Show Us Your New SmugMug Customized Sites!

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  • PhotoDavid78PhotoDavid78 Registered Users Posts: 939 Major grins
    edited April 15, 2015
    After toying around with so many other service providers, I've finally returned to SmugMug.

    Honestly, I've missed the fast loading / rendering of my photos and the clean look.

    I've spent about a week customizing the layout and a few CSS tweaks.

    Check out www.picomoments.com.

    Looking forward to some feedback.

    I love the look of your site but might I suggest that you don't start your homepage slide show with a food photo. Maybe a landscape or portrait might be better.
    David Weiss | Canon 5D Mark III | FujiFilm XT-4 | iPhone
    My Website
    Facebook | Twitter | | VSCOgrid | Instagram |
  • tatteberrytatteberry Registered Users Posts: 35 Big grins
    edited April 15, 2015
    It was time for a redesign on my own site. http://www.historytrekkershoppe.com
    Todd Atteberry

    The Green Man Design Studio
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 19, 2015
    tatteberry wrote: »
    It was time for a redesign on my own site. http://www.historytrekkershoppe.com
    Overall your site looks good but there is one thing that jumped out at me. That is that you are allowing access to the Original images. That is the size used for printing and should not be made available to your viewers. With that size available there is no need to buy from your site; your viewer can simply download the original and print it. Choose any size other than Original as the largest display size.

    Yes, I know, you have right click protection enabled. That doesn't protect your photo, it simply forces a person who wants to grab the image to grab it from the browser cache, an operation that takes seconds.

    --- Denise
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 19, 2015
    Gobo Fongo wrote: »
    Check out my site at: www.billibilli.com

    I really appreciate any feedback!
    Your design with a side menu, background image, and 2-across folders has limited the space used for your photos. On a large screen monitor I would hope that a photo site would use more than a third of the screen to present the photos.

    For the most part the background image serves as a distraction.

    The squares representing the galleries in the fine art section of your site are shown with a haze on top of the images. I know this is personal preference but with that hazy finish there is nothing that entices me to click on one of the galleries.

    --- Denise
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 19, 2015
    Check out www.picomoments.com.

    Looking forward to some feedback.
    I like the nice clean look of your site, well done.

    --- Denise
  • divamumdivamum Registered Users Posts: 9,021 Major grins
    edited April 19, 2015
    Thanks for all the help last month! Have it mostly the way I want it (for now lol) so here it is.... http://www.divatography.com :)
  • photoqphotoq Registered Users Posts: 2 Beginner grinner
    edited April 23, 2015
    Easy CSS Customizations with sources.
    Ok I've been poking around and using the following sites: I was easily able to modify the changes below on my www.photo-q.com site:
    • Adding text to the lightbox buttons
    • Recent activity feed
    • Modified the gallery description header
    • Add 1 pixel border around the thumbnails and photos
    • Add a drop shadow to gallery and folder images
    • Remove the slideshow button
    • Change the “Buy” Button Text
    • Make the folder images slightly transparent when the mouse hovers over it
    • Change the lightbox background color
    • Add a Border and Drop-Shadow to the Lightbox

    Let me know what you think!
    The only change that I'm really wanting to make is to change out my front page slider to a carousel in order to enable people to click the images and have it bring them to the galleries that the images reside in. I don't want to do this till I can style the carousel a little better. Anyone know how to do this?
  • RR13RR13 Registered Users Posts: 1 Beginner grinner
    edited April 24, 2015
    just finished new re-design
    www.RyanRayner.com

    hows it look? any feedback/suggestions for further customization would be much appreciated. my goal was to keep it as minimal as possible and present my work against a complimentary design aesthetic. i used several custom CSS codes on my galleries page such as hide the icon that appears next to a gallery title and center the gallery title.
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 25, 2015
    divamum wrote: »
    Thanks for all the help last month! Have it mostly the way I want it (for now lol) so here it is.... http://www.divatography.com
    I like the overall look of your site.

    There are two behaviors that don't work for me though. The first is that some of your menu items open a new browser tab. This is inconsistent and to me, annoying. My usual behavior when a site spawns new browser tabs that I haven't asked for it to close the site. I know that's just me, but...

