My new website - if you have a moment...

[James33]

I JUST finished it tonight. I know I'll add to it and tweak it, but the general look and feel is about right for now. C&C is appreciated - especially if there are issues with other browsers or platforms. I used a PC and IE Explorer.

Oh - and NO MUSIC. :lol:

www.photophilephotography.com (http://www.photophilephotography.com/)

[yuriyo923]

not really liking your blue background... everything else looks good :)

[James33]

In your gallery I cannot seem to scroll down, so the images are getting cut in half.

Mathias - what is your browser window size? My page is about 900 pixels wide and a little over 900 pixels tall. Your browser doesn't show a scroll bar on the right to allow you to move down to better see the page?

Also, what is your platform and browser?

Thanks for the feedback all! :cool: I may change the blue to a little darker.

[Pete]

I'm on Windows XP with Firefox 3

The homepage seems to be aligned top-left, but when you go into the other pages, it jumps to centre alignment.

Also, the "portraits" page doesn't work (page not found). Overall, it's clear and straightforward.

[James33]

I'm on Windows XP with Firefox 3

The homepage seems to be aligned top-left, but when you go into the other pages, it jumps to centre alignment.

Also, the "portraits" page doesn't work (page not found). Overall, it's clear and straightforward.

Fixed the page not found - thanks. I'll check the alignment this afternoon!

[Faolan]

Doesn't work with Opera. The menu and header are missing.

Watermarked header images: Why?

Contact form is highly recommended - What about people visitng from public PCs? They're not going to be able to email you.

Services: You have a portfolio of images but nothing to describe what you do, so consider doing some filler text.

Autoviewer: Consider purchasing a licence or finding another slideshow presenter as it doens't look professional advertising someone elses product.

The code is sloppy and messy, you've missed closing tags (probably why it won't show in Opera), the CSS could be in a seperate container (to save bandwidth). You've not declared a doctype and also you've neglected SEO. Finally the code for Flash Player doesn't state the minimum version required.

I would also seriously recommend consider a table-less design to make it friendlier to alternative viewers.

[yuriyo923]

Mathias - what is your browser window size? My page is about 900 pixels wide and a little over 900 pixels tall. Your browser doesn't show a scroll bar on the right to allow you to move down to better see the page?

Also, what is your platform and browser?

Thanks for the feedback all! :cool: I may change the blue to a little darker.

I think darker blue would work better

[Grumbledook]

No offence meant by what I'm about to say but...

It looks a lot like people's first website from back in the 90s. Over used the emboss feature, it rarely looks good. The home page is left aligned the pricing page is centred, need to make the pages consistent.

Seems odd you put the definition of phile but not photo, either put in both or neither (though that is just my opinion)

There are a lot of free "photoblog" themes available for wordpress (free blog software) which would look a lot better. This does look like it was designed by a web design amateur (which may be the case), if you are trying to compete with others customers are probably going to go with the guy with the nicer looking site, all else being equal.

Hope you take that as the honest criticism that I intended and not some kind of attack. Faolan also pointed out some things that need addressing. Most of which would be solved if you used a pre made wordpress theme. Success as a business photographer involves perhaps more about marketing and business at the end of the day.

Good luck!

[scotthidley]

I noticed some grammar errors on your pricing page. I think it's important to use correct grammar on websites to come off as a more professional service. Perhaps cut the text out and run it through word, then paste it back in. I'm on mozilla and can't scroll down the images either. I'm using a 15" laptop and the width font sizes seem to be pretty decent.

[James33]

No offence meant by what I'm about to say but...

It looks a lot like people's first website from back in the 90s. Over used the emboss feature, it rarely looks good. The home page is left aligned the pricing page is centred, need to make the pages consistent.

Seems odd you put the definition of phile but not photo, either put in both or neither (though that is just my opinion)

There are a lot of free "photoblog" themes available for wordpress (free blog software) which would look a lot better. This does look like it was designed by a web design amateur (which may be the case), if you are trying to compete with others customers are probably going to go with the guy with the nicer looking site, all else being equal.

Hope you take that as the honest criticism that I intended and not some kind of attack. Faolan also pointed out some things that need addressing. Most of which would be solved if you used a pre made wordpress theme. Success as a business photographer involves perhaps more about marketing and business at the end of the day.

Good luck!

No offense at all. You are right - I am a total amateur when it comes to websites. I was pretty up to date when HTML first came out (90's just like you said - :lol:) but just haven't kept up. I don't want to pay anyone to do it for me, so I plan on improving it as I go and learn more CSS and XHTML. I have a full time job that is not photography so I am not expecting people to rush to my website and sign up for anything. The work I get will most likely be referral stuff for a while anyway.

