OK. How much for a Website Tweaking?

The M/A/P/B navigation idea is poorly thought out. I couldn't use it easily and I've been making a living as a web developer for the last 5 years... :)

In the trade it's called "Mystery Meat" navigation (Google for more examples) and is typically not a good thing. Basically anything that changes so dramatically on waveover, or doesn't have obvious functionality from looking at it on first glance, it's typically considered a bad thing.

The site you have there would be relatively simple to rebuild into standards-compliant non-flash form. Anyone quoting more than £1k to rebuild exactly what you have there would be raising my eyebrows as there's really not much to the site's frontend.

How do you add new photos to the site? If it's just a case of uploading pre-resized images to 4 folders on an FTP, then that would be super easy to re-implement. If you have some fancy "logged in" area then obviously that's going to bump the cost.
 
Carl, just scanned this thread and seen your website. Like your pictures a lot, but the sit itself is not very good IMHO. It is different, but plain hard to navigate. Suggest you go back to the drawing board with the design and concentrate on easy / fast / quick to navigate...
 
Yes, the kerning is out, but, and it's a big but, most of the population would neither know what kerning is, or care about it if they could see the problem when it was explained to them. Even with css you can't do 'proper' kerning, you're stuck with a much less sophisticated mechanism. If you could kern in the true sense there's little chance that any of the browsers would support it and M$ would find a way to mess it up as a matter of course, just look at what designers have to do to make a page render anything like correctly in IE.
Here are some suggestions, first the well-known zen gargen that shows what can be done simply by changing the CSS or maybe something totally different yamaha's navigation and some other ideas
other ways too

some interesting web typography
 
As a last contribution to the thread. a lot of emphasis seems to be being placed on how much a designer charges as a method of qualifying them. If there is one good thing about the design industry it is that in most cases it is easy to see if a designer is capable by viewing their previous works. Also where possible get references, BUT don’t write off anyone just because they are cheaper. Some people work from home and have no overheads and some designers just want to validate their worth with their prices. Some even use price structure as a way to filter out certain markets, all these things affect price regardless of production quality.

It is a very good idea to have a budget in mind, but I would consider it more important to view portfolios and get references if possible, talk with your designer/developer and feel comfortable with them and how they work.

Also regarding how long a project will take will vary from person to person, some people are just a lot faster at what they do :-)
 
If you are targetting picture editors or galleries and the like then you are better off creating a high quality pdf document with high res images embedded and emailing it to them. They can then easily distribute it or print it with better quality than from the web if they are really interested. And they get the colour profiling you use in the PDF too.

Then for your website take a look a look at www.clikpic.com which is cheap(UK based) and easy for you to manage yourself. If you really want a blog then setup up a free one with google blogger or whoever and just link to it from the clikpic.com hosted site. You can use your own domain name with clikpic and you can tailor the templates they provide.
 
Had a word with a friend of a friend. Agrees with what has been said and mentioned how the navigation will put people off not just the site but me as a tog, even if this is not my main way of getting clients.

Has suggested a mixture of html and flash with a navigation redesign. Was worth talking to him on the phone as got a "feel" for him as a person.

He is now going away and giving me a quote based on what we spoke of. He has sent me a portfolio and references too, so now need to wait on the quote and suggestions.

Thanks for all the help, (esp you flicker) and also help in relisation that the Nav, although cool to a few is not going to do me any favours in the long term.

I know reading it back I seemed snotty at times, but assured it was not that way it was intended. I appreciate the time you have all taken to help me sort my head out.
 
Sorry another negative here too. Had I not known that there was something to navigate to I would have assumed that it was just a single page in order to give a web presence. The method of navigation is not good. I would also suggest something normal. Cars normally have a wheel in each corner, sticking 3 at the back and 1 at the front does not make it better!

I do however quite like some of your stuff :)
 
ding76uk said:
Backstage you seem very quick to crit, do you have examples of sites you consider to work extremely well?
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Yes, the BBC website, Photobox, Flickr, CNN, Facebook, Twitter, Quidco, Nikon, Hot UK Deals, Wikipedia.....

You could add a million sites to that list, probably 10 million, all of which would have navigation that you don't have to 'work out' before you can use it.

Sorry if I've upset the 'loving your work, hugs all round' applecart, but I'm entitled to my opinion, even as a very relative newcomer to this site.

***Actually that's a bit rude but I've left it in. I've just had a bad day***
 
ding76uk said:
I am not sure what you mean about kerning, as this is a standard kern as far as I am aware.
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How can you not know about kerning, and then say that it's 'standard'.

The 'A' needs to be moved closer to the backslash to make the bad navigation look better (though still equally bad in function).

***Sorry, bad day again***
 
For what it's worth, I like your website as it is and didn't find the navigation confusing at all. The arrow pointing at the menu made it obvious where to look, and it took all of two seconds to figure out how it worked. I liked that it was different :)

I liked the way the pictures scrolled too. I pretty much liked everything!

I know nothing about web design, but I know what I like. Your site stood out because it was different, but not so different that it was annoying. :)

(the only annoying bit was that it was a little slow loading)

I guess I'm the odd one out here :lol:
 
backstage pass said:
Yes, the BBC website, Photobox, Flickr, CNN, Facebook, Twitter, Quidco, Nikon, Hot UK Deals, Wikipedia.....

You could add a million sites to that list, probably 10 million, all of which would have navigation that you don't have to 'work out' before you can use it.

Sorry if I've upset the 'loving your work, hugs all round' applecart, but I'm entitled to my opinion, even as a very relative newcomer to this site.

