New website

ShepsMom

I was directed to come here to get some beating. So i did

For 10 days i was battling Blu and Godaddy to get my site up and running (i've decided to switch hosting company) so finally after sleepless nights of headache and no-one willing to help, my site is up.

I would love to hear what ya all think. It's flash, it's a template, there is music, not too much flexibility to move things around (such as menu), etc. but that's OK with me, cause i like it that way.


Anyway, would love to get some critique (still working on selection of image, etc...)

Thanks in advance!

www.intruecolors.com

studio1972

It's pretty, and so are the pics, but...

On my mac (Safari Browser) the menu went a bit weird and unresponsive. I would recommend wordpress and prophoto, but appreciate you probably don't want to hear that.

ShepsMom

studio1972 wrote: »

It's pretty, and so are the pics, but...

On my mac (Safari Browser) the menu went a bit weird and unresponsive. I would recommend wordpress and prophoto, but appreciate you probably don't want to hear that.

Thank you. I have to check on menu and I really hate to contact them again
As for blog, i do have blog, it didn't transfer properly when i switched, it's another grand story. It's up but my posts worth of 3 years are gone, so i have to start from scratch there.

EXILER

i thought the website came out great.. although im not a fan of music web pages. Your images are stunning. i found myself going through your different sessions ( engagements,weddings,lifestyle) and then eventually bookmarked for future reveiw

PS: on my mac (safari browser) the menu worked fine. just an FYI.

oh and another thing, in your bio you said that you werent sure if anybody read them? i ALWAYS read them. I enjoy reading about the people behind the camera.

ShepsMom

EXILER wrote: »

i thought the website came out great.. although im not a fan of music web pages. Your images are stunning. i found myself going through your different sessions ( engagements,weddings,lifestyle) and then eventually bookmarked for future reveiw

PS: on my mac (safari browser) the menu worked fine. just an FYI.

oh and another thing, in your bio you said that you werent sure if anybody read them? i ALWAYS read them. I enjoy reading about the people behind the camera.

Thank you sir, thank you very much for your nice words.
You have great images yourself, and your pup...... omg!

Sam

I thought your overall look and feel is fine. I would however suggest you think about ether simplifying how the viewer can turn off the music, and or give them a choice when entering. There are a LOT of people who don't like music.

I also found the font on your menu a little difficult to read.

I did like your about me. Written from your heart and perspective, not some cliched made up super sensitive mush one thinks the client will respond to. Also like that you didn't write in the third person.

Now a question for the Smugmug experts. Can you make a Smugmug site look like this??

Sam

ssimmonsphoto

I'm using Chrome and things are ok, but may not line up the way you envisioned them to. I find your logo a bit small considering that the menu is bigger than it. Also, I'd second the recommendation to enter your site without music. I absolutely hate sites with it and automatically close out of them just to get it to stop quicker. Other than that, I like your color choices and how the background matches your logo. I also like how image rich it is.

Sam wrote: »

Can you make a Smugmug site look like this??

Not that I'd consider myself an expert, but, if you are familiar with coding and everything, you could likely get pretty close. My site is hosted entirely on SmugMug without the use of third party places. It's constantly in revision and I'll likely get bored and change it up again in February.

ShepsMom

Sam wrote: »

I thought your overall look and feel is fine. I would however suggest you think about ether simplifying how the viewer can turn off the music, and or give them a choice when entering. There are a LOT of people who don't like music.

I also found the font on your menu a little difficult to read.

I did like your about me. Written from your heart and perspective, not some cliched made up super sensitive mush one thinks the client will respond to. Also like that you didn't write in the third person.

Now a question for the Smugmug experts. Can you make a Smugmug site look like this??

Sam

Sam, thank you for your input.
Regarding music, they can turn it off by clicking on the jukebox. May be it's not too obvious? Hmm.... I can play with fonts too, but I like it the way it is.
Thanks again!

ShepsMom

ssimmonsphoto wrote: »

I'm using Chrome and things are ok, but may not line up the way you envisioned them to. I find your logo a bit small considering that the menu is bigger than it. Also, I'd second the recommendation to enter your site without music. I absolutely hate sites with it and automatically close out of them just to get it to stop quicker. Other than that, I like your color choices and how the background matches your logo. I also like how image rich it is.

.

Thank you for your feedback. Regarding music, it's been on and off over the years, but for some interesting reason i keep coming back to leaving it on. I do know about music on websites and never-ending debate about it, for now i think i just leave it on till i get sick of it.
Logo, i have a choice of displaying logo or text. I can make logo bigger, but it overlaps the images, i can do the text, but it's too plain for my test. I might make logo just a bit bigger and see how it works. I don't have much control over its placement.

