My Personal website

The pokemon kid

The pokemon kid

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Name
Mathew
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Heya guys and girls,

I am currently creating my new website. I am a website designer and this website will showcase my work and what I am about. The website is still being created and just wanted some feedback on some of the larger parts of the website...

I am looking for people with screens with a resolution of 1600x900 or better to test it for the minute. I will be creating more CSS pages dedicated to the smaller screen resolutions later. but I just want to test that things are working before moving onto those parts...

Here is the URL: http://www.teaguephotography.co.uk/indexmteague.html

Tell me what you think...
 
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Works fine at 1920x1200 here.

You misspelt 'volunteer' under work experience.
 
It works, but quite frankly it's horrible. Sorry to be blunt.
 
Dark text on dark background is a rotten thing to to, as is lots of scrolling and fading stuff: up down, left and right. Stuff off the page on the right hand side.
Just because you can do something clever doesn't mean you should.
So, not for me.
 
What I will do, is lighten up the background a little. It does seam a little dark but it is a letter press effect which needs the background to be slightly darker and the text to be even darker.

Horrible in what way? Is the sliding a little too slow? The colours not quite right?

I decided to create the scrolling site because multi page sites aren't fun to make anymore plus the fact this makes me different to every other site. Also there shouldnt be anything off the right hand side of the page... What size screen resolution are you using?
 
The way it scrolls up and down when you click on different menu options is really disorientating. If I was looking for a web designer and saw your site, I would either think 'this person doesn't know how to make sites with more than one page' or 'this person doesn't know anything about usability'. Sorry.
 
It has to scroll up and down on the page to be able to get to the different content... So are you saying if it didnt scroll it would work better? because I could add a switch in where you are able to turn off the scrolling part and just for it to jump between the sections

Also, the previous work would show that I can create many types of website some with different pages and that I am just trying to show off my skills within this website...
 
I meant off the bottom of the right hand side.

Anyway, that's beside the point really. I still don't like the 'metal imprint' style, and more importantly it is of low contrast. Dark on a light background is often used for a reason - because it is easy and pleasant to read. Scrolling off the bottom, a loooong page, means people often miss the content hiding there. Or they get bored scrolling the thing so go elsewhere, so you lose, and/or your customer looses.
It would only be multi-page because you are wasting so much space, with the huuge links on the left, and the style in general. I can't even tell they are links until I wander my mouse over them.
Then, the links are not proper links so a screen reader wouldn't be able to pick them up. You may not have any interest in the Disability Discrimination Act, but your potential customers might.

Given some content the challenge is not to see how many div's you can use and bits of javascript to glue it together, but to present the content clearly and efficiently with enough eye candy for people to not realise you are marketing to them. So far you failed big time with me. It's not little tweaks, it's the whole thing. Sorry!
 
Okay, well the website is currently being changed... however the sliding feature is staying...

I could see the page was too long and so it will be shortened to roughly half what it is now. Also the color scheme within the website is going to be changing as I saw the error of my ways.

Also, I would like people give constructive criticism rather than pulling it apart and not saying how I could change it. Hasn't been greatly helpful so far...
 
The pokemon kid said:
Also, I would like people give constructive criticism rather than pulling it apart and not saying how I could change it. Hasn't been greatly helpful so far...
Click to expand...

that's because you a claiming to be a webdesigner - you should know how to change it - as an aside are you actually a website designer, or are you just a computing student who wants to be a website designer ? - there's a difference

That aside the hire tab is off the bottom of my screen and unclickable, and the whole look of the site is very amateur and naff

what should you do differently - practically everything ! but specifically

Bin the clumsily outlined self portrait - if you must have a self portrait get it taken professionally, your current pic does nothing to inspire confidence or project a professional image.

drop the faux wood background - that's one of the effects that makes it look like an out of the box "my first website"

drop the scrolling thing - its nasty and not remotely friendly - use a paged layout

reduce the size of the text on the left hand bar

In fact on the whole bin the whole thing and start again, if all its about is a show case of your work all you need is one page on which you provide links to websites you've designed and list your contact info - you don't need the text saying "this is my personal website and a showcase of my work" - that should be self evident
 
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big soft moose said:
are you actually a website designer, or are you just a computing student who wants to be a website designer ? - there's a difference
Click to expand...

