New Site Design C&C?

Jeremy Winterberg · May 26, 2009

Hey everyone, after a long night I finished my new site deisgn.
I started it at 10pm and finished at 6am... got up for school at 7:30am... going to work now till 8pm.. long day I guess...

But, I hope it was worth it! I really like it, and I hope other people like it too. I was going for a more heres the info, you don't have to go searching through rough flash pages (like my old site)... its also dark... sorta grunge'ish which is the new trend these days.

Check it out: www.WinterbergPhotography.com

I'm probably going to make a few minor changes in the next few days, but overall this is what it looks like.

Tim Kamppinen · May 26, 2009

I would suggest totally redoing your galleries page. The "tiltviewer" thing is just annoying to me. The novelty wore off as soon as I tried it. There's no point in tilting and spinning a tiny jpeg around on a computer screen, the controls aren't all that intuitive, and worst of all I couldn't even see a decent sized photo. Besides that, the scroll bar on the right disappeared for me on the galleries page (I'm in firefox 3.0) and I couldn't go down even though I could tell that there was more stuff listed on the page off screen.

I'm just wondering why you dont work everything into your smugmug site instead of splitting it up? Having a link to galleries on a different domain is less than an ideal situation. I like the background, but why so narrow? There's tons of dead space on my screen and I'm in 4:3. I imagine it would look really sparse on a widescreen monitor. It also makes for lots of scrolling. It's best to keep everything "above the fold" i.e. fit everything on the screen so people don't have to scroll if at all possible.

Sorry if this all sounds rather negative, I'm just trying to give some useful feedback. I like the overall look and feel you have going, it just needs some adjustment.

Jeremy Winterberg · May 26, 2009

Tim Kamppinen wrote:

I would suggest totally redoing your galleries page. The "tiltviewer" thing is just annoying to me. The novelty wore off as soon as I tried it. There's no point in tilting and spinning a tiny jpeg around on a computer screen, the controls aren't all that intuitive, and worst of all I couldn't even see a decent sized photo. Besides that, the scroll bar on the right disappeared for me on the galleries page (I'm in firefox 3.0) and I couldn't go down even though I could tell that there was more stuff listed on the page off screen.

I'm just wondering why you dont work everything into your smugmug site instead of splitting it up? Having a link to galleries on a different domain is less than an ideal situation. I like the background, but why so narrow? There's tons of dead space on my screen and I'm in 4:3. I imagine it would look really sparse on a widescreen monitor. It also makes for lots of scrolling. It's best to keep everything "above the fold" i.e. fit everything on the screen so people don't have to scroll if at all possible.

Sorry if this all sounds rather negative, I'm just trying to give some useful feedback. I like the overall look and feel you have going, it just needs some adjustment.

no, I didn't feel that was negative... Its all things I myself noticed, and need to fix... I'm just too tired to do it tonight, maybe tomorrow.

I use a 32" HDTV... widescreen... as my monitor/tv... so yes, I get the mass ammount of emptiness you feel.

The reason why I don't use just my smugmug as my only site is because I want to be in controll of every single aspect of my website. And you are with smugmug (to a certain degree) but not as easy as I can be with html and dreamweaver (cheating I know but it makes it sooooo easy).

To be honest, I dont think websites created in smugmug look professional. I tried it for a while, but I'm going back to linking to smugmug galleries, and using smugmug for proofs and ordering.

Tiltviewer is going bye bye as soon as I find a different gallery app that looks decent... any suggestions?

anonymouscuban · May 26, 2009

I agree with all of Tim's points, especially the tilt viewer. It's one of those things that just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. The impression I got is that you are trying to sell your site and not your pictures. To be very candid, by the time I got to you pictures I was already bored and a little annoyed. The only reason I clicked on your galleries page was because you asked for feedback. If I happened across your site on my own, I probably would have navigated away from it after I clicked on the tilt thingy and realized all it did was move a few thumbs around.

I would focus more on displaying your pictures and less on fancy site functionality.

Please don't take this personal. Just trying to give you honest feedback.

Tim Kamppinen · May 26, 2009

Jeremy Winterberg wrote:

Tiltviewer is going bye bye as soon as I find a different gallery app that looks decent... any suggestions?

