OK. How much for a Website Tweaking?

ding76uk

ding76uk

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Carl
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Hi All.

My website www.carlspring.net is working very well apart from one small thing.

When someone who does not have a widescreen monitor views it, it is not very practical for them to navigate or work with.

How much would I be looking for to have someone make it resize to the browser? Also does anyone have a recommendation for someone to do this?

Also I would be looking at getting a blog template linked into this as well if this is not too expensive. I just need someone who you can reccomend to do these tasks. No design work will be required, just the tweaking for me.

Thanks in advance guys
 
What i personally do, is set the layout widths, e.g. navbar and main body area as percentages for widths, but ensure a minimum/maximum width (as pixels) are there as well if neccessary
 
The resizing wouldn't have been a big job, but for some reason your whole site has been designed in Flash. So to resize it would mean someone will have to edit the flash source files and change the output.

There is a setting in Flash where you can specify that the published movie fits the page and would resize with the browser, however this only works well with Vector images. Jpg images distort alot when resized to any size other than what the image actually is, and this probably isn't a good look for a photography website.

Your best bet is either have the site redone using xhtml, javascript and css which wouldn't be hard to achieve the exact same look as you have now. Or get the flash resized into a standard browser fit. The minimum most people design for at the moment is 1024x768 but bear in mind you lose some width with the browser frame so around 975px is a good width.

With regards to the blog I would think you would have to get a quote depending on exactly what you want :-)
 
It looks fine here and I dont have have a widescreen monitor, it is a 19" though.
 
Well the size of the job to change it, is very much dependant on the size of the site. From what i can see you just have a few pages with some image rotations on them. I think any decent disigner/developer could knock this out in under a day given they know exactly what they have to produce.

Obviously the price would depend on the developer, but we charge £140 per day. The only variable would be if you need a way to manage your images. For example we write gallery management systems where you would be able to add and remove images from any of your galleries as required, just by uploading them to the site via a site admin.

If you would like to talk more about what can be done feel free to contact me directly I am always happy to help and give advice where possible.
 
If it were me I'd just use Joomla 1.5 and the Simple Image Gallery plugin. You wouldn't get the animation of sliding photos but then I wouldn't want that anyway.

As it stands there are no thumbnail (which you'd get with SIG) and I think that's a big minus.

A lot easier to upload photos too, just bung them in a gallery folder and everything is automatic.

As mentioned above, it's an easy redo for a web bloke. I'm not going to get into a bidding war but the £140 mentioned is on the money.
 
XD2 said:
Well the size of the job to change it, is very much dependant on the size of the site. From what i can see you just have a few pages with some image rotations on them. I think any decent disigner/developer could knock this out in under a day given they know exactly what they have to produce.

Obviously the price would depend on the developer, but we charge £140 per day. The only variable would be if you need a way to manage your images. For example we write gallery management systems where you would be able to add and remove images from any of your galleries as required, just by uploading them to the site via a site admin.

If you would like to talk more about what can be done feel free to contact me directly I am always happy to help and give advice where possible.
Click to expand...

David can you pm me your email address, as for some reason I cannot pm you on here.

Thanks
Carl
 
To be honest, I think you should be looking at a complete redesign. That site is not doing you any favours. You can still go along the same lines but shrink the width and improve accessibility and usability a lot.

The fact it is in flash with all of its pitfalls even though it isn't utilising anything that flash can do and html can't is a bad start. The loading time is slow because of this.

The navigation is hell to work with and will most likely confuse a lot of people. I had trouble with it (when I figured out where it was)

The width is just far too wide. Going over 960px wide is something that should be carefully thought out and this looks as though it is nearing 1200px.

The text is almost unreadable as it's a really dark grey on a black background.

The sliding photos can be achieved using jquery.

If you can wait a month or so, I should have an opening around mid-end of April, although I would recommend a different approach to what has been mentioned. I am strongly against the use of open source CMS such as mambo and joomla for usability and security, and always build a custom CMS to suit the clients needs. If you are prepared to go down this route, let me know.
 
flicker said:
I am strongly against the use of open source CMS such as mambo and joomla for usability and security, and always build a custom CMS to suit the clients needs. If you are prepared to go down this route, let me know.
Click to expand...

For a non-critical site I would suggest that Joomla is perfectly secure, and my experience is that it's servers that get attacked more than actual sites.
 
