My New Portfolio Site is Live

Spent a few days working on this and choosing various pieces. Check it out:

http://www.migsvuitton​.com/portfolio

Nice, it's very "magazine" type style, modern, looks good and clean.

It's easy to navigate. It's load speed is not bad. I think overall you did a great job on it.

the only crit, if you click on the top portfolio link, and it opens the categories, and you click on the photo, it only shows you the one photo, with no option to scroll through the categories photos. But if you click the wording below it goes to the portfolio page. maybe the pic and the text should link to the same place?

- Derrick

- Derrick

Hi, there is also a proble with the "Check back later" link on the Design and brand portfolio page. not working.

- Derrick

This site is very pleasing in the aesthetics department. It is one of the better designs I have seen around here. I love the layout, the typography, and the hierarchy of information. Its a very clean cut and modern design. There are some ways I think it can be improved though...

1. Ditch the splash page. The only additional information you are offering there is a link to your blog. You should throw that link up with you main nav and make the first portfolio page your home page. All you are doing is delaying someone from getting to the content they are after. If you did this for SEO purposes, you can easily incorporate some of that text on your homepage.
   
2. You link structure is confusing. What I consider to be the home page is labeled portfolio in the address bar. Then when I click on the portfolio link, it listed as portfolio/portfolio. I don't get it. Since you have no way of labeling where you are, and the home page is listed last in the nav, people may see the address bar and think they are on your portfolio page.
   
3. You need better designation of where the visitor is on the site. Even though its labeled on your about section, I still think you need to highlight it in the nav since its not immediately clear. Some as simple as a grey rectangle behind the text would be a nice clear designation of what page the visitor is currently viewing.
   
4. There are no roll over effects for the main navigation and other links. The only place I see anything is a hover effect in the news section towards the bottom of the home page. Its a good web design practice to have more of an effect than just the cursor changing. Someone might not notice that and might not see its clickable as a result.
   
5. Your ticklers below the main rotating image (portraits, fashion, weddings, etc...) should have the images be links as well. The only place I can see to click is the title, which isn't obvious at first. Make the images link as well so you don't potential miss out on people using those. Make sure the images have hover effects too.
   
6. I am not crazy about the link order. The home being last throws me off, but it could just be me.
   
7. Be careful with having a news section. If you aren't going to have updated new on a regular basis, I would do something different on your home page. It might be more beneficial to have an RSS feed to your blog or one of your social media pages.

Make your "about" page much less wordy and less essay-like.

Also change your last paragraph from: "If you’d like to hire me.." to "To hire me..". How you have it is very weak and non-assertive.

I like it, very clean.

Derrick_SA wrote in post #9820099
the only crit, if you click on the top portfolio link, and it opens the categories, and you click on the photo, it only shows you the one photo, with no option to scroll through the categories photos. But if you click the wording below it goes to the portfolio page. maybe the pic and the text should link to the same place?

Derrick, appreciate the critique. I feel the same way and can't figure out how to change the link to those images so that it goes directly into the gallery rather than showing the one image.

Quite annoying. Going to have to dig into some PHP files to look for it.

DarkKnight369 wrote in post #9821388

1. Ditch the splash page. The only additional information you are offering there is a link to your blog. You should throw that link up with you main nav and make the first portfolio page your home page. All you are doing is delaying someone from getting to the content they are after. If you did this for SEO purposes, you can easily incorporate some of that text on your homepage.
   
2. You link structure is confusing. What I consider to be the home page is labeled portfolio in the address bar. Then when I click on the portfolio link, it listed as portfolio/portfolio. I don't get it. Since you have no way of labeling where you are, and the home page is listed last in the nav, people may see the address bar and think they are on your portfolio page.
   
3. You need better designation of where the visitor is on the site. Even though its labeled on your about section, I still think you need to highlight it in the nav since its not immediately clear. Some as simple as a grey rectangle behind the text would be a nice clear designation of what page the visitor is currently viewing.
   