    Some of the menu entries open pages in your blog. That's fine. What isn't is that those pages don't show your site menu and don't provide an obvious way back to your photo site. Relying on your viewer to close a tab and to navigate back to a different browser tab is not always good enough. I'd recommend adding menu entries to those pages (or at least a link back to your smug home page).

    I would also recommend switching to the smugmug mini footer.
    Customize... Content and Design... Settings.

    --- Denise
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 25, 2015
    photoq wrote: »
    Overall your site looks good.

    I would recommend switching to the SmugMug mini footer:
    Customize... Content and Design... Settings.

    Right now with the small number of keywords on your site showing the keywords on your galleries page is OK (although I suspect most people won't scroll down and see them). I think that once you have a larger keyword cloud that won't play well on the folders and galleries page.

    I don't like the ads and the popular keywords at the bottom of all of your galleries.

    When I resize the browser window I see an edge of photo on the gray background. This doesn't work well. (screenshot attached)

    --- Denise
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 25, 2015
    RR13 wrote: »
    I think your site reaches your goal of presenting a minimal look.

    Your logo in black against a dark gray background on every page other than your home page doesn't work for me. It looks like a big empty space above your site content. Either use a readable color or remove the logo and reclaim the space (although removing the logo leaves your site not identified which is really not a good idea).

    Clicking your CONTRIBUTE link opens a new browser tab and shows "Oops! We couldn’t find that page."
    The link needs to be fixed. Also, try to understand your viewers. When a site opens a new browser tab and I didn't explicitly request a new tab I often close the entire site. I know that's probably a bit over the edge, but I hate unwanted browser "clutter". I suspect I'm not alone in that behavior.

    --- Denise
  • elmanielmani Registered Users Posts: 97 Big grins
    edited April 26, 2015
    Would love you feedback... thanks in dvance
    Hi from London!

    I'm new to SmugMug, but have spent the last few weeks building a new site (to replace an old wordpress site). It's just a personal site to display my photos for friends and family (but I have over 40,000 images) and my site gets lots of visits.

    I'm know you are all really busy, but, before I move the site across to my main domain, I would really really appreciate any feedback you have on how I might improve my site. Any feedback you can provide would be gratefully received!

    The site can currently be accessed at www.elman.co.uk

    Thanks in advance and enjoy the weekend!
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 26, 2015
    elmani wrote: »
    Hi from London!

    I'm new to SmugMug, but have spent the last few weeks building a new site (to replace an old wordpress site). It's just a personal site to display my photos for friends and family (but I have over 40,000 images) and my site gets lots of visits.

    I'm know you are all really busy, but, before I move the site across to my main domain, I would really really appreciate any feedback you have on how I might improve my site. Any feedback you can provide would be gratefully received!

    The site can currently be accessed at www.elman.co.uk
    Your home page is a bit overwhelming with the number of galleries it presents. The text indicates "Latest galleries are shown below. " but it includes galleries with names that indicate the photos are from 2014 and 2013 in addition to current galleries. Why not use your home page as a place to highlight a small set of galleries? Use larger images, and highlight the latest 3 or 4 galleries. Leave the others to the browse page. I have something similar on my site on my Kaleidoscope page.

    You haven't exposed the /keyword page but it appears that you have used keywords to identify the individuals in your photos. You might consider changing your current menu entry titled "search" to open a page that contains both /search and /keyword.

    --- Denise
  • elmanielmani Registered Users Posts: 97 Big grins
    edited April 26, 2015
    Your home page is a bit overwhelming with the number of galleries it presents. The text indicates "Latest galleries are shown below. " but it includes galleries with names that indicate the photos are from 2014 and 2013 in addition to current galleries. Why not use your home page as a place to highlight a small set of galleries? Use larger images, and highlight the latest 3 or 4 galleries. Leave the others to the browse page. I have something similar on my site on my Kaleidoscope page.

    You haven't exposed the /keyword page but it appears that you have used keywords to identify the individuals in your photos. You might consider changing your current menu entry titled "search" to open a page that contains both /search and /keyword.