Thanks for the feedback flicker, but I do not want to change the navigation as I like the fact it is completely different from normal. I have no idea why you found it hell to work with?

I am very happy with the site as a whole, just need it tweaking to shrink to fit.

I agree the use of flash may not be the way forward. Do you have any examples of your work. Pm me if you would prefer not to put them on here.
 
Hi Carl,

I am using a 24" widescreen, 1920x1280 screen- and your site looks fine (albeit, slightly stuck to the left as it were). The navigation on the left is a complete nightmare (personal opinion).
 
I agree with backstage_pass Joomla is pretty secure, I've done many sites with it and so far none has been hacked. The one that was hacked was hosted with someone else as you might say 'Not on my server'
 
Just to answer the Carl's question on the navigation, the reason people don't like it and what makes it hard to use is the fact it is not obvious and therefore not user friendly.

The links don't become apparent until you mouse over which in a user friendly world wouldn't be the case. You should also consider that it makes sense to yourself because you already know how it works, but putting yourself in the place of someone who has no idea, would you still consider it an obvious menu system.

In any case it is important to keep the website as you want it, but you should definitely consider any change for the better, especially if the website is intended to bring in work.
 
I tested the site on a family member and he also had the same problem. He clicked on "carl" then "Photo" then "Spring" and got slightly frustrated at not getting anywhere. Then found "info" but didn't find the other pages as he thought "info" was the only one there and was also confused about why it didn't just say "info" and seemed to be a random sequence of letters.

If it's to gain work, why **** off your site visitors?
 
No offence meant to family members flicker, but the people I will be aiming at are magazine photo/art directors and such. The guy who designed it has done major work with a lot of leading brands.

The whole thing behind it is that when an art director looks at the site it will just appear different, minimal and clean (which I hope people agree it does).

There are a million sites with the same type of nav and this was aimed to be a little different, although I do get that some will find it frustrating, the idea is to be inquisitive to find more out.

The same thing applies to the logo, on first glance it makes you want to examine it to figure it out and the colour coding makes it simpler for the mind to do so.

Navigation aside would there be any other recommendations of what does not work well, and what works well please.
 
Hi Carl,
Didn't understand how the bottom link worked- or even realise they were links before I moused over it. That's all :)
 
I really really REALLY can't think of a worse sin on a website than it not being easy to navigate between pages.

"I like the fact it is completely different from normal" - well sorry, but sites are normal for a reason. You can style your navigation in a million different ways, but at least have it so people can see how it works.

My first reaction was to not understand it, and when I did, I hated it.

Sorry, but I think you're almost in a minority of 1 here.
 
backstage pass said:
I really really REALLY can't think of a worse sin on a website than it not being easy to navigate between pages.

"I like the fact it is completely different from normal" - well sorry, but sites are normal for a reason. You can style your navigation in a million different ways, but at least have it so people can see how it works.

My first reaction was to not understand it, and when I did, I hated it.

Sorry, but I think you're almost in a minority of 1 here.
Click to expand...
:thumbs:
 
backstage pass said:
I really really REALLY can't think of a worse sin on a website than it not being easy to navigate between pages.

"I like the fact it is completely different from normal" - well sorry, but sites are normal for a reason. You can style your navigation in a million different ways, but at least have it so people can see how it works.

My first reaction was to not understand it, and when I did, I hated it.

Sorry, but I think you're almost in a minority of 1 here.
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Well I may be in the minority, but not of one. You say you hate it, but why? I can understand you not liking it, but when you found it you hate it? Why do you hate it?
 
And...if you are going to keep it, at least get the kerning between the first '/' and the 'A' sorted.
 
Another problem is that Search Engines aren't really good at indexing flash sites.

Most look for keywords relevancy etc and rate you on these.

And for that you need Meta tags and some text.

You could get the same look using Xhtml, Css and Javascript.

And the Search engines find it easy to find and index you then.

Then you can also put Google analytics on to your site and check how each page is doing, not just the whole site.

And, TBH, your navigation sucks.

Definitely needs to be re-done.
 
petersmart said:
Another problem is that Search Engines aren't really good at indexing flash sites.

Most look for keywords relevancy etc and rate you on these.

And for that you need Meta tags and some text.

You could get the same look using Xhtml, Css and Javascript.

And the Search engines find it easy to find and index you then.

Then you can also put Google analytics on to your site and check how each page is doing, not just the whole site.

And, TBH, your navigation sucks.

Definitely needs to be re-done.
Click to expand...

