Looking for Your Feedback

Hello all.

I am in the process of totally revamping my website and am moving to a blog based format for sharing my stuff. I am looking to get some early feedback on my design and layout.

http://66.147.242.198/​~ksimages/

This is only about 70% complete. Most of the links in the two side panels will be changed as well as the menu options at the top. What I am most interested in at this point is do the various slideshows display fully on a variety of monitors. I am spoiled with these monster MAC displays so have a hard time telling how effective this is for a wider range of displays.

If you have the time to take a look and let me know how it displays on your system or have any suggestions for improvements, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance for your time and feedback.

For people with DSL.. or anything slower.. the page will take forever to load if you're going to have THAT many slideshows on the front page all of the time. You also need a domain name rather than just your ksimages as a directory on a bluehost.com server..

As for the original question..yes the slideshows show up and are decent size.. without my 8 mb/s though it could take a LOT longer. Maybe narrow the front page down to 1 or 2 items while keeping the 'recent posts' column on the right. Also before you get TOO far into it.. don't forget tags/categories so people can click on a posts category and find similar posts It's not a bad look though.. I like clean blog backgrounds rather than overly decorated ones personally.

DHMN wrote in post #8474762
For people with DSL.. or anything slower.. the page will take forever to load if you're going to have THAT many slideshows on the front page all of the time. You also need a domain name rather than just your ksimages as a directory on a bluehost.com server..

As for the original question..yes the slideshows show up and are decent size.. without my 8 mb/s though it could take a LOT longer. Maybe narrow the front page down to 1 or 2 items while keeping the 'recent posts' column on the right. Also before you get TOO far into it.. don't forget tags/categories so people can click on a posts category and find similar posts It's not a bad look though.. I like clean blog backgrounds rather than overly decorated ones personally.

Thanks for the input. The bluehost reference is temporary while my URL is changing through DNS since I changed ISP's to go with a better Word Press host. Once it gets through DNS updates, www.ks-images.com will take you directly to this page.

Good point about the bandwidth. I get spoiled being on a fiber optic network with blazing speed so I don't even think about download times any more. I will adjust accordingly.

Categories and all the other grouping and linking will get fixed and is on my list of things to finish once I get the general framework in place.

Thanks again for the feedback. Have a good one.

Kevin,
Looks nice on my laptop. I'm curious though, is the intent to sell or just display? If it is to sell, wouldn't some sort of file structure or catagorization on the side be nicer to help find stuff that might be old. I guess if someone is looking for their kid playing volleyball for instance, why make them search through a chronology of your personal life? Is that what the left side will become? Also instructions at the top to click in the show which takes you to the photoshelter site where they can buy.
How much time does it take to get something like this up and running?

ChunkyDA wrote in post #8475313
Kevin,
Looks nice on my laptop. I'm curious though, is the intent to sell or just display? If it is to sell, wouldn't some sort of file structure or catagorization on the side be nicer to help find stuff that might be old. I guess if someone is looking for their kid playing volleyball for instance, why make them search through a chronology of your personal life? Is that what the left side will become? Also instructions at the top to click in the show which takes you to the photoshelter site where they can buy.
How much time does it take to get something like this up and running?

Thanks Dave,

The side panels will have groupings and categories to make it easier to find things. I just have not made it that far yet. I will also build FAQ pages and how to buy pages which will have instructions as well as links to my photoshelter stuff. I am also buliding lots of identification info into the photoshelter pages as another way to allow for searching.

My goal is to turn this into a news type site with daily content updates and much more full mulitmedia content. Picture sales by themselves don't generate much money in my small market but I have been getting lots of positive feedback from businesses about using this as an advertising medium. Time will tell I guess.

Setting this up so far has not taken long at all. The content I already had created on my old blog. I set up a new ISP account, installed the wordpress apps, found a basic template and modified it into what you see here all yesterday. I already had the photoshelter account set up so that did not require anything new.