    --- Denise

    Denise, thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I think your feedback on the homepage is great - I'll make some changes later! with regards to the keyword, I wasn't really sure what you meant?
    Thanks
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 26, 2015
    elmani wrote: »
    Denise, thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I think your feedback on the homepage is great - I'll make some changes later! with regards to the keyword, I wasn't really sure what you meant?
    There is a <your url>/keyword page. I was suggesting that you expose it.

    Take a look at this page to see all of the default system pages available on your site - http://news.smugmug.com/2013/07/31/smug-tip-customize-your-404-search-page-and-more/.

    --- Denise
  • elmanielmani Registered Users Posts: 97 Big grins
    edited April 26, 2015
    There is a <your url>/keyword page. I was suggesting that you expose it.

    Take a look at this page to see all of the default system pages available on your site - http://news.smugmug.com/2013/07/31/smug-tip-customize-your-404-search-page-and-more/.

    --- Denise

    Fab! thanks
  • danoutandaboutdanoutandabout Registered Users Posts: 10 Big grins
    edited April 27, 2015
    While your overall design is clean and elegant, the original images you have posted are so small they are, in some cases, no bigger than the thumbnails when displayed in the Lightbox. For me, this makes opening them in the Lightbox very underwhelming.

    Hi Webster, thanks for the feedback. It took me a while to decide what would be the right sizing. The decision was based on two factors:
    1- time for a picture to load. I am constantly on the road and changing connexion. I noticed that not everyone has a good connexion and hence a "light file" is friendlier to everyone. Also, a high proportion of visitors are using phones and/or tablets and it is again better to use a "light file"
    2- Time spent on a website. It is often said that people do not spend much time on a website (30-60sec). I am one of them and if I can't get content within reasonable time then I get impatient. I therefore had the same view for my website. People might just pop by for a few seconds and I want to make sure they have a fast and smooth viewing experience. Another point for the "light file"
    Kind regards
    Dan
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 27, 2015
    Hi Webster, thanks for the feedback. It took me a while to decide what would be the right sizing. The decision was based on two factors:
    1- time for a picture to load. I am constantly on the road and changing connexion. I noticed that not everyone has a good connexion and hence a "light file" is friendlier to everyone. Also, a high proportion of visitors are using phones and/or tablets and it is again better to use a "light file"
    2- Time spent on a website. It is often said that people do not spend much time on a website (30-60sec).
    Really? your photos are so small that I wouldn't bother to spend any time on your site on a computer. A phone maybe - but smug will serve the proper size photos to mobile users even if you load and allow access to larger images.

    --- Denise
  • danoutandaboutdanoutandabout Registered Users Posts: 10 Big grins
    edited April 27, 2015
    Really? your photos are so small that I wouldn't bother to spend any time on your site on a computer. A phone maybe - but smug will serve the proper size photos to mobile users even if you load and allow access to larger images.

    --- Denise

    Quite direct and clear! Thanks!
  • DegreyDegrey Registered Users Posts: 2 Beginner grinner
    edited April 30, 2015
    Website Critique
    Hi do you know of anywhere I can get my website reviewed? I want to get better and drive more traffic to my site?

    Thanks,

    Don
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited April 30, 2015
    Degrey wrote: »
    Hi do you know of anywhere I can get my website reviewed? I want to get better and drive more traffic to my site?
    this thread is used to share your smugmug website and to request feedback. If you look back through the posts you will see both sharing and comments.

    Post a link to your site in a new post in this thread and request feedback.

    --- Denise
  • immopiximmopix Registered Users Posts: 16 Big grins
    edited May 4, 2015
    mine is a bit minimalist and thats what I was going for
    www.immopix.ca
  • samresamre Registered Users Posts: 1 Beginner grinner
    edited May 6, 2015
    Smugmug site
    mbonocore wrote: »
    Allright Customization gurus, we want to see what you have been doing to the New SmugMug. Reply to this thread with your new SmugMug site. If you can also give a brief overview of the additional customization you did, that would be awesome.

