »

Sounds like it fits the bill so and you haven't gone on too far a tangent.

If you're interesting in learning a bit more about design and usability and stuff like that, nothng can bit getting someone to try out the site and see what they make of it. Don't help them with anything, just observe them, see what makes sense and try viewing it through their eyes.

The biggest challenge in design is learning to thinking about projects and not just designing for yourself.

Again though, great site for a first timer, and looks like a great learning experience.

Check this out too, could be interesting for future projects:
http://960.gs/

That does look interesting alright, i'll check it out. Thanks for the link and all your help

Fergaloc

for your first php site well done , the pic hovering thing is cool, makes the website that bit better, you could add more to it but its still good
maybe it needs more maybe it doesn't

Liam Byrne

The only problem I'd have is that the images "behind" the text can't be seen or hovered.

Other than that, damn good for a novice!

Fergaloc

well if the text was moved a bit so that you could just hover over everything im not sure where it could be moved to for it to still be on the photos, texxt might need to be moved to somewhere outside the pics