Portfolio Site

[Disphotic]

Finally got around to building a new portfolio site, I've kept it very simple for the time bring as it's likely to get replaced with a proper one eventually.

Anyway if anyone has five minutes and fancies giving me any comments or reporting any bugs they encounter it would be great.

 

[petersmart]

Well I waited for a couple of minutes for something to happen and nothing did apart from some words appearing.

Then when I finally realised nothing was going to happen I clicked on the first word - and was told I had to download the Flash player.

Same on the other 2 choices.

And when I clicked on the "Contact me" bit I was presented with a dialogue box which gave me mutiple choices of which e-mail client to use!

I clicked on the Blog but couldn't see the relevance to YOUR work at all.

And that was that.

I don't quite know what this site is meant to accomplish but as an example of how to drive people away it's excellent.

If you want to get onto Google and other SEs, well, I'm afraid neither this type of "minimalist" design - meaning nothing there - and Flash - is not really the way to do it.

Search engines want TEXT to index sites.

Here is an example of what could be called "Minimalist" which does actually work and is on the first page of Google for several keyphrases and loads very quickly with no Flash in sight:

http://www.andreaduncan.co.uk/

She is also a member of this forum.

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[Dale_tem]

The front page just screams early millenia Microsoft frontpage.

The front page needs to have all of your info on. You are using bog standard arial, underlined hyperlinks, it looks like a basic page someone at school came up with. it is not a good advertisement.

Try wordpress or similar, turn off all the bits you don't want and go from there, simple, effective and stylish.

 

[Disphotic]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm a photographer not a web designer, so I rather expect people to be looking at the photos rather than the site design. The blog is entirely about photography, my own work and other peoples, did you read any of it? The flash issue is a valid one which I'll look into, although I am a little suprised there are people using the net without flash installed...

 

[Dale_tem]

Wordpress is easy to use, and will make the site more compelling. Have a look

 

[petersmart]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm a photographer not a web designer, so I rather expect people to be looking at the photos rather than the site design. The blog is entirely about photography, my own work and other peoples, did you read any of it? The flash issue is a valid one which I'll look into, although I am a little suprised there are people using the net without flash installed...

Well TBH if you want to get onto any search engines flash is not the way to go - even now Google and others can't index flash and it just isn't needed to build a good simple website - as the example I gave you showed.

And if no one sees your site they're certainly not going to see your photographs no matter how good they may be.

If you only want to use it so people can see your photographs then you may just as well get a pro Flickr account - much easier that way.

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