    We are going to start showing off awesome sites via our social media channels soon, so show us what you got! clap.gif

    Michael

    My site is samrephotography.com. I am new to this so this may not be one of the top 10 sites. I would appreciate any criticism and help you would have. Thank you
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited May 7, 2015
    immopix wrote: »
    I like minimalist as well. Your site has a good clean look to it but one thing jumped out at me. Even on a large screen monitor your logo image, menu and header text take up more than half of the vertical space. On a phone in portrait mode it uses more than half of the space, in landscape mode your logo doesn't fit and none or your photos are visible without scrolling.

    I'd recommend rethinking the size of your logo. As it is my eyes are drawn to the logo rather than your content.

    --- Denise
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited May 7, 2015
    samre wrote: »
    My site is samrephotography.com.
    You have a good start, with a clean site appearance.

    I do have some suggestions for improvement though. The first is to rethink how much space your want your logo and menu area to take. As it is there is quite a bit of empty space at the top of the page. Look at your site on a phone and a tablet in addition to on a large screen monitor. I'd recommend making the vertical size of your header smaller.

    You haven't included a way for viewers to contact you. You might consider using the smugmug contact form. See help page at http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1248294-how-do-i-create-a-contact-page-.

    I find switching backgrounds on every gallery to be jarring. In addition, your menu entries sometimes fade into the background color. Choose a single color and use it as the background everywhere on your site. If you feel that you must use an image as a background make sure that it is a subtle image that doesn't conflict with your photos and that allows your menu entries to remain readable.

    --- Denise
  • Tom FosterTom Foster Registered Users Posts: 291 Major grins
    edited May 7, 2015
    [url]Http://www.edinburghphotography.com[/url] If anyone has any spare time soon feedback would be good! I've asked a few times before and got some good tips and made some big changes. Would be happy to hear what you all have to say.
    Many thanks!
  • MomaZunkMomaZunk Registered Users Posts: 421 Major grins
    edited May 7, 2015
    Tom, I would say that your logo could use a bit of contrast between the name and skyline, so the name stands out more. Either make your name a dark grey or the skyline in the background darker.
    I will take a look more this evening.
  • Lille UlvenLille Ulven Registered Users Posts: 567 Major grins
    edited May 7, 2015
    Tom, I agree with MomaZunk on the subject of the logo.
    And I like your photos :)

    Additionally a very few points:
    1) Your "Popular Gallery" has a Share, Like & Info button while the "Edinburgh Gallery" only has the Share button. All other galleries seem to have no buttons at all. => I would rather go with one setup on which buttons to show for all galleries to not confuse your visitors too much
    2) For your "Popular Gallery" it looks as if you have added the text behind the buttons for Like and Info, but unfortunately it seems to be written in the color of the background, so you cannot read it (unless diving into your screen and guessing that it could be there) - so it just looks like too much space between those buttons. The text for the Share button is unfortunately missing for this gallery.
    3) Your Galleries come in 2 different styles. While Popular and Edinburgh have the same style, Fife is suddenly different. So if someone clicks through top to bottom, they expect a bigger photo on the left side in the Fife gallery - yet only get an empty space. I think this is somewhat unfortunate. I think I would rather go for one gallery style for all galleries here as it leaves a tidier impression with the visitor.
    4) Bio-page: "I've always enjoyed visiting Scotland so seemed like a good idea to come here for university. " Is this sentence missing an "it" like so: "I've always enjoyed visiting Scotland so it seemed like a good idea to come here for university."?
    5) Bio-page: You sometimes use the short forms for "I have" and "I am" and sometimes the long ones - I would rather go with one of them for the entire text - probably always the "I have" / "I am" as it just leaves a better impression (at least to me, but then my mother tongue is not English).
    6) On the bottom of your page you have on the left hand side a "FB Like (without numbers)" and a "FB Share (with numbers)" and then you start the right side with an "FB Like (with numbers)" - I think one of the two FB-likes should go.

    Good luck

    Lille Ulven
    https://www.lilleulven.smugmug.com - The Photos of my travels
  • denisegoldbergdenisegoldberg Administrators Posts: 14,373 moderator
    edited May 8, 2015
    Tom Foster wrote: »
    Overall I like your site - but you did ask for things that could be changed...