Thank you again!

ssimmonsphoto

ShepsMom wrote: »

Thank you for your feedback. Regarding music, it's been on and off over the years, but for some interesting reason i keep coming back to leaving it on. I do know about music on websites and never-ending debate about it, for now i think i just leave it on till i get sick of it.
Logo, i have a choice of displaying logo or text. I can make logo bigger, but it overlaps the images, i can do the text, but it's too plain for my test. I might make logo just a bit bigger and see how it works. I don't have much control over its placement.

Thank you again!

I'd make it bigger even if it overlaps. In fact, I somewhat like a bit of overlap with that because it adds dimensionality to the site. And, in the end, your logo really is the outward appearance of your business. Having logo recognition will help people with brand awareness especially since it's not your own name. Just my 2 cents. I definitely don't make myself out to be one of the amazing togs around these parts.

Hikin' Mike

I hate music on a website and when I hear it, I leave, and I know I'm not the only one. That said, I decided to look further and it took too long for your website to load (I'm still waiting). If I were a customer, you lost me.

If your going to use a splash page, you should think about adding a title tag so Google can find you. Read my SEO for the Photographer.

ShepsMom

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

I hate music on a website and when I hear it, I leave, and I know I'm not the only one. That said, I decided to look further and it took too long for your website to load (I'm still waiting). If I were a customer, you lost me.

If your going to use a splash page, you should think about adding a title tag so Google can find you. Read my SEO for the Photographer.

Thanks Mike, i had tags, just removed them, will go put them back.
Music, i did notice my site is slower, i think my audio files are too big, maybe i can downsize them, that should help with the loading time.
Thanks again for feedback!

Hikin' Mike

ShepsMom wrote: »

Thanks Mike, i had tags, just removed them, will go put them back.
Music, i did notice my site is slower, i think my audio files are too big, maybe i can downsize them, that should help with the loading time.
Thanks again for feedback!

Honestly it took a few minutes to load.

ShepsMom

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

Honestly it took a few minutes to load.

I disable music for now. I think it's loading a little faster

Hikin' Mike

ShepsMom wrote: »

I disable music for now. I think it's loading a little faster

48 seconds until I saw the first image. Way too slow for me.

ShepsMom

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

48 seconds until I saw the first image. Way too slow for me.

Hmm, my images are pretty small in size, i might downsize them even more, not sure what else i can do.
Thanks for checking!

ssimmonsphoto

Did you just change the image size? It was taking longer a few minutes ago when I ran YSlow from Firebug on it, but it got dramatically faster when I ran it the second time. Flash is, as a whole, the biggest component of your load time beyond the images and doc portion of your site.

Moogle Pepper

In your galleries, trying to load and surf through the images is totally unresponsive for me. I am using Chrome, which is usually quite fast. As for music, I would leave it off. Brides tend to be checking out wedding sites at work. It would suck for them to have the songs come on unexpectedly.

ShepsMom

ssimmonsphoto wrote: »

Did you just change the image size? It was taking longer a few minutes ago when I ran YSlow from Firebug on it, but it got dramatically faster when I ran it the second time. Flash is, as a whole, the biggest component of your load time beyond the images and doc portion of your site.

I disabled music, and downsized images on home page. I'll be downsizing all of them as i go. I added border to them too, i think it looks kind of cheesy.

ShepsMom

Moogle Pepper wrote: »

In your galleries, trying to load and surf through the images is totally unresponsive for me. I am using Chrome, which is usually quite fast. As for music, I would leave it off. Brides tend to be checking out wedding sites at work. It would suck for them to have the songs come on unexpectedly.

Thanks Ted, i'll be resizing all the images.

FotobyMoMo

I personally stay as far away from flash as possible. Why? It's very important to me that everyone who goes on my website is able to see every part of it w/out having to go on to their desktop. I for one use an iPhone and many people use iPads and it's essential to me that anyone using mobile devices do not get to a site where flash is disabled. Which is why I went full HTML but I wanted to make it look nicer and have the slides so luckily a friend knows a lot about this stuff, he'll be making my website out of JavaScript. I'll have moving images and slides which can be accessed through any device.

Just something to think about.

denisegoldberg

ShepsMom wrote: »

I disabled music, and downsized images on home page. I'll be downsizing all of them as i go. I added border to them too, i think it looks kind of cheesy.

Even with the downsized images your homepage takes a very long time to load - long enough that I normally would just close the site.

Highlighting the menu entries on hover is probably a good thing, but highlighting so the background is a light blue with white text is pretty close to unreadable.

