Website critique

The site looks OK, if a little foreboding. ( the shot at top left is a bit scary..:-) I'll look forward to more content when you get used to using the camera. I,m glad that its all black. Did you build this yourself? or was it some kind of template? ( If thats not a rude qustion to ask a webdeveloper..? :bonk:) FWIW I think horses nearly always look better in profile.
 
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate your comments.

Yep, I built it myself when I had a couple of hours spare, just tried to keep it as simple as possible.

The reason I went for black was so that the focus was on the photos, rather than a fancy site, but I agree it looks a little dark - especially when the images on the page are greyscale too.

Thanks for the screenshot of the page in safari, I'll tweak the css to fix the problem when I get a minute.
 
I've tinkered with the site a little, replacing the logo and lightening it up alittle from black to a darkish grey... Doesn't look so ominous now.

:)
 
I like it. The colours of your website seem to go well with your style.

Clean and simple. Once you get some more photos uploaded it should look 100%
 
I would suggest removing the portraits link until you have more photos to put in that category. But that depends on the purpose of the site: is it to display your work or to try to get business?

Also, the "about" page isn't fullsized in Chrome and the navigation appears on the left rather than the right.
 
Doest look good on a Mac - Safari. The main pic seems too far too right, guess it should be below the navigation links, it starts straight after contact.
 
Hi. Just to add some feedback - the thumbnails on your album pages don't fit the white 'frame' unless they are portrait orientation. Like the revisions you made otherwise.
 
Photodiva said:
Hi. Just to add some feedback - the thumbnails on your album pages don't fit the white 'frame' unless they are portrait orientation. Like the revisions you made otherwise.
Click to expand...

The problem is that with images of different orientations it's difficult to arrange them nicely in a table.

I've found a decent enough compromise now, of centering the image in the grid both horizontally and vertically.
 
Beau said:
Nothing massive to add other than it seems very dark. Black sites are generally looking a little dated these days?

Also when viewed in safari on my mac I get this..

http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8775/screenshot20100207at201.png

:)
Click to expand...
cambsno said:
Doest look good on a Mac - Safari. The main pic seems too far too right, guess it should be below the navigation links, it starts straight after contact.
Click to expand...

Fixed the problems in Safari.

chris_f said:
Looks great to me, what did you build it in/with?
Click to expand...

I built it myself using php and mysql. It's a very, very simple site.

The backend consists of an area to:
1. add/edit/delete blog posts.
2. create/edit/delete albums (with an album description)
3. upload/edit/delete an image (with a title and description)
4. edit the 'about' page

That's it for now.
 
I think if you built that from scratch then you have done very well, I am currently scouring the web for a decent php template to get on my site.
I have tried so many different ones, including coppermine, joomla, phpgallery etc...

and the hunt goes on.
 
chris_f said:
I think if you built that from scratch then you have done very well, I am currently scouring the web for a decent php template to get on my site.
I have tried so many different ones, including coppermine, joomla, phpgallery etc...

and the hunt goes on.
Click to expand...

Ah well, I am a web developer by trade which helps out a little ;)

The reason I made my own is because I don't like the way some of the software packages such as Joomla and Wordpress work.

Something such as Joomla would be overkill for my site plus packages such as Joomla / Wordpress can be awkward to make function in the way I want them to, hence the reason to create a bespoke package that does what I want, the way I want it to be done.

Plus I just plain don't like Joomla, we use quite it often at work.
 
That seems much better.... Nice. So how much would a site like that cost? I,m sure you could get some takers ...
 
we11ingon said:
That seems much better.... Nice. So how much would a site like that cost? I,m sure you could get some takers ...
Click to expand...

Apologies to the mods if I'm not allowed to post this - but if required I'll remove it.

To be honest - I'm not really sure.

It needs some tweaks to the backend to make it a bit more user friendly. (uploading of multiple images)

As long as someone provided their own hosting (php and mysql enabled) and a domain name.

Selling it as it is (with the tweaks mentioned earlier) - but with no future development by myself - I could do it for a £150 one off payment - no monthly/yearly charges like you'd get with companies such as photium... other than your domain name and hosting costs.

It is very basic mine consists of the following pages

Home
About
Blog - with an infinite no of posts
Portfolio - with an infinite no of images and albums (taking into account your hosting packages' limits)
Contact
 
I think it looks fine.

Browser testing: Looks fine in Firefox and Opera...IE7 and IE8 need a little tweaking. IE6 is majorly screwed!

I suggest you download and install a tool called IE Tester, it's very handy!

There's also a few errors in the code:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3a%2f%2fwww.stephenhoultphotography.co.uk%2f

By the way, I work for a top London web agency so if you do get really stuck then give me a shout. However, I don't have much spare time so I'm not really interested in building websites for anyone - before the requests come flooding in!
 
Hi,
Just been looking at your photos. I presume they were done with Visual Lightbox?
On my laptop they don't fit on the screen. Need to scroll to see the whole picture.
Looks good though
 
LizardMan said:
I think it looks fine.

Browser testing: Looks fine in Firefox and Opera...IE7 and IE8 need a little tweaking. IE6 is majorly screwed!

I suggest you download and install a tool called IE Tester, it's very handy!

There's also a few errors in the code:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3a%2f%2fwww.stephenhoultphotography.co.uk%2f

By the way, I work for a top London web agency so if you do get really stuck then give me a shout. However, I don't have much spare time so I'm not really interested in building websites for anyone - before the requests come flooding in!
Click to expand...

Fixed the errors thrown up by the W3C validator - though I must confess I hadn't checked the site yet.

Developed in firefox, works fine in IE8 and Safari (haven't tested it in IE6/7) though I'll have a look when I get the chance.

MartinH32 said:
Hi,
Just been looking at your photos. I presume they were done with Visual Lightbox?
On my laptop they don't fit on the screen. Need to scroll to see the whole picture.
Looks good though
Click to expand...

My site is using the lightbox2 script - my images are sized to 900px wide if they're landscape or 700px tall if they're portrait - this is how I set it up to work on my screen - but I realise if this was for the masses then it'd need to be designed to fit on laptops / smaller screens (I hate laptops :p)
 
The site seems to be working well in most browsers now.

It looks ever so slightly different in IE6, but if you never saw it in another browser you wouldn't think it doesn't look quite as it should.
 
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