4. There are no roll over effects for the main navigation and other links. The only place I see anything is a hover effect in the news section towards the bottom of the home page. Its a good web design practice to have more of an effect than just the cursor changing. Someone might not notice that and might not see its clickable as a result.
   
5. Your ticklers below the main rotating image (portraits, fashion, weddings, etc...) should have the images be links as well. The only place I can see to click is the title, which isn't obvious at first. Make the images link as well so you don't potential miss out on people using those. Make sure the images have hover effects too.
   
6. I am not crazy about the link order. The home being last throws me off, but it could just be me.
   
7. Be careful with having a news section. If you aren't going to have updated new on a regular basis, I would do something different on your home page. It might be more beneficial to have an RSS feed to your blog or one of your social media pages.

1. Splash page… I somewhat agree. It started out as migsvuitton.com being my main page. However, I wanted /portfolio as it's almost secondary to what my site is about. The current splash page may in the future be just my blog since that's what I'm most interested in at the moment…

2. Yea I agree here too lol. I think the overall image of my site has yet to be determined, but I agree home link and logo link is quite confusing.

3. Since I'm using a template, I'll need to figure out a way to display which page you are currently at.

4. Def. agree with the rollovers. That's easy enough to add in the css file, so I'll def. do that asap.

5. Totally agree, another easy change I'll be updating soon.

6. No comment as this ties into the whole lack of identity I have for the site still.

7. Yea, I should change it, rather than "news" maybe "introduction" or something. Not sure. I don't even want it there.

Thanks so much for your feedback! Very much appreciated

HappySnapper90 wrote in post #9821956
Make your "about" page much less wordy and less essay-like.

Also change your last paragraph from: "If you’d like to hire me.." to "To hire me..". How you have it is very weak and non-assertive.

I know less is more, but I can't help it haha.

ncphotoguy wrote in post #9823327
I like it, very clean.

Thanks!

jetcode wrote in post #9823407
Very professional and I notice you targeted specific related markets for your work. That is a real sign of a professional. Good luck with your career.

Thank you!

Under the portraits section it says, "Whether you’re looking for head hots as an aspiring actor". Is that supposed to say hots or shots?

was it hard to build that site?

MigsVuitton wrote in post #9820011
Spent a few days working on this and choosing various pieces. Check it out:

http://www.migsvuitton​.com/portfolio

heh, it's funny, i still had your blog open in one of my chrome tabs and have looked at it already after seeing your new post about it.
but now i can say stuff about it! looks good! i like that first portrait of the girl by the way.

MigsVuitton wrote in post #9824198
1. Splash page… I somewhat agree. It started out as migsvuitton.com being my main page. However, I wanted /portfolio as it's almost secondary to what my site is about. The current splash page may in the future be just my blog since that's what I'm most interested in at the moment…

2. Yea I agree here too lol. I think the overall image of my site has yet to be determined, but I agree home link and logo link is quite confusing.

3. Since I'm using a template, I'll need to figure out a way to display which page you are currently at.

4. Def. agree with the rollovers. That's easy enough to add in the css file, so I'll def. do that asap.

5. Totally agree, another easy change I'll be updating soon.

6. No comment as this ties into the whole lack of identity I have for the site still.

7. Yea, I should change it, rather than "news" maybe "introduction" or something. Not sure. I don't even want it there.

Thanks so much for your feedback! Very much appreciated

1. Just remember, think of what your audience will be coming to your site for, not what you want. There can be a balance, but if you aren't meeting expectations your could lose traffic/customers.

2. I think you have a pretty solid image/theme. Its professional looking for sure. Just roll with it and keep your audience in mind.

3. What you said in #4 gives me the impression you know enough about CSS to edit it. This is easy then. Whatever you use for the CSS hover effect, you can use for "You are here" link effect. It involves naming the link with a class, and the body with a correspoinding ID. So if its the home button you link class would be home and your body ID for that page will be home. The CSS will look like this....

#home, .home { "your CSS here" }

This way those properties will only work when both the ID and class are present for the page. Make sense?

7. An Introduction might be a good idea. Something that describes you, what you do, location, etc. This will add clarification to your site as a whole and help with SEO.