My New Website (DT6.biz)

I have just published my new website, which can be found here:

www.dt6.biz

There haven't been many visits yet, so it would be nice if some of you could have a look and let me know what you think.

I did the site from scratch, with the intention of keeping it simple and efficient, in both code and appearance.

I am going to change the home page display photograph and text to something more visually appealing, plus make a couple of adjustments to the gallery display pages (page number links etc), but apart from that I'm happy with it.

Thanks for looking,

Mike

Beautiful Mike, both the site and the images.

As a web developer I would ding you a bit for your "efficient code" comment - this table-based layout is not exactly efficient, modern or standard, but the site does render well on the couple browsers I viewed it with.

Dave

Thanks Dave

Haha! You can tell I'm not an expert in the website department then! I thought tables were simple and efficient. Must do some more learning there!

The main idea was to keep simple it so all images were well optimized, to keep bandwidth usage down, plus avoid things like flash presentations and extra code that I don't know anything about! I tested it on Internet Explorer and Firefox when I was building it and it displayed correctly on those two.

I read up on search engine optimization and think I've got that right, with regard to meta information, key words in the page text and alt tag text. I'm still waiting for Google to index the site, so I don't know how it will be ranked.

Mike

SEO is a never-ending effort, only limited by the amount of energy you're willing to put in to it But yes, you've got a good start. You might also use Google Analytics to monitor site usage, if you're interested in that.

If you're wondering about tables, you could google for something like "why tables for design is bad" and I'm sure you'll find plenty of good reading.

Have fun!
Dave

Thanks Dave I have verified my site with Google and am just waiting for it to be indexed so I can get some data to look at.

I have just had a quick look at why tables are bad! Looks as if I had better learn about CSS layouts then! I have been using what I learned a good few years ago, so I'm obviously way out of date. Everything I learned then was based around using tables for website layout!

Mike

your landscape shots look amazing...

Mike, I went to check out your website for the site itself, as you requested.. but I was soon captivated by your exquisite images. Great site, great images.. you've done well young Padawan. :p

Thanks for your kind words CD5 and Collin

Haha! Padawan!

Mike

I'm getting really annoyed now, waiting for Google to index my site. Seven days it has been now and still nothing!

I'm sick to death of going into my Google Webmaster Tools and finding that nothing has happened, so I still have no data to look at so I can wonder what the hell it all means!

When I look up on forums to see how long it takes for other people, some of them are saying that it only takes a few hours when they submit sites.

Mike

Nice site, great pics.

I know virtually nothing about websites. That being said, it would be nice if you could go from pic to pic without going back to the gallery - like using a forward and reverse button. Also, I can copy and paste your images to my desktop - they are only 60KB files, but not sure if you could close that option off or not. You may want to make the contacts page a direct link to your e-mail - I really do not like copy and paste for e-mail addresses. Take my comments with a grain of salt, like I said I know nothing.

Will you be selling prints? I'm curious about the .biz domain name......

Mike I think it looks great, simple and straightforward. What did you build it with?

Looks pretty good! I might add a better 'title' page then "Dorset Photographs - Home". If you want to be known on Google, then I would suggest something like "Your name - Your Town, State/Province etc". It's all about ratings!

BTW - nice photos!

Thanks for your replies and nice comments everyone.

Shane, I hadn't considered that about the gallery navigation, I'll put that on the Possibilities list! Not disabling right-click was a conscious decision as it doesn't really stop people pinching photographs anyway. I put my watermark on the images in anticipation of them possibly being copied and used online, so if left intact at least it may bring in some site visitors. I kept my preview images down in size so that they aren't much use for anything other than website viewing. The non-live e-mail links were deliberate, to discourage e-mail address harvesting programs, as explained on the page!

Jon, yes, I intend to sell prints sometime in the near future. The .biz domain was my favourite out of the available options for DT6, so I probably would have chosen that one anyway, even if not intending to sell prints.

Marj, thanks, that was the aim - to keep it simple. I built it with Dreamweaver 4. It's just as well that I wanted to keep it simple because I don't know much beyond HTML code!

Mike, 'Dorset and 'Photographs are my top two key words! I built the whole site round a specific set of key words with Google in mind, right from the meta tags and page titles to the page text and alt tag text, all with an eye on keyword usage and density. The only place that I haven't made best use of optimization techniques is with the image file names themselves, but I might go through them and sort that out. I'm waiting to see what Google makes of it all before I make any adjustments!

Thanks again everyone

Mike

Nice clean layout great images!