Completely re-did my website [Archive] - Canon Digital Photography Forums

Scarter275

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 01:50

Tell me what you think. What you like and don't like.

Also, I'm not too sure about the 2 images of me on the photographer page and the contact page. I like the photographer page photo but am not too sure about the contact page photo.

And yes, the website currently does not resize. It will be changed within the next week. As well as the font for the SC Photography will be changed to match that of my logo. Also, the contact form will be easier to read.

scphotographymn.com

Thanks!

Electric Monk

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 02:10

was this built from a flash template?

Hikin Mike

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 04:24

And yes, the website currently does not resize. It will be changed within the next week. As well as the font for the SC Photography will be changed to match that of my logo. Also, the contact form will be easier to read.

When you already have several "issues" why not wait until you have the bugs fixed and then let us now the website is done? ;)

asysin2leads

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 10:26

Get rid of the music. Nothing pisses people off than having music built into a site and having it blast out of their speakers when the least expect it.

sevillafox

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 12:46

GAH! Kill the music! Also, maybe it's me, but I can't get ANYWERE! All I get is the music and the pic of those kids almost kissing.

Binning

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 14:33

GAH! Kill the music! Also, maybe it's me, but I can't get ANYWERE! All I get is the music and the pic of those kids almost kissing.

I had the same problem navigating the site

JakPot

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 15:34

I can't get ANYWERE! All I get is the music and the pic of those kids almost kissing.

ditto

OneCall

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 15:47

Same here??

Mike-DT6

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 16:01

First impressions are good, apart from the music, but that can be turned off (although I wouldn't have it on there in the first place if I were you :-) ).

I think you only need one photo of yourself. The one of you with your camera is good.

The site doesn't seem to be loading all the photos under the 'Menu' section, and then when it does, some appear in delay. It didn't do the same thing each time I visited the site.

As the others have said, the navigation is very confusing. When I selected something and it brought up the thumbnails, as soon as I moved the mouse pointer away from where I selected something, the thumbnails disappeared. When I realized you could get them to show up again by moving the mouse pointer to the bottom of the page, it wouldn't load the thumbnails when I clicked on whichever one I wanted to see.

The Galleries section sub-menus are a bit confusing where it repeats the name of the previous section and also in the same size and colour font.

I think you will lose nearly every casual visitor for the above-mentioned reasons. I almost always give up on a site when I find that it is flash-based. I prefer something easy to navigate without elaborate displays or functions.

By the way, that redhead is lovely, whoever she is. :-D

Mike

Steve Parr

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 16:20

I had no problem navigating the site, really.

As for the music, if you're going to have it playing, it should never fade out. Either have it or don't. I'll agree with others here, though, I wouldn't have it at all...

PhotosGuy

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 18:57

I can't see the menus on my laptop @ scphotographymn.com. Just the image.

Scarter275

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 19:14

Yes, it's flashed based.

I don't see how its hard to get from the main page? It says menu and gallery at the very top? Unless you were using a smaller monitor, than everything would be cut off :( The site designer is out for a convention (bigfolio) and won't be back for a few more days to fix the problem.

Also, the deal with the gallery images and having the bottom part always disappearing is kind of annoying, i know. I think i'm going to spend some money and have them make it so the images are a slideshow or see what they can do about it.

I'll get rid of the second image of myself and make the music optional.

Thanks for the feedback.

JakPot

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 19:33

Yes, it's flashed based.

I don't see how its hard to get from the main page? It says menu and gallery at the very top? Unless you were using a smaller monitor, than everything would be cut off :( The site designer is out for a convention (bigfolio) and won't be back for a few more days to fix the problem.

Smaller monitor? Here at work I'm on a 19" flat panel and all I see is a pic with no navigation. What size monitor do I need? I see that you will have the site to resize, and I think that's a VERY smart move. This would be very frustrating to clients

Box Brownie

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 20:27

Hi

I have a 15inch LCD and unless I F11 the links and your copyright note at the bottom are cut through. I would hope your designer can arrange for an auto sizing script to run as just possibly many potential clients may be trying to view your site on 15inch laptops with a 1024x768 resolution.

HTH :)

swimchic

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 20:37

I didn't have any problems navigating through your site, however I do have a 22" monitor, so I'm not sure if that was where everyone else was having problems. I think it's nice & simple. I do agree about the way the thumbnails are in the gallery, (how they cut over the picture.) I definitely think that should be a priority to get fixed. Other than that I thought it was nice :)

Sp00ks

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 20:37

It looked good to me loading with FireFox. Easy to navigate, I missed the music thank goodness. The only thing I didn't care for was the 2nd page of images, I think it would be more intuitive if the radio looking buttons were arrows or numbers to indicate there was another page of images. Other than that, I think it looks good.

I have a 20" monitor running 1600x1200 and had a lot of white space around the main flash.

Scarter275

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 20:49

That's weird that it didn't work with your 19inch monitor.

Thanks you guys.

Mike-DT6

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 21:02

Hikin Mike

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 21:17

It may be because of the Status Bar or Navigation Bar. If I disable those bars, I can see the whole screen.

R_Metzel

5th of January 2008 (Sat), 21:26

Easy to read/see on my 22" monitor. Didn't like the thumbnails on the gallery pages. It looks like it just randomly picks a point in the photo and thats the preview. So I cant tell what photo it is...

Scarter275

6th of January 2008 (Sun), 00:37

I'm not too sure how it detects what you have. They said that they would install a script to fix it. But i'm not too sure what that means.

PhotosGuy

6th of January 2008 (Sun), 10:32

I can't see the menus on my laptop @ scphotographymn.com. Just the image. Looking again, there are just the very bottom 4-5 pixels of a menu text. If I point at them, the menu drops down. Besides that & the image, there's nothing.

