Can you tell if a website is bought "over the counter"?

Dinarius

I'm looking to change my website and I'd like, if possible, to buy something "over the counter" that would suit my needs.

I'm looking for a very clean, spare and high-key (white) look.

Here are a few sites I like....

http://www.jecxz.com/

http://tristanhutchinson.com/

http://www.jasperwhite.co.uk/

http://www.kerrphoto.com/

http://www.walkerpickering.com/

http://www.jkphotography.com/

http://www.wolfmarloh.com/

http://www.thomasbroening.com/

Is it possible to tell if any of these come from the likes of the Themeforest stable? :rolleyes:

Many thanks.

D.

tricky D

Hard to give any advice without knowing what are your needs... Is it just portfolio or are you planning to sell?

Dinarius

Sorry. I thought it was obvious I'm a photographer.

The menus in all the above sites are pretty standard, and that's what I'm after.

If I could buy a ready made, but editable site, I would. The thing is, most of what I see on the likes of Themeforest is very cheesy and very American.

I want lots of white screen and discreet menu text, just like above.

So, if any of those sites above were identifiable as being such-and-such from Themeforest, or wherever, I'd be very interested in knowing.

Thanks for the reply.

D.

Kenny Logins

Those sites don't look like templates to me, TBH I don't think anyone would buy them. :pac:

tricky D

Photographer was indeed obvious, but togs have many various website needs: hobby portfolio, professional portfolio, commercial, takes bookings, selling photos.

From a glance of your suggestions I've highlighted the most obvious "don't dos" which you need to avoid.

http://www.thomasbroening.com
Hijacks regular mouse functions which is BAD. Long wait, which looks like nothing is happening, for homepage to load.

http://www.jkphotography.com
Nav is a bit mixed up.

http://www.wolfmarloh.com
Weird alignments. Not Responsive.

http://www.walkerpickering.com/
Looks nice but hijacks mouse again. Ugly URLs.

http://www.kerrphoto.com/
Flash based. Delete from your list with extreme prejudice. Enough said.

http://tristanhutchinson.com
Horizontal scrolling gallery - bad.

http://www.jecxz.com
Strange alignments and uses frames. Looks nicest to me barring the issues.

http://www.jasperwhite.co.uk
Mouse hijack.

As Kenny suggests, most if not all of these look like bespoke designs.


Must haves:

• Responsive Design is a must have.
• Content Management System (editable).
• Quick loading pages.

Strongly urge you to have:

• Something that doesn't hijack mouse functions, that's confusing and anti-intuitive. (Don't Make Me Think is a book all about this)
• SEO capabilities.
• Social Media.
• No low contrast grey on grey text.
• Clear site structure with prominent navigation. Buried/discreet nav is not usually a good idea, it just annoys users.
• Centre aligned content areas.
• Full and proper contact details incl form.
• If are selling services or photos, put the prices up (or indicative price at a minimum). If you are reluctant or have reasons not to put prices up, refer to the sentence before this one.

Recommendations

• Try to use a gallery system which allows for captions unless you are very sure you don't need them.

If you are selling, then that's another can of worms.

That's it for the mo, gotta dash.

hth/gl

Dinarius

Kenny Logins wrote: »

Those sites don't look like templates to me, TBH I don't think anyone would buy them. :pac:

Good photography websites only need to look like gallery walls. Everything stands or falls on the images.

Thanks for the reply.

D.

Banta

http://www.jecxz.com/ - looks custom.

http://tristanhutchinson.com/ - No longer available. Came from http://cargocollective.com/designs/

http://www.jasperwhite.co.uk/ - looks custom or some basic site with widget

http://www.kerrphoto.com/ - Flash site from liveBooks. Don't touch it.

http://www.walkerpickering.com/ - some squarespace template.

http://www.jkphotography.com/ - something to do with these guys: http://www.indexhibit.org/forum/thread/590 I'm not reading any more of that. It's awful. (http://www.indexhibit.org/price/ ?!?!? Jebus!)

http://www.wolfmarloh.com/ - looks custom and very dated code.

http://www.thomasbroening.com/ - looks to be from where ever http://www.jasperwhite.co.uk/ is from.


There are nicer free templates just about any where. Not going to critique them too much. But I'm sure you could find similar free templates some where if that's the look you're going for.

Dinarius

tricky D wrote: »

Photographer was indeed obvious, but togs have many various website needs: hobby portfolio, professional portfolio, commercial, takes bookings, selling photos.