I am still working out a workflow but the last two posts took about 4 hours each to create from the download of images from the camera. That includes all editing, captions and keywords, uploading to photoshelter and writing the text for the post.

Dave and DHMN,

I have made some additional changes based on your input. I still have several to make but the URL and the use of categories to group posts should now be working.

www.ks-images.com should also take you directly to the page now.

Thanks again for the input. It has been very helpful.

If anyone else checks this out from a machine not on a high speed connection, please letm me know your thoughts on how quickly things load. Per DHMN's comment, I had a friend check it out via a slow DSL connection and they thought it loaded pretty quickly. The way Photoshelter steams the slideshows seems to be pretty efficient but would like to hear from more people if possible.

Dave - I kept track of my workflow when I created the most recent post from girls soccer last night. I took right at 400 photos, whittled this down to 87 keepers of which I flagged 14 as my favorites. I added a general caption and keywords to all 87 and also added individual names to the 14 primes. I uploaded all 87 images at 1800 pixel files at 12 resolution to Photoshelter, created two galleries, created the post with links and it took 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Kevin,
Thanks for the timeline, very helpful for me to decide if that is something I want to get into. I have a F/T job and 3 kids running me ragged already.
The categories are real nice now, even cross referenced so both teams can find their shots. Nice!
My laptop screen is 1280x800, your site appears about 1/2 inch too wide so a horizontal scroll bar appears on the bottom.
When I click on the slideshow IE asked if I wanted to accept pop-ups. I accepted and had to click on the slideshow again to have the photoshelter site open in a new tab. I think I have new tab selected as my default for links instead of new window.
The click here for gallery works nicely, opens in the same tab.
On your photoshelter site on the top right, there is a link to your ks-images site. That button is a red x KS Images. perhaps that button needs to be redirected to the correct image.
I have heard good things about wordpress, looks like you are getting excellent use out of it. good luck with it .

I have a second tier DSL connection - just above basic. It took 45 seconds for the first picture of each slideshow to appear. It took about 3 minutes for all pictures from every slideshow to load and allow me to go backwards and forwards within any slideshow.

I like how clean it is and its asking the viewer to stay and have a look round.
I did not find that it was slow downloading.
My verdict....It looks good.

The connection I'm on is ADSL (Which is the same land line as my phone)

Thanks again to everyone who has responded. The feedback is tremendously helpful to me getting things lined out.

I am going to change the overall width a bit to allow it to fully display easier and will check all the code for the links to see what I can change to have things display in the same window instead of triggering popup windows.

Thanks again everyone. I really appreciate your time and assistance. I will post an update here when I get these things implemented for those who want to check it out. Any additional suggestions are always welcome.

Kevin,

just wondered how your site has come on since this last update? I really like the blog type format for your photography and the link off to where people can purchase prints. I wanting to do something similair in the UK where locally sports photography is a largely untapped market.

I was surprised to read that your sales werent particularly big due to your local market....is this still the case? Do you do any onsite printing? You seem to cover alot of events and your stuff is excellent.

thanks

joecov wrote in post #9496793
Kevin,

just wondered how your site has come on since this last update? I really like the blog type format for your photography and the link off to where people can purchase prints. I wanting to do something similair in the UK where locally sports photography is a largely untapped market.

I was surprised to read that your sales werent particularly big due to your local market....is this still the case? Do you do any onsite printing? You seem to cover alot of events and your stuff is excellent.

thanks

Thanks for the note.

The site has worked out very well and seems to have been very well received. I am averaging about 200 unique visitors a day which is not a huge number but I also don't do a huge amount of advertising either.

Sales overall are still terrible and really don't expect them to ever improve. There are waaaaay too many people here who run around with cameras and give away all their work to ever hope for much better. I do this stuff because I enjoy it. My money comes from portraits, weddings, youth league team and individuals, etc.

Good luck with your expansion. If I can be of any help at all, please feel free to contact me.

Have a good weekend.

Kevin