SEO is of no real interest. The people I am working with are not concerned to search for photographer on google. It is more a presentation tool.

Again. WHY DOES THE NAVIGATION SUCK? Ease of finding it I understand, but after that why else is there a problem with it?
 
I totally agree on the need to look at html et al. But this is something I am working towards and was asking for on here.

Can someone give me any examples of navigation types that are not the plain boring "Normal" style.

I may sound like I am being defensive, but I am not, I just do not want a normal header, and a normal navigation etc. The aim is to go for something different to the norm, and therefore I may have missed with this, but need ideas of where to go instead.
 
Some things become the "norm" or "standard" for a reason...they work, people understand them, they know exactly where to look and what to do. All computer keyboards have the numbers above the letter keys because people are used to it and moving them would decrease usability and annoy people.

When someone hovers over the word "home" they expect it to change colour or get a new background, they don't expect it to turn into the word "contact". Your nav has seemingly random letters which would give people no interest in clicking on them as they would expect hovering over them simply changed the colour and would give no more info. And then when they do hover over them, the real confusion starts as several words appear. It's just an absolute nightmare!!!!!! And people on touch screen devices will never know what they are clicking on because they will never see the words on hovering. You are getting a lot of advice from professionals in this field - I suggest you take it.
 
OK. SO here is what I need to do then.

Convert site to XHTML or whatever (forgive my know nothingness)

Create new navigation system. That link has given me some ideas, thanks Flicker.

Attach and create wordpress blog in white V similar to what there but my logo and ability to link in with site.

How much am I looking at ball park?
 
ding76uk said:
OK. SO here is what I need to do then.

Convert site to XHTML or whatever (forgive my know nothingness)

Create new navigation system. That link has given me some ideas, thanks Flicker.

Attach and create wordpress blog in white V similar to what there but my logo and ability to link in with site.

How much am I looking at ball park?
Click to expand...

The price will depend on the designer you choose. Some may quote you around £200, some around £1000+ and some around £5000+. You need to go through some designers portfolios, check references and reputation then contact the ones you want to use and get a quote. If you shop with price at the forefront of your mind, you will probably end up using a bad designer though (a lot of the time you do get what you pay for). Understandably you will have a budget, but probably based on how much you are willing to spend ona site and what it is worth to you, rather than based on your knowledge of website pricing. Speaking to a designer over the phone and being honest about your budget can save a lot of time - I say over the phone because you can generally get an idea of how honest someone seems, so you don't say my budget is £50,000 and they reply with "what a coincidence...that's how much it will cost".

I always try and hint at a ball park figure to the nearest thousand or so as soon as I have heard the brief and decide by the reaction whether or not to spend half a day writing out a proposal. Knowing the budget, or even ballpark budget always makes things easier.

Basically - decide what a site redesign is worth to you - you say you don't use your site to get work so maybe it is worth very little. You can pay anything you like for a site...there is always someone willing to do it at any price range. Tesco might pay £100,000-£500,000 for a site because it is worth that much to them and brings a good enough ROI (and they probably pay that much per year)
 
I currently charge nearer £240 per day - depends on the designer and what they are worth. I would say googling to check out your local designers is a good start. It's always better to find a face-to-face one.

If you find a couple of local ones you like, pm their sites to me and I will give a bit of advice on choosing one of them.
 
ding76uk said:
SEO is of no real interest. The people I am working with are not concerned to search for photographer on google. It is more a presentation tool.

Again. WHY DOES THE NAVIGATION SUCK? Ease of finding it I understand, but after that why else is there a problem with it?
Click to expand...

The navigation sucks because where it says Carl Photo Spring there is a link which does nothing when clicked on.

And there is no indication that the M/A/I/P/B bit at the bottom is not just a link but a series of links - most people would just click on one part and assume the whole thing was a link.

As I said - it sucks - and needs to be totally re-done so that the links are obvious.
 
ding76uk said:
Again. WHY DOES THE NAVIGATION SUCK? Ease of finding it I understand, but after that why else is there a problem with it?
Click to expand...

Once I worked out where it was, I hovered over the "B" at the end. The word "Blog" appeared somewhere to the left of my mouse pointer, so I moved my pointer to try and click on it. "Blog" suddenly changed to "People" and then scrolled through all of the other available pages as my mouse pointer moved.
So if you want to click on "Blog", you actually need to click on some empty space just to the right of it :cuckoo:
 
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