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New Website - Opinions?

S

SOLLERBOY

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 8, 2008
715
68
UK
Hi guys, I just finished my final year at college (going to uni later this year) and thought I would create a website to promote my work. I am a beginner when it comes to html etc.

I decided to go for something different and complete a layout entirely in photoshop and use dreamweaver to bring it all together.

Bare in mind that the gallery is only a demo and the thing has only just gone live as a tester.

I'm looking for opinions and constructive criticism.

Thanks.

www.daniellloberaphoto.com
 
It looks simple and clean, I like that. There are some things you might want to reconsider:

Nothing is really aligned with each other (the navigation is furhter to the left than the "banner" and higher up than the image). Try using a more grid-like layout to see if that improves the look. Grids go well with simple and clean designs, I think.

Everything is just a big image and there is no real text (i.e. actual text with HTML markup). This is bad for various reasons (e.g. accessibility, SEO, takes longer to load than using text and just the main image as an actual image).

Maybe even try centering everything in the browser window.
 
SOLLERBOY said:
Hi guys, I just finished my final year at college (going to uni later this year) and thought I would create a website to promote my work. I am a beginner when it comes to html etc.

I decided to go for something different and complete a layout entirely in photoshop and use dreamweaver to bring it all together.

Bare in mind that the gallery is only a demo and the thing has only just gone live as a tester.

I'm looking for opinions and constructive criticism.

Thanks.

www.daniellloberaphoto.com
Click to expand...
That site is a nightmare for SEO.

As a site in general, it's nice, I like it, simply but to the point.

If you are trying to do business off it, it is HORRIBLE for being seen on a search engine.

You are not optimized at all... and all your text is inside images, which the spiders can't even see anyways to index you. I'm not at my computer right now but I'd venture to say there are no backlinks so your linkjuice is very low. You also keyword stuffed your metatag, but metatag DOES NOT help your PR... just your descriptions IF google ever finds you.

...let me go check.....

Yeah just did a search for your EXACT website, and google doesn't know you.

So as far as trying to sell things (if you are) or just be known, your site is not good at all. Your gallery is in flash and your texts are in <img> tags with no alt tags.

Basically google sees about 10 words on your entire site and can't really use any of it.

By no means am I ragging on your site, I like sites like that, I really do, but getting into the SEO field as I am, I analyze sites now when I see them and I read all your code on the site and it's really bad as far as optimizing to show up in search engines to gain hits.

Other than that it's good ;)

PM me if you have any direct questions, I'll also check back on this thread ;)
 
SOLLERBOY said:
Hi guys, I just finished my final year at college (going to uni later this year) and thought I would create a website to promote my work. I am a beginner when it comes to html etc.

I decided to go for something different and complete a layout entirely in photoshop and use dreamweaver to bring it all together.

Bare in mind that the gallery is only a demo and the thing has only just gone live as a tester.

I'm looking for opinions and constructive criticism.

Thanks.

www.daniellloberaphoto.com
Click to expand...

Major fail. You took something extremely simple and made it complex. Why did you do your nav links as image maps?! I'm on a fast connection and everything loaded really slow because you are using large images instead of laying everything out as html and slices. Bad! Bad! Bad!

The design is kind of meh. If you are going to have something so minimalist (and don't get me wrong, I like minimalism), then you should look at using one of the many CMS templates that are already out there. Then you won't have to do all the coding and it will help you make a site that is more functional. You seriously need to rethink the direction you are going. If your lack of web knowledge is holding you back, then you should hire someone to help you, or find someone at your school to do a trade with.

Edit: I forgot to mention. Your gallery page that uses tilt viewer is pretty gimmicky. The sound effect and thumbnails moving around gets annoying pretty fast. But, the biggest issue is that it doesn't relate to the rest of your site, visually or technically. It even dumps the navigation scheme so that the user is forced to click the back arrow on the browser to return to the website. When I clicked on gallery I thought I was redirected to a different website until I looked and verified that I was on the same URL.
 
having one giant image as a website is not a good idea it loads horribly.

All of your text could easily be replicated in html/css and the background is white so I don't see why you need to paste in a white background just get the hex code and set the background color. The image just put in a div.

I am confused as why you did it this why if you are that horrible just use iweb

edit: looked through the rest of your website rather then iweb I am going to suggest you do a google search for a photo wordpress themes here is a start http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/18/100-amazing-free-wordpress-themes-for-2009/
 
may i know how you added the gallery? i'm looking to ad on to my site aswell. thanks!
 
Thanks for all the comments guys, i'm trying a few things out as time progresses.
 
Im currently working on v2.0 using a different method that I used through college so I am not relying on image based pages even though I love the look of the site.

What I would like to know is if there is any way I can add an image into a page and write over the top of it as I have done on my old site using dreamweaver??

Thanks.
 
you can set an image as the background and then insert text on top.

Just select the area, and then add property "background image" and choose your image, then Background repeat - "no repeat" etc.

There may be other ways, but this is what I have done in the past.

How you go about putting your text on top however is up to you. Tables are clumsy apparently, but i'm not really knowledgeable enough to suggest anything else
 
ktbubster said:
you can set an image as the background and then insert text on top.

Just select the area, and then add property "background image" and choose your image, then Background repeat - "no repeat" etc.

There may be other ways, but this is what I have done in the past.

How you go about putting your text on top however is up to you. Tables are clumsy apparently, but i'm not really knowledgeable enough to suggest anything else
Click to expand...


Thanks, I thought that background images automatically tile themselves?
 
you can turn that off by setting
Code: 
#example {
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}

I'm sure there's an option for that in Dreamweaver.
 
adding text on top?

Yes, they do, unless you add in the following like I mentioned - you have to set background repeat to "no repeat" you can just add that property in the same menu you add the background image property.

Depending how your set up is, you'll want to set the background position as well to "center center" or "center top" etc, depending where this is positioned on your page... as well. I think the default is "left" if you don't set this, but I may be wrong.

ktbubster said:
Just select the area, and then add property "background image" and choose your image, then Background repeat - "no repeat" etc.
Click to expand...

** Hey - while we're on the topic - as this is good for the OP too probably, what is a better way of adding text over an image/background image other than putting a table on top of it? I heard that this is clumsy, but I am not sure of another way. I tried using an av div before but it didn't stay aligned with the background or image when the windows was changed in size etc. Thoughts? The OP may want to know this too?
 
Its a good start but i think you need to add a background color and center the text with the picture better but all in all i like it

Edit: I would make it so the top of the image was aligned with the top of the word about

P.S. Nice picture, where is that?
 
fun173 said:
Its a good start but i think you need to add a background color and center the text with the picture better but all in all i like it

Edit: I would make it so the top of the image was aligned with the top of the word about

P.S. Nice picture, where is that?
Click to expand...


Thanks again everybody for the help and info.

it's rhyolite Ghost town in Nevada.
 
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