I also agree with the previous poster that building an entire site in flash is not a good thing. It feels like as a viewer I have very little control.

Clicking the entries representing photos in an individual gallery often does nothing. Sometimes clicking two or three times changes the large photo displayed, most often not.

--- Denise

kdog

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

I hate music on a website and when I hear it, I leave, and I know I'm not the only one. That said, I decided to look further and it took too long for your website to load (I'm still waiting). If I were a customer, you lost me.

If your going to use a splash page, you should think about adding a title tag so Google can find you. Read my SEO for the Photographer.

Moogle Pepper wrote: »

In your galleries, trying to load and surf through the images is totally unresponsive for me. I am using Chrome, which is usually quite fast. As for music, I would leave it off. Brides tend to be checking out wedding sites at work. It would suck for them to have the songs come on unexpectedly.

FotobyMoMo wrote: »

I personally stay as far away from flash as possible. Why? It's very important to me that everyone who goes on my website is able to see every part of it w/out having to go on to their desktop. I for one use an iPhone and many people use iPads and it's essential to me that anyone using mobile devices do not get to a site where flash is disabled. Which is why I went full HTML but I wanted to make it look nicer and have the slides so luckily a friend knows a lot about this stuff, he'll be making my website out of JavaScript. I'll have moving images and slides which can be accessed through any device.

Just something to think about.

denisegoldberg wrote: »

Even with the downsized images your homepage takes a very long time to load - long enough that I normally would just close the site.[...]
I also agree with the previous poster that building an entire site in flash is not a good thing. It feels like as a viewer I have very little control.

Clicking the entries representing photos in an individual gallery often does nothing. Sometimes clicking two or three times changes the large photo displayed, most often not.

--- Denise

Agree with ALL of the above. The slowness is all due to the Flash code being downloaded into the user's browser. And the sad thing is that it's totally unnecessary. One can build a much more responsive site without the Flash. I found the menus on this site to be very sluggish, like they were full of lead or something. They just sort of slowly expanded for me. Ordinarily, I would have simply closed the page, but I really wanted to see the site. Disabling music and making images smaller isn't the problem. It's the Flash. When you open a page on this site, even after the page paints, you can see in the browser's status bar that it's continually streaming a bunch of information from the server. I imagine it's loading more flash code and preloading images. All this pre-emptive loading makes the user actions extremely sluggish. You may not see this if you've visited the site before because it's all cached on your computer now. But the user's first impression is crucial, and this site comes off as being really slow.

We see soooooo many people on this site asking for opinions for Flash sites, and the consensus is always the same. Flash sucks. I wish folks would ask for advice on which technology to use on their site BEFORE they spend many hours building it. It's a shame Marina, because your content is otherwise excellent.

Moogle Pepper

Not all builders though are terrible. I know, a plug, but intothedarkroom, builds their sites that also utilize flash and they are coded extremely well. My site can be seen on my android, on my ipad, and on my ipod touch.

The slowness could come from bludomain's coding of the site, the port where your server is held, to the image size.

ShepsMom

Wow, thank you everyone for your feedback. I don't know what else to do with this, i'll try removing the background image, maybe that will help.
Ted, i like the simplicity of your site, can you remove the bottom part (website by.....) or is a part of the deal?


Thanks!

Moogle Pepper

Shepsmom,

No. But then again I haven't tried and I don't think I will. I really do love the work and the relations with ITDR that I don't mind leaving that part in.

urbanaries

I liked your site even though it was on the slow side, it is much better than it was about a week ago when I first visited. I wanted to comment though because I remember your photos & posts from a year or so ago when I frequented the People forum, and I almost had to do a double take at your username. You have come leaps and bounds and I am incredibly impressed! Wonderful, beautiful work. clap

ShepsMom

urbanaries wrote: »

I liked your site even though it was on the slow side, it is much better than it was about a week ago when I first visited. I wanted to comment though because I remember your photos & posts from a year or so ago when I frequented the People forum, and I almost had to do a double take at your username. You have come leaps and bounds and I am incredibly impressed! Wonderful, beautiful work. clap

Why thank you! I have a long way to go, so each wedding is a practice and a challenge that i just love!
Appreciate your nice comment and thank you for checking out the site.

NikonsandVstroms

A few things I noticed on the flash site to look into:

-The menu is a bit busy with all those animations, I prefer the HTML version's type of simple fade.

-The music doesn't have proper titles.

-"We get the picture" under the logo has 2 issues, it is too small to read easily, and the images overlap it making it even harder to read then before.