I have built a good few basic html and css pages over the years, but I have found it less trouble and far easier simply using Wordpress. I find it is so much better with SEO and the amount of really good themes out there takes care of the need for someone to keep updating the look.

But there is room for a web builder designer, but they have to be able to design good looking and clean easy to navigate pages. Most of the time I don't bother reading past index page, if the website is messy cluttered or hard to read and navigate.

I love reading websites that are clean simple and neat, so long as there is something worth reading that is :)

I think your sites layout and colours need changing.
 
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The pokemon kid said:
Also, I would like people give constructive criticism rather than pulling it apart and not saying how I could change it. Hasn't been greatly helpful so far...
Click to expand...

Sorry. I thought I was being constructive. I've told you examples of what is wrong, and hinted at 'better practice'. I'm not going to spoon feed you a design. If you want me to be more constructive my advice is to throw that design away and start googling for the fundamentals of good web design.
 
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I used Dreamweaver and I was building pages and uploading them, I was constantly asking people to have a look at my new website. I soon gave up when I finally realised my web building skills were terrible.

What I thought was great others thought terrible, I built similar looking pages to yours. I finally discovered Wordpress, I soon gave up the idea of building pages!

If you are still planning on doing web stuff, don't try too hard. Keep things clean simple and neat.

Nice clean background, with good readable text, and easy to navigate links. Big boxes and borders very rarely work ;)
 
To me it looks a bit 'In your face', the navigation font size is far too big and ideally you don't want users to scroll on the homepage to see the rest of the content (on a widescreen display). Your photography pages are far better.
 
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Is this for the new link or for the previous website? The new website is a bit more similar to my normal design...
 
Okay, thats cool. I am just swapping the colours around now and adding some images in. There will be an update shortly :)

There ya go... And a logo rollover too :)
 
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The pokemon kid said:
Okay, it has been completely changed. I also decided to change the font as I quickly made a logo for myself... there is lots of space where content needs to be added...

http://www.teaguephotography.co.uk/indextest.html

Again, tell me what you think...
Click to expand...

well its definitely better - though i'd think about the "all content copyright to matthew teague - if you are showcasing websites you've built for others that won't be the case.

However its still not the cutting edge of profesionalism - It looks like something i could knock up in page plus in a couple of hours - okay for a hobby site, but not sufficient as a showcase of a web designers skills

also if you are a web designer why is your url teaguephotography , rather than teaguewebdesign ?
 
big soft moose said:
well its definitely better - though i'd think about the "all content copyright to matthew teague - if you are showcasing websites you've built for others that won't be the case.

However its still not the cutting edge of profesionalism - It looks like something i could knock up in page plus in a couple of hours - okay for a hobby site, but not sufficient as a showcase of a web designers skills

also if you are a web designer why is your url teaguephotography , rather than teaguewebdesign ?
Click to expand...

Yeh, now that you mention it, it may just have to be content instead of all content...

I am just waiting on my logo now, then i can make some more changes on how it looks. I put something togethor on paper for my logo and my girlfriend is just making it. She's specialises in logo design.

It's just been created etc on my other websites url until I get a domain for this website...
 
Hi Matthew. The last iteration is better than the earlier ones. Just don't quite know why you (as a web designer) would put your site nav into <div> rather than as a <ul>?
Personally I don't go for wonky text, its just a gimmick and will put people off. The black text looks soft, have you tried some CSS3 effects? I don't think they work well enough here.
 
I put them as div tags as I wanted to individually position them as the spacing between them isn't quite even. The reason the text is because the logo when I get it back will be slightly off like the text... there will also be a faded version of the logo behind the wonky text.

I had the effect on the text and I have just forgot to take it off...
 
Surely you could adjust the spacing within the <li> element?
Why is there a background image tiled? I'd have though you could have just chosen a bg color. The shadow effect is CSS3 which works in most browsers. Have you got PIE?
I noticed in Opera the css3 doesn't work and your text hasn't got the same font. I don't think the loss of shadow is a biggie, but the font may well be.

mathewteague.jpg
 
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