I don't really know much about that sort of thing. Personally I love the basic smugmug gallery style with "stretchy" mode enabled. It fills the monitor and shows a decent sized image all rather seamlessly, and I like the option of the lightbox to see it larger without leaving the current page. Galleries that make you navigate away from the page you're on and load an entire new one just to view an image at a reasonable size make me want to hang myself. You know... browse thumbs, click on a thumb, bye-bye gallery, we're on a new page with the photo. Look at it, click "back" to return to the gallery, repeat ad nauseum.

I have to disagree about smug sites not looking professional. I'll agree that they don't look as slick as a custom flash-based site, and if you just upload your pics and change some text here and there it definitely looks "cookie cutter" and unprofessional. However, if you put some time into it you can come up with some good results, and this is easier than with the new easy customizer tool. I know my site isn't anything to get excited about, but I think it at least looks "professional" and not like it was tossed together by a 14 year old with some free web hosting. It's not 100% unique but I don't think it has to be. The main things that I was going for when I designed it were a clean apperance and simple navigation, and I've at least achieved that.

To be honest I think it looks more professional to have a simpler site that's self contained and fits togther seamlessly than to have your front end linking to galleries on a different site with a different look and feel, no matter how great your main site is. I mean, the galleries are what it's all about, right? You want people to have a great experience when viewing your photos.

Anyway that's just my take on it. Maybe there's a way to use the two sites and integrate them more seamlessly? I don't know how, though. Perhaps someone else has advice...

divamum · May 27, 2009

Agree with the others. That tilt viewer is incredibly annoying and achieves absolutely nothing except to prove that you have it installed.

Tim has made some great points, and I would also add that IMO you should only have your very BEST images as part of your professional site (obviously, unlisted ones will be there that you can link to privately - I'm referring to the public "portfolio" type galleries). You have some good shots in there, but don't make people work to find them - I know it is said to have enough samples to show people you can get a good picture consistently, but since you're just starting out I think it would be better not to worry about that until you have a range of pictures that are ALL your top work to display. As you build your portfolio you can add things, but quantity isn't going to impress people in the first instance - quality is.

Lastly, consider that many viewers will NOT have a 32" monitor. Make sure everything looks great on a crappy screen - it will only look better on a good one!!

Pupator · May 27, 2009

I agree with all the above suggestions* (especially that you should be taking advantage of Smugmug galleries with the stretchy viewer!) but I'll add one more thing since no one has mentioned the "about me" page yet.

1) Change out the picture. You say that you like to have fun with your photography and I'll bet that's true. Put up a picture of yourself that reflects it. The picture of you is a nice formal shot but I don't think it reflects as much about you as a more personal shot could.

2) Find a good English major or writer and have them touch up the copy on that page. Grammatically and syntactically there are some mistakes that need fixing (no shame in that; that's why God made English majors!). Also, think carefully about how you want to describe yourself to potential clients. Are you telling them, on that page, the most compelling reasons why they might want to hire you?

Just my 2 cents. No hard feelings if you disagree!

*I think you're just wrong that Smugmug sites cannot look professional. Check out this gallery - nothing in there that looks professional?

Jeremy Winterberg · May 27, 2009

Pupator wrote:

*I think you're just wrong that Smugmug sites cannot look professional. Check out this gallery - nothing in there that looks professional?

Actually, I agree with what everyone says. I need to change everything, and I'm doing that.

business is pretty slow right now for me so thats why I'm updating stuff... I'm not sure why I changed out my live site layout so early, but I did... maybe it was the fact that I was exhausted?

I see one site in particular that I love... http://www.jakigoodphotography.com/

but, thats way too much work. I'm not the greatest javascript/css coder in the world... hence why I use dreamweaver... I'm good with html, but not so much with css and java... or flash for that matter. My previous layout was taken from a free flash template, and I had a hard time editing it, which is why I wanted to change it to an html one.

I guess I can work on it a little more to get the smug mug one working/looking great. Its just a lot of work, and last time I tried getting help on here I basically got shot down and it was a huge mass of confusion.

Tim Kamppinen · May 27, 2009

Wow, that site is pretty slick. I didn't know you could do that with a smugmug site...

But as you said it's probably a huge amount of work. However, to just get a simple, clean, professional looking site is not that hard. You don't have to know CSS or javascript or anything like that. I know nothing about coding. Everything I did to my site was just copy and pasting code from the customization forum and tutorials. Takes a little trial and error but it's not what I would call "hard". I know most if not all of the sites in the link Pupator posted can be replicated in this way (not that you want to replicate someone elses site exactly... that's where the trial and error come in). It is possible.