-Under investment>deals the translucent rectangle is fitted to the right side but on the left goes over your outline graphic.

-Galleries it lags on my laptop (not a really high spec machine but probably average of who is going to view your site).

-Galleries, there is the problem with overlapping on the logo.

-About>the pros, the issue here again is the translucent rectangle, it goes over the graphic border again, and also goes right up to the logo making a little bit of a crowded look, here you could shrink it down a little.

-Your stuff, again the content is not really fitting into the graphic you set up and has some overflow, you should be able to fit all that content on top of the image and it is light enough that no translucent rectangle would be needed.

Personal preference here is I avoid using a "home" button, most sites don't have them anymore.

HTML

-"menu" is all lower case while all other options under it are not.

I'll actually stop here and just do some general comments.

If you go on the HTML versions and see how the white boxes just run over the backgrounds on pages that really demonstrates what I mean for the flash side. It is not as bad on the flash one but if you could fix that it would make for a lot cleaner website.

NikonsandVstroms

kdog wrote: »

Agree with ALL of the above. The slowness is all due to the Flash code being downloaded into the user's browser. And the sad thing is that it's totally unnecessary. One can build a much more responsive site without the Flash. I found the menus on this site to be very sluggish, like they were full of lead or something. They just sort of slowly expanded for me. Ordinarily, I would have simply closed the page, but I really wanted to see the site. Disabling music and making images smaller isn't the problem. It's the Flash. When you open a page on this site, even after the page paints, you can see in the browser's status bar that it's continually streaming a bunch of information from the server. I imagine it's loading more flash code and preloading images. All this pre-emptive loading makes the user actions extremely sluggish. You may not see this if you've visited the site before because it's all cached on your computer now. But the user's first impression is crucial, and this site comes off as being really slow.

We see soooooo many people on this site asking for opinions for Flash sites, and the consensus is always the same. Flash sucks. I wish folks would ask for advice on which technology to use on their site BEFORE they spend many hours building it. It's a shame Marina, because your content is otherwise excellent.

Just a quick note, flash does not always suck it is people create overcomplicated sites that are not broken up with it that brings up the issues with lag and also a heavy hand can easily make too busy of a site. As a design tool flash is nice in that it gives you more freedom than HTML/CSS (this is not as big of a deal with HTML5/CSS3 but still flash has some advantages). Flash in a way is like photoshop, it gives you the power to do all sorts of cool things, but if you go too heavy with them, or add too many at once it just looks like a mess.

Just for an example here is a flash site I recently built and there should not be much if any lag for you:
http://jbeckphotography.com/eli_eban/test_final_14.html

To continue the photoshop comparison my view of HTML/CSS VS flash is much like the darkroom VS photoshop, 90-95% of my normal photo editing could be down in the darkroom but that 5-10% I add thanks to photoshop has a big impact on the images.

(Sorry for the brief thread hijack)

ShepsMom

NikonsandVstroms wrote: »

A few things I noticed on the flash site to look into:

-The menu is a bit busy with all those animations, I prefer the HTML version's type of simple fade.

-The music doesn't have proper titles.

-"We get the picture" under the logo has 2 issues, it is too small to read easily, and the images overlap it making it even harder to read then before.

-Under investment>deals the translucent rectangle is fitted to the right side but on the left goes over your outline graphic.

-Galleries it lags on my laptop (not a really high spec machine but probably average of who is going to view your site).

-Galleries, there is the problem with overlapping on the logo.

-About>the pros, the issue here again is the translucent rectangle, it goes over the graphic border again, and also goes right up to the logo making a little bit of a crowded look, here you could shrink it down a little.

-Your stuff, again the content is not really fitting into the graphic you set up and has some overflow, you should be able to fit all that content on top of the image and it is light enough that no translucent rectangle would be needed.

Personal preference here is I avoid using a "home" button, most sites don't have them anymore.

HTML

-"menu" is all lower case while all other options under it are not.

I'll actually stop here and just do some general comments.

If you go on the HTML versions and see how the white boxes just run over the backgrounds on pages that really demonstrates what I mean for the flash side. It is not as bad on the flash one but if you could fix that it would make for a lot cleaner website.

Thank you for your detailed review. Unfortunately, i can do nothing about none of the above you've mentioned, as it's a template and i can't move things around or adjust anything for that matter. I can make logo look smaller so it wont overlap the images, or better yet, get rid of it and just type the name with no graphics. Same with HTML, i don't have access to source file, and i did email Blu to see if they can give me access, which i doubt they will, and i have not heard from them yet, not a surprise.
I'm getting really frustrated with this site now. :cry