New website - comments please

T

tfboy

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Xavier
Edit My Images
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Finally bit the bullet and got a prophoto blog up and running.

Whilst the smugmug galleries are great, they do lack the polish you get with proper wordpress blogs, and I felt it was time to have something a bit more SEO-capable.

Still in its early stages, just managed to figure out how to import my old posts from blogger, and there's not much content or portfolio kind of pics up, but I may well get pretty busy soon with more stuff to add.

I reckon there is a clash somewhere in something. I won't mention it now, wait for people to pick up on it and then assess how much of an issue I want to make it :)

Let me know what you think :)

http://www.xavimages.co.uk

Thanks! :thumbs:
 
Thanks Nick. :)

I've deliberately gone for a minimalist approach. Can't decide whether to lightly watermark the photos to emphasise the branding or not.
 
I like it but you should have a large image on the front page, or open straight to the galleries.
 
Couple of comments. ( OK I know my site isn't perfect either )

I agree on it looking bland and without a brand identity. Consistency is what you need.

Also on the posts. You're not selling yourself, its all very much "I've not done this before so thought I'd give it a go" which isn't going to help bring in business.

Oh and forgot to say, I see weirdness with a white flickering box that appears when scrolling, and a missing image at the top.

Pete
 
scottcampbell said:
I like it but you should have a large image on the front page, or open straight to the galleries.
Click to expand...
I'll think of an image for the front page.
I'm not a big fan of massive galleries at the start. So many sites have very nice galleries, but they take time to load, and I wanted to stick to a simple, fast loading site. I agree it may not look impressive at first site though :)
icecavern said:
Couple of comments. ( OK I know my site isn't perfect either )

I agree on it looking bland and without a brand identity. Consistency is what you need.

Also on the posts. You're not selling yourself, its all very much "I've not done this before so thought I'd give it a go" which isn't going to help bring in business.

Oh and forgot to say, I see weirdness with a white flickering box that appears when scrolling, and a missing image at the top.

Pete
Click to expand...
Hey Pete, at least I'm consistently bland :p
I know what you mean about the posts and might edit them slightly.

Funny you should mention weirdness flickering box. I don't get it at all. Someone on nikoncafe posted about a white line, but I can't see what they mean. It all looks OK to me (albeit a bit bland).
 
OK, had a bit of a revamp.

Added a proper logo, details, flash slideshow on the right, etc.

Does the slideshow work? I had a few designs and eventually kept the one online now. Having the "logo" bottom right with the type of gallery on the end. Does it work or is it distracting?

Thanks :)
 
in the UK, if you have flash, you must have HTML to back it up
 
No you don't :)

I have a bludomain site which is all flash and they won't supply me with an HTML version of it. That, to be honest, is a right pain and despite the fact that it does look good and was very easy to put together it does prove to be a distinct disadvantage when it comes to SEO.

It's down to the way good old Google works. Basically google can't read flash content. It sees "flash" but can't make any sense of what is in there. Suppliers like Bludomain get round it by supplying page headers and a splash page which can be read by google and you need to get all your metatagging in there.

Certainly if you have some flash on your site it should not cause any SEO problems so long as you have plently of html content too.
 
It's a wordpress blog, so very SEO friendly. The flash is just to spice it up a bit, make it look a bit more dynamic, but I'm always planning on it being html driven. If you turn off flash, you can still navigate and see the odd photo so the site still works :)

This weekend, I need to add a few more pages of services offered type content, along with explanation of prints, frames, etc. Will be having another rewording of posts and info as and when more "professional service"-oriented content comes online :)
 
BouncyMelons said:
No you don't :)

I have a bludomain site which is all flash and they won't supply me with an HTML version of it. That, to be honest, is a right pain and despite the fact that it does look good and was very easy to put together it does prove to be a distinct disadvantage when it comes to SEO.

It's down to the way good old Google works. Basically google can't read flash content. It sees "flash" but can't make any sense of what is in there. Suppliers like Bludomain get round it by supplying page headers and a splash page which can be read by google and you need to get all your metatagging in there.

Certainly if you have some flash on your site it should not cause any SEO problems so long as you have plently of html content too.
Click to expand...

That's only an issue if you rely on google to bring in hits. I've not yet got any business from a google search, it's WOM.
 
I've only just started to work on the SEO with my wonderful web wizard and in the two weeks since we started I've got two bookings from it. Google analytics is also a great tool because I can see the search terms that people are using to find me and I can then tailor my meta tags to match those search terms which all helps drive business my way.

I can also tell you that the TP lot are a nosy bunch ;)
 
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