Website Feedback

T_J_G · 27 Jul 2016

Evening,

I've been working on this for a while now, and since it's pretty much live I'd like some feedback on it if at all possible. I've created using wordpress and using a theme I downloaded. First time doing something like this so I'm sure I've gone wrong in a few places. Anyway if you get a chance to have a browse it's www.tjgphotography.co.uk.

Thanks in advance!

kendo1 · 27 Jul 2016

Looks OK.
I've not seen any problems. I'm checking spelling and grammar too

It's not the fastest to load, but acceptable. I checked my download speed on speedtest and I'm on 80Mbs just now.

Jason Crest · 27 Jul 2016

Loads sort of ok in Linux Mint Chrome but the slide show starts without me doing anything which is annoying and the indicator keeps telling me that the page is still loading when it has in fact finished.

I think you need a real killer shot for the landing page - the sort that encourages people to investigate further - and presumably some SEO work to highlight the site in Google.

Good luck.

ancient_mariner · 27 Jul 2016

Just tried - painfully slow to respond - almost gave up!

Pics are nice and the bright bouquet shot works well but the others on the slide show are a litte dull by comparison. Scrolling down the home page, the shot in the middle at the bottom looks dark & underexposed compared to the images either side.

Wandering through the rest of the site, it responded much more promptly. Generally looks good, but there's a pic you've used a couple of times of a bride leaning on a wall that's unflattering in terms of pose, likewise a couple of others in the gallery that look like random unflattering shots by guests, rather than professionally posed wedding photos. That may be a style you're happy with and technically they were OK, but if I were looking for a tog then I'd think twice because of those.

Hope that's helpful.

T_J_G · 27 Jul 2016

Thanks for the input people, I need to work on getting the site to load faster. Think this needs to be my first port of call. Any suggestions?

I'll re-review all shots on site, thanks @ancient_mariner

Danaras · 27 Jul 2016

Try Hyper cache plugin or any CDN to make it load faster.

afasoas · 28 Jul 2016

First thought is the load time - between 8 and 20 seconds!
It's a big question as to why.
Ping time is a reasonable 11.4ms and other sites from that server (that I dare try) seem to load reasonably quickly. Even your wp-admin page that has nearly zero content on it takes quite a while to load. This should be protected by some mechanism and served over HTTPs btw.

As a triage measures I'd:
- Try disabling all plugins and then switching them back on one at a time - reload the page (ctrl + f5) in between each change
- Temporarily remove the wordpress site and replace it with a static HTML page that's loading some chunky images and see how that loads
- Step-up to loading a PHP page - something light weight initially, and then something a bit more beasty (loop through some CPU intensive calcs and present the result)
- Stash something chunky in the database and see how long it takes to retreive it

That should give an indication as to where the issue lies - your site or the hosting arrangement.

T_J_G · 28 Jul 2016

afasoas said:
First thought is the load time - between 8 and 20 seconds!
It's a big question as to why.
Ping time is a reasonable 11.4ms and other sites from that server (that I dare try) seem to load reasonably quickly. Even your wp-admin page that has nearly zero content on it takes quite a while to load. This should be protected by some mechanism and served of HTTPs btw.

As a triage measures I'd:
- Try disabling all plugins and then switching them back on one at a time - reload the page (ctrl + f5) in between each change
- Temporarily remove the wordpress site and replace it with a static HTML page that's loading some chunky images and see how that loads
- Step-up to loading a PHP page - something light weight initially, and then something a bit more beasty (loop through some CPU intensive calcs and present the result)
- Stash something chunky in the database and see how long it takes to retreive it

That should give an indication as to where the issue lies - your site or the hosting arrangement.

Now I've done a few things myself this morning and it's being very slow to load for me this morning, which is slower than it's ever been for me! Thanks for the advice but I fear your solutions or tests are out of my knowledge zone! Also what do yu mean by "This should be protected by some mechanism and served of HTTPs btw."

afasoas · 29 Jul 2016

That was supposed to say "HTTPs" - which means communication between the client (web browser) and server is encrypted as oppose to being transmitted in clear text and vulnerable to username/password snooping.
Quite honestly, if you are thinking about building a website which is more than a few static pages of content, it's important to take your time in learning how to do things properly than create another new honeypot for script kiddies.

I'd start with building a virtual machine on your PC and using that to build and host your website - that will give you a good grouding in all the technologies involved. If you aren't prepared to do that, pay someone who already has the prerequisite knowledge.