    There is something very odd going on with your background image. I've seen this at home on a very good internet connection and I've seen it on slower connections as well.

    Your pages begin as white, no background, with some page details. Then the background fills in, the page completes, and the background moves up and down. Then it settles in. I've seen this on both fast and slow internet connections.

    Your logo is relatively tall. It's not bad on a large screen monitor but I'm looking at it right now on a tablet. On smaller devices it uses too much of the available vertical space.

    You use a lot of text on your pages. This is good from a SEO standpoint and is good from telling the viewer what they are seeing. But again on a small device, I need to scroll to see the full large photo. I don't think this is an ideal viewing environment.

    --- Denise
  • Tom FosterTom Foster Registered Users Posts: 291 Major grins
    edited May 8, 2015
    MomaZunk wrote: »
    Tom, I would say that your logo could use a bit of contrast between the name and skyline, so the name stands out more. Either make your name a dark grey or the skyline in the background darker.
    I will take a look more this evening.

    Done! I moved the skyline slightly and made it more transparent so hopefully that is a bit better! If you think it's still a problem I'll take another look and see what I can do! :D
    Tom, I agree with |b]MomaZunk[/b] on the subject of the logo.
    And I like your photos :)

    Additionally a very few points:
    1) Your "Popular Gallery" has a Share, Like & Info button while the "Edinburgh Gallery" only has the Share button. All other galleries seem to have no buttons at all. => I would rather go with one setup on which buttons to show for all galleries to not confuse your visitors too much
    2) For your "Popular Gallery" it looks as if you have added the text behind the buttons for Like and Info, but unfortunately it seems to be written in the color of the background, so you cannot read it (unless diving into your screen and guessing that it could be there) - so it just looks like too much space between those buttons. The text for the Share button is unfortunately missing for this gallery.
    3) Your Galleries come in 2 different styles. While Popular and Edinburgh have the same style, Fife is suddenly different. So if someone clicks through top to bottom, they expect a bigger photo on the left side in the Fife gallery - yet only get an empty space. I think this is somewhat unfortunate. I think I would rather go for one gallery style for all galleries here as it leaves a tidier impression with the visitor.
    4) Bio-page: "I've always enjoyed visiting Scotland so seemed like a good idea to come here for university. " Is this sentence missing an "it" like so: "I've always enjoyed visiting Scotland so it seemed like a good idea to come here for university."?
    5) Bio-page: You sometimes use the short forms for "I have" and "I am" and sometimes the long ones - I would rather go with one of them for the entire text - probably always the "I have" / "I am" as it just leaves a better impression (at least to me, but then my mother tongue is not English).
    6) On the bottom of your page you have on the left hand side a "FB Like (without numbers)" and a "FB Share (with numbers)" and then you start the right side with an "FB Like (with numbers)" - I think one of the two FB-likes should go.

    Good luck

    Lille Ulven

    I've updated the logo, moved the background skyline slightly and made it more transparent and the logo slightly larger.

    1) Oversight by me, knew about the inconsistency and hopefully fixed now!
    2) Fixed! :)
    3) The reason for the different gallery types was that I've not added titles and captions for some yet and thought this was less obvious in the other gallery type! I've made it consistent though.
    4)5) Fixed! That whole page was intended as a placeholder that I've never quite got round to updating...
    6) The left one is the number of likes on my facebook page and a link to like my Facebook page. The right one is a link to like/G+/Tweet about that particular page. They are both different even though it looks like duplication. I can't have the left one without the right one thanks to how Smugmug handles Javascript...unless anyone knows a better solution!
    Overall I like your site - but you did ask for things that could be changed...

    There is something very odd going on with your background image. I've seen this at home on a very good internet connection and I've seen it on slower connections as well.

    Your pages begin as white, no background, with some page details. Then the background fills in, the page completes, and the background moves up and down. Then it settles in. I've seen this on both fast and slow internet connections.

    Your logo is relatively tall. It's not bad on a large screen monitor but I'm looking at it right now on a tablet. On smaller devices it uses too much of the available vertical space.

    You use a lot of text on your pages. This is good