In the meantime, does anyone know how that "Jaki Good Photography" site was put together?

Tim Kamppinen · May 27, 2009

Actually, upon closer inspection, 90% of that site would be fairly simple to do using copy and paste CSS. The front page slideshow/gallery and the animated photos on some of the info pages are the only things that jump out at me really as not being that simple. Although the homepage gallery seemed slow to load the pics for me, which is annoying. I suppose you could just not have as many in there though.

TonyCooper · May 28, 2009

Jeremy Winterberg wrote:

Actually, I agree with what everyone says. I need to change everything, and I'm doing that.

business is pretty slow right now for me so thats why I'm updating stuff... I'm not sure why I changed out my live site layout so early, but I did... maybe it was the fact that I was exhausted?

I see one site in particular that I love... http://www.jakigoodphotography.com/

I guess this is "Rain on Jeremy's Parade Week". Jaki's site is very good visually, but the music is annoying. I have 100s of music CDs, I like acoustic guitar, the song is pretty, and the woman's voice is good. But I want to be able *choose* to listen to music, not have it forced on me by a website. I usually have a CD playing on my system across the room, so websites that open with music compete with what I have on.

If you do emulate Jaki, at least have a very large button to turn it off.
I couldn't, so I closed the site and continued to listen to my own choice: an old recording by Capercaillie.

Pupator · May 28, 2009

I agree - the site is very pretty but it has two strikes against it before I ever click on the first link:

1) Music (same as you said)
2) Loading time. Way too long for what's basically a splash page.

Tim Kamppinen · May 28, 2009

Yeah, please don't put music on your site, or if you do, have the default setting be "off" with an obvious "Play" button for those who do want to hear it.

Jeremy Winterberg · May 30, 2009

i also agree with the music, i hate music on websites for the same reasons stated. that is one thing i was going to leave out, also i wasn't going to copy her, idk, i'm working on it...

I'm a tad handicapped right now. two days ago i got my left hand caught in a jointer and it took the whole pad of my thumb off straight down to the bone. Yesterday i had surgery, they did a skin graph, cut a flap up on my index finger, and attatched my thumb to it so it has blood flowing to heal faster.

So photography in on hold for a bit, and website design is gonna be slowly progressed.

Vicodin helps alot!

WolfOnDigital · May 30, 2009

Smugmug websites not looking....
To be honest, I dont think websites created in smugmug look professional. I tried it for a while, but I'm going back to linking to smugmug galleries, and using smugmug for proofs and ordering.

Have you looked at the websites in Smugmug? You must have missed alot as there are some wonderfuly professional looking websites here!

Jeremy Winterberg · May 30, 2009

WolfOnDigital wrote:

To be honest, I dont think websites created in smugmug look professional. I tried it for a while, but I'm going back to linking to smugmug galleries, and using smugmug for proofs and ordering.

Have you looked at the websites in Smugmug? You must have missed alot as there are some wonderfuly professional looking websites here!

yes there are, but i don't want to copycat them... idk, like i said, i'll work on it its just gonna take some time right now lol... its hard typing with one hand.

Tim Kamppinen · May 30, 2009

Wow, that sucks about your thumb in the jointer. I really cringed when I read that. Hope it heals fast!

divamum · May 30, 2009

OUCH!!!! Hope it starts to feel better quickly - that sounds like loads of no fun!

Jeremy Winterberg · May 30, 2009

divamum wrote:

OUCH!!!! Hope it starts to feel better quickly - that sounds like loads of no fun!

yeah, no fun at all...

they have my hand wrapped up like lobster claw... typing with one hand is a pain, especially when i'm on my laptop... worst of all i can't take pictures.. i could technically, but i wouldn't be able to use a zoom lens. "oh nifty fifty where art thou?"

Jeremy Winterberg · July 9, 2009

ok... so I'm semi recovered from my woodworking accident. I'm starting a new layout. This time I'm not going live till its perfect.

Heres a picture of the new layout... matches my new business cards I'm getting. The grey box that makes the navigation repeats throughout the width of the site... if that makes sense.

unfortunately my dreamweaver/html skills have pretty much gone away, and now I'm running into the dilema of not being able to center the website. I'm trying everything I know, and it will not work?

New Site Design C&C?

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