From a glance of your suggestions I've highlighted the most obvious "don't dos" which you need to avoid.

http://www.thomasbroening.com
Hijacks regular mouse functions which is BAD. Long wait, which looks like nothing is happening, for homepage to load.

http://www.jkphotography.com
Nav is a bit mixed up.

http://www.wolfmarloh.com
Weird alignments. Not Responsive.

http://www.walkerpickering.com/
Looks nice but hijacks mouse again. Ugly URLs.

http://www.kerrphoto.com/
Flash based. Delete from your list with extreme prejudice. Enough said.

http://tristanhutchinson.com
Horizontal scrolling gallery - bad.

http://www.jecxz.com
Strange alignments and uses frames. Looks nicest to me barring the issues.

http://www.jasperwhite.co.uk
Mouse hijack.

As Kenny suggests, most if not all of these look like bespoke designs.


Must haves:

• Responsive Design is a must have.
• Content Management System (editable).
• Quick loading pages.

Strongly urge you to have:

• Something that doesn't hijack mouse functions, that's confusing and anti-intuitive. (Don't Make Me Think is a book all about this)
• SEO capabilities.
• Social Media.
• No low contrast grey on grey text.
• Clear site structure with prominent navigation. Buried/discreet nav is not usually a good idea, it just annoys users.
• Centre aligned content areas.
• Full and proper contact details incl form.
• If are selling services or photos, put the prices up (or indicative price at a minimum). If you are reluctant or have reasons not to put prices up, refer to the sentence before this one.

Recommendations

• Try to use a gallery system which allows for captions unless you are very sure you don't need them.

If you are selling, then that's another can of worms.

That's it for the mo, gotta dash.

hth/gl

That helps a lot. Many thanks.

D.

Dinarius

Just curious, but why is Flash a no-no?

Thanks again. This is all very helpful!

D.

Dinarius

Ps. Cargo Collective looks interesting. Not as "cheesy" and American as the Themeforest offerings.

D.

Dinarius

Pps.

One more for your consideration......

http://www.simonburch.com/

I'm guessing custom made, but thought I'd ask anyway.

D.

Kenny Logins

Dinarius wrote: »

Good photography websites only need to look like gallery walls. Everything stands or falls on the images.

Thanks for the reply.

D.

Yep, my point was that there are some issues with each of the sites you posted, and these would make them difficult to sell.

You can make a very simple, clean and responsive site without relying on a template though. A framework is close to a blank canvas but with all of the underlying code in place. I'd go from there.

tricky D

Dinarius wrote: »

Good photography websites only need to look like gallery walls. Everything stands or falls on the images.

Thanks for the reply.

D.

It's not that simple. Imagine the impression you would make for a client if you just showed them photos with no presentation. The non-gallery treatment is part of the overall presentation and there are shed loads of considerations beyond just a gallery eg. tone of the text copy, contact methods, business factors like shipping and returns, to name a few. Then there's all the various galleries and their very variable quality. With the photography profession, there's a gazillion factors at play which non-professionals/experts have no clue about and make bad and dismissive assumptions about. Don't make the same mistaken assumptions when looking at sorting out a web presence. Even a simple looking photo can have a lot of unseen work behind it, same for a web presence.

Dinarius wrote: »

Just curious, but why is Flash a no-no?

Doesn't work on many devices, generally rubbish for SEO, buggy, insecure, uncustomisable, no structure for URIs (can't refer some one directly or easily to an image or page)...

Avoid it like the plague.

The Corinthian

When I read the title of this thread, I thought it was referring to some clandestine, black market trafficking of Web sites...

...brought here with the promise of false specs and SEO targets... their DNS entries taken away from them and held by unscrupulous Web consultancies...

Dinarius

Thanks guys,

Cargo Collective looks very interesting. http://cargocollective.com/

And, according to this site> https://www.bestvendor.com/apps/design-templates/cargo-collective (scroll down the page) there are plenty of alternatives to it.

Anyone got any experience of any of these?

Many thanks.

D.

devildriver

Koken is designed specifically for photographers.

I tried out an earlier version some time ago and was quite impressed with it.

http://koken.me/

Dinarius

Thanks! Will look into it.

Here's a site from Cargo that I like. (I also like the work) http://peterzeglis.com/ The design template is called Polaris.

Thanks again.

D.

smash

A lot of these look like Behance pro sites, which are free to anyone with a behance account and an adobe subscription.