New Website critique

[silverturtle]

So after numerous drafts, and experimenting with several layouts, i finally have my first (draft) website. after playing with so much looks, i decided that white clean and simple look is the best.

i avoided all flash, my previous site was entirely flash and i hated it, this entire site is HTML (some java and php). the about page i need to change the pic to a picture of myself, but i need to take one first.

Let me know what you think overall, then give me the details of the smaller stuff.

thank you in advance, i appreciate the help.

www.abeghazaliphotography.com

[crbradford01]

I think the white looks great. It's easy to navigate. You have great packages offered as well. nice pictures as well.

[Cetre]

It looks good to me, but I am not a web designer by any means. The only thing I wasn't sure of was the wording in the "About" section. You have written ... "A good photograph's job is to capture those moments and save them for eternity."

I just wanted to confirm that you wanted to say "A good photograph's job" or "A good photographer's job."

[silverturtle]

oh wow, i need the English checked over by someone, that isnt my strong part. I meant Photographer's

[MikePrattPhotography]

I think its great... usually people have too much going on and they also have an intro and its hard to get to the meat of the port.. but not yours.. great site!

[S.Wood]

From a purely "critical" standpoint:

The site is too wide, causing some horizontal scrolling. It's caused by the 900px width setting in your body and the 1200px width table. Set it to 1200px and you'll be ok - though it's still a bit wide and may cause problems for those using lower screen resolution.

Nothing is centered. Take a look at the realationship between your header image, menu and the image on the screen. A lot of this is due to the use of tables to layout the site. Consider CSS layout.

Are you interested in SEO or are you working off of referrals only?

[SwitchBlade]

It looks good, what's annoying me is that I have to scroll sideways to view it all and that's more annoying when I can see that the content could fit within the browser width. Remember a third of people still use 1024x768.

[silverturtle]

i am very interesting on search engine optimization, that is my next step, i need to read more about it.

as for the resolution, this has been so frustrating. at home a use a 20 IMac, so when i design the website it looks perfect, no scrolling or anything. i goto my work computer that runs an old ie, with windows xp and a square screen, and everything is mis alligned and doesnt fit. so this time i coded the site on my work computer in notepad, and reviewed it there, it looks good with no scrolling.

then i get home, stuff is missalligned, so i adjust it a bit in macromedia and everything looks good. on my current screen everything works fine, and the reason it looks wide is because its supposed to fit on a square screen.

How do i fix this, how i do i make macromedia give me the preview in a certain resolution. CSS really is my weak spot so i try to avoide it. can someone show me a screenshot of the side scroller ?

thanks alot for the complements btw.

[silverturtle]

OK hope this works

I changed the width on all the tables, and the header image to 900, everything seems to align perfectly on my mac now, and on my iphone, there is no more scrolling. let me know how it looks on your screens.

thank you

[SwitchBlade]

Your menu table has a width of 900, but all the TDs have a combined width of 1200. So the table is being stretched to fit the content. Set them to 16.6%, then they'll all be the same width and a sub width of the table.

Similarly your gallery table is set to 600, but has 7 TDs of 120 wide each which makes 840.

[silverturtle]

Fixed Again, let me know if it still scrolls.

[SwitchBlade]

No scrolling, all good here.

[Sid52]

A nice simple easy to navigate site.
A couple of points. A typo in Packages 'It usually taken a couple.....'
and the thumbnails on the galleries are slow to load. Even after loading a message remains '(13 items remaining) Downloading picture..... etc

Sid

[cdwise]

Overall your site looks good and is easy to navigate but I have a few comments:

First, on your gallery pages, when you get to the individual gallery there is a thumbnail column on the left and the right is a big blank space. You should auto load the first image in the gallery so that folks know what htat space is for.

Second, when I followed the link to your blog I felt like I left your site. So much so that I checked the url thinking I was going to an externally hosted blog. The contrast between the minamalistic gallery site and the much higher contrast with lots of blacks and grays on the blog. The font on the masthead is different as well which contributes to the feeling of leaving the photo site when you visit the blog. I'd sugest modifying the WordPress theme or finding one that is more harmonious with the rest of your site.

Finally, you might want to look at some of the Wordpress plug-ins that will present the photos in your blog using a lightbox or gallery style presentation that more closely matches the rest of your site.