JakPot

6th of January 2008 (Sun), 10:47

Mine is a 19" monitor, using a 1280 x 1024 resolution and I could see the navigation. Maybe Jake didn't have the correct Flash plug-in. Is your site set to detect that and display a warning or download prompt for viewers without the Flash plug-in?

Mike

I think the resolution was set at 1024x768 on that machine. And fairly sure it has the flash plug-in.

But really, how many "normal" users have 20+" monitors? I'm willing to bet it's not as many as those having less than 20" monitors.

This would be a huge problem to me. Who cares about how the gallery loads if customers can't even get to that part?

Mike-DT6

6th of January 2008 (Sun), 11:24

I think I read somewhere that around 97% of internet users have a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or higher.

Mike

Binning

6th of January 2008 (Sun), 17:23

I could navigate forward, but not backward or around once I moved forward

dekalbSTEEL

6th of January 2008 (Sun), 22:27

I'm not so sure about the pic of you holding that big lens out in front of you. Maybe a nice wide angle zoom or a short prime?

Scarter275

6th of January 2008 (Sun), 23:48

I'm not so sure about the pic of you holding that big lens out in front of you. Maybe a nice wide angle zoom or a short prime?

thats the only pic I have of me with a camera.

I'm not too sure what it's set at. It comes in perfectly on my 17inch monitor. But doesn't come in on my work and schools 15inch monitors.

dekalbSTEEL

8th of January 2008 (Tue), 21:06

thats the only pic I have of me with a camera.

I'm not too sure what it's set at. It comes in perfectly on my 17inch monitor. But doesn't come in on my work and schools 15inch monitors.

I was talking about the imagery! ( I'm kinda warped that way:-o)

leninglass

9th of January 2008 (Wed), 05:23

How much did you pay this people? It does look like it was from a template. horribly done for my taste. For the people that have the site cut off on them and you say that their monitor is too small? I have a 23 inch Sony and it cuts off...

I am on the process of making my portfolio site and It is XHTML , CSS , and JAVASCRIPT based. NO FLASH AT ALL. PERIOD. As a web and graphic designer, I see that many user don't have flash or even like to wait for a flash file to load!

Mike-DT6

9th of January 2008 (Wed), 10:58

It would be interesting to know how many people don't bother hanging around when they see a Flash site. When I visit a site and I see the beginnings of a flash-based site starting to load my heart sinks and I usually press the back button.

I think the problem is down to self-indulgent designers overcomplicating things just because they can.

Hikin Mike

9th of January 2008 (Wed), 15:59

sevillafox

9th of January 2008 (Wed), 16:03

Mike-DT6

9th of January 2008 (Wed), 17:54

:lol: I've only ever started one poll on here and that one is running at the moment. One is enough for me!

Mike

:-)

Scarter275

9th of January 2008 (Wed), 22:03

How much did you pay this people? It does look like it was from a template. horribly done for my taste. For the people that have the site cut off on them and you say that their monitor is too small? I have a 23 inch Sony and it cuts off...

I'm using bigfolio, it is a newly redesigned template. So they are still fixing the bugs i guess. The designer of the template is away at a convention, so he's unable to fix the problems with it. I had a special coupon for the site so i got %40 off, was only 150.

Maybe the problem is more than just having a smaller sized monitor. I haven't tried it on a 23 inch, but i have tried it on a 24inc Imac and it came in perfectly...

Scarter275

14th of January 2008 (Mon), 22:02

Okay, they said that they fixed the resizing issue.

Could you let me know if it's resizing correctly? Thanks a bunch!

leninglass

15th of January 2008 (Tue), 20:01

Close to flawless! Great website now. Try having them give you a 20px padding at the bottom.

Scarter275

15th of January 2008 (Tue), 21:24

Close to flawless! Great website now. Try having them give you a 20px padding at the bottom.

Great! Thanks, yeah i told them about it, it also cuts off the copy write on the bottom, so they are going to fix that.

And than in a month or so i'm going to pay for them to make the gallerys into a slideshow rather than having to click on each photo.

PhotosGuy

16th of January 2008 (Wed), 10:32

It looks OK on my CRT. Haven't checked with the laptop. And than in a month or so i'm going to pay for them to make the gallerys into a slideshow Personally, I hate those, especially the ones with music.

djscrib

16th of January 2008 (Wed), 23:56

Lots of good comments above on this.

I'd still consider shrinking the main area abit. It's tight for 1024x768 users depending on how many toolbars and other things they have on screen.

Also 800x600 is not completely dead yet, Lots of older people will run this resolution.

I think the margins between the photo and the text should be consistent on the top and bottom of your main image. The top nav stuff looks a bit too tight.

Dump the music. Is there a chance of you gaining sales because people like the music? Not likely.

Is there a chance a person closes their browser immediately because of it and you lose a sale? Likely.

Your double-flyout under galleries is not the most intuitive. The 2nd flyout sort of magically appears without any indicators.

I personally hate flash sites for business sites (same thing as with the sound, you'll lose more customers than you'll gain). But understand why people do it.

Overall a very nice looking site. Only critical things I would say are the menus and the music.

blackshadow

17th of January 2008 (Thu), 03:16

Lose the !@#$ing music - as soon as it came on I shut down the site. If I want music I listen to my own.

JakPot

17th of January 2008 (Thu), 20:15

i still have mixed feelings about it. I agree about the double fly outs... I kept hitting the button thinking nothing happened.

Also, for me some of the transitions between pages seem kind of choppy & slow. But now that I can actually see the site, it's a good start.. keep at it.