***Actually that's a bit rude but I've left it in. I've just had a bad day***
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I don't care how much you slag things off mate as you say you are entitled to an opinion, and I appreciate it. I don't give a **** if you like my work or not, as I have no need to impress you! I think the general consensus has been made that it needs to go, and is in the process of doing so.

99 percent of those sites you suggested have nothing to do with photography though. If I wanted a photography site I do not ask for examples such as wikipedia, as it has nothing to do with what I am asking for. If I want a pair of jeans I don't look in a bakers. They are functional, but if you think they are good websites apart from that they are functional then our opinions differ.

As for kerning I never said that I do not understand it!

M/A/P/I

Look at the letters above. The kerning has not been tweaked in any way. Notice how the layout of the letters is exactly the same as in the design! That means no kerning was applied to the design, I say as far as I am aware, as I did not design it. I think you mean to apply a kern yourself to alter the style of the lettering.

Anyways, I am starting the process of getting it altered.

Anything else you think I should change apart from the navigation? and I like the way you speak your mind, even if you may think I am putting it on here to have my ego massaged!

I put it up to look at tweaks, and thanks to the crit I have a chance to make something that I personally really like, but is obviously not user friendly enough for most people, better.
 
Glass Books said:
For what it's worth, I like your website as it is and didn't find the navigation confusing at all. The arrow pointing at the menu made it obvious where to look, and it took all of two seconds to figure out how it worked. I liked that it was different :)

I liked the way the pictures scrolled too. I pretty much liked everything!

I know nothing about web design, but I know what I like. Your site stood out because it was different, but not so different that it was annoying. :)

(the only annoying bit was that it was a little slow loading)

I guess I'm the odd one out here :lol:
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Thanks for the comment.:D Least I have one Ally

You have hit the nail on the head with what the idea was, in that I didn't want a "normal" website, I wanted something just a bit different but not too different to be annoying. That was the whole idea behind the whole branding thing. It needs a second look to figure it properly. Same as the logo, almost the same as every tog who writes their name, but mixed up a little to make it stand out.

Ah well at least I have proof I am not a minority of one, lol.
 
who is your target audience?
does this site earn you money?
is it a main source of income?
do your potential clients take the time to sift through the site or just quickly browse?

Have you considered just creating a very quick and easy to build wordpress site?
its extremely easy to use and customise, has plenty of premium templates available for it, and has some very good gallery plugin functions.

Its also very easy to upload new content, create custom contact forms, and has very easy to use navigation.

For a pain free installation i would charge £50 including hosting plus cost of what ever template you wanted to choose.
You dont have to be spending thousands these days to get a site that generates income and meets the criteria as well as your budget.
 
Absolutely massive improvement! If there was some way you could have a placeholder image showing whilst the flash part loads it would be great! At the moment it shows a big black area for about 7 seconds (the first time you load the site only)

Perhaps swapping flash for a jquery slideshow?
 
http://medienfreunde.com/lab/innerfade/ example further down the page

Changing images is as easy as cropping them to the size you want and uploading via ftp to your slides folder and if you are replacing a photo, simply overwriting it with the same name will do it. Or just alter/add an img tag - you can copy an existing line of code and then just change the file name to match the new image
 
You can even put the flash version in between <noscript> tags so that if javascript is disabled, the flash version will be there.
 
And then have your best image as the backup for when flash AND javascript is disabled, which you can make into a link to a portfolio of all the rest of the images. This way you cater for everyone
 
Sorry about the multiple posts - thinking as I type!

If you run the flash slideshow and jquery slideshow from the same image files and then use them for the portfolio part, you will only have to overwrite one file to change the lot.
 
ding76uk said:
Can someone give me any examples of navigation types that are not the plain boring "Normal" style.
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There are plenty of totally awesome DHTML menu's and slideshows out there that totally break the normal rules. You only need to know where to look

The disadvantage of using DHTML is the same as flash - it requires the end users machine to do the maths and rendering, however doesnt require plugins, and is indexable by google
 
flicker said:
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)
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cost usually depends on the designer, and bluntly how long the job will take to code and implement. Be aware that some technologies are very hard to amend and edit after the event. whilst others are very easy to keep updated

It is worth writing a good brief, but be aware, a good designer may introduce you to ideas that fit, that you never would have imagined before you spoke to them
 
Richard King said:
There are plenty of totally awesome DHTML menu's and slideshows out there that totally break the normal rules. You only need to know where to look

The disadvantage of using DHTML is the same as flash - it requires the end users machine to do the maths and rendering, however doesnt require plugins, and is indexable by google
Click to expand...

Do you have any examples? Would love to look at these before I set final brief and get working with a revamped site.
 
Richard King said:
cost usually depends on the designer, and bluntly how long the job will take to code and implement. Be aware that some technologies are very hard to amend and edit after the event. whilst others are very easy to keep updated

It is worth writing a good brief, but be aware, a good designer may introduce you to ideas that fit, that you never would have imagined before you spoke to them
Click to expand...

Yeah the guy I have gone for seems to be doing that. talking of things I had never thought of etc. The good thing is he is happy to do the thing in 2 stages.

First will be redesign, blog design, integration together and all up and working with new style.

Secondly will be working on the ability for me to be able to change and upgrade the site myself using a backend with extra bits and pieces to make things go even better. Gives me a chance to absorb impact of one before going on to the other.
 
ding76uk said:
Do you have any examples? Would love to look at these before I set final brief and get working with a revamped site.
Click to expand...

http://www.dhtmlgoodies.com/index.html?page=menuScripts is a good resource, as is http://www.cssplay.co.uk/ There are some even more off the cuff examples, but they become so random, I would need an idea of what you are after

We have forund with both photography and design that phased payme nts are the way to go. It works for the client and the person doing the job - commitment is shown both ways
 
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