I am not familar with wordpress - any links to websites, software to use, etc to get someone stuck in the 90's back in the 21st century would be appreciated. :D

I plan on addressing as many of the comments as I can this weekend. I am currently using Frontpage 2003 and really don't care for it, but it's all I have (bought FP '98 back in the day and have just kept with it.... :lol:)

Thanks to all for the comments and honest feedback. I'll get there.

[Grumbledook]

wordpress software is well documented if you can use a ftp program you can probably manage setting up wordpress

there are so many guides googling should throw up loads of tutorials etc, for themes if you aren't that comfortable with doing it yourself just yet, as I said look for "wordpress photoblog theme" and again you will get a fair few options

for the armature they are great imo

[James33]

I totally redid the site with stylesheets etc. I'd love a second opinion and look from those who commented before. I have one issue I need help with - when viewing a flash gallery and you select gallery again from the menu, the flash area hides the drop down choices for the other galleries. Is there a way to make this float on top of the flash area or how would you fix it?

Thanks all!
James

[wizeguy4]

who do you use for printing?

[James33]

I use http://www.adoramapix.com/

[Cowboymitch]

James I don't know much about front page, but in dreamweaver there is a menu that lets you arrange your AP Elements and your div styles on the page. If Front page has that bring the spry menu bar to the top. Its just like layers in photoshop and then it won't get cut off in your gallery pages.

[shankey]

I saw photophilephotography on IE and Mozilla. In Mozilla portfolio pics are not showing properly as top pics and last pics are cutting, Also When we click on any image, A thumb image is showing in right side,Instead of large image.
When we view it from IE, Its not showing vertical Scroll bar, due to this, only 9 images are showing (like in Glomour), after that images are cutting half.
Am using 1024*768 resolution.

As the site is also not SE optimized.
I think if you use wordpress, this will develop quickly also wordpress have much gallery plugins with SE optimized.

Just a suggetion, Create a contact us form instead of giving email (with mail to) feature, This will protect you from spamming and that will also convinient for contacting user.

[James33]

Got the scroll bar issue fixed now - thanks! Would love to do a form but I don't have access to CGI scripts - any suggestions on something that would work?

[James33]

James I don't know much about front page, but in dreamweaver there is a menu that lets you arrange your AP Elements and your div styles on the page. If Front page has that bring the spry menu bar to the top. Its just like layers in photoshop and then it won't get cut off in your gallery pages.

Excellent! I am using Dreamweaver now, but when I look at the AP elements tab there is nothing listed. I am a COMPLETE novice at Dreamweaver. Bought a "building a website with dreamweaver" book and have taken a crash course in CSS stylesheets and div containers etc. I tried physically relocating the Spry menu script to the top of the HTML page but then it doesn't work at all. I have tried sticking it in the header and just below that and zip. I would love for it to work without having to insert those 2 paragraph markers before the flash viewer to keep from cutting it off. Any ideas or help is VERY Much appreciated!!

James

[Faolan]

The site works in Opera apart from the galleries which are clipped at the bottom.

The design whilst it works is a bit plain and your font colour is hard to read (grey on black).

You could do with some spiel for your front page, it's kind of disturbing having a single image there! Also the spiel in contact should really be seperated into about and contact, and I'll second the advice on a contact form.

Final note, think of an alternative navigation scheme for your menu system if a person has JavaScript disabled.

[aram535]

IMHO, its very good although I would recommend the following:

- The default "dark blue" in firefox of the anchor is bad on the black background. You should probably set that to something else. I noticed it on the model's page.

- The color: #868686 for text is probably too close to black on the color wheel I would move it to a different quadrant. Although probably anything other than white is going to be a little distracting.

- The "home" link is extranous, just make your logo on top linked back to the hompage. That's pretty default everywhere, even if you don't get rid of the menu "home" I would still link the logo.

- The box around the Gallery submenu doesn't seem to belong there, but I think the only way to fix it is to add a bottom border to the menu. Not sure about that one. Also as someone else mentioned it to me, the default Spry menu is pretty over used -- come up with a background or something to replace the defaults.

- The contact page seems to be an "about page" rather than a contact page. Maybe separate those out?

[shankey]

Got the scroll bar issue fixed now - thanks! Would love to do a form but I don't have access to CGI scripts - any suggestions on something that would work?


Check out this,Its a contact form generator for php,asp and CGI scripts. This will create a contact us form with programming, so when anyone fill that form, that message will mail to you by script.

http://www.tele-pro.co.uk/scripts/contact_form/

I just tested its php contact form and that worked fine.

cheers

[thesmithy]

Great to see photographers taking charge of their online presence! I do a bit of photography for work, but mainly work in support for a uk web hosting company. We are seeing a lot of artist and photography websites being ordered, great to scroll through some of the amazing portfolios.

Smithy
UK Web Hosting (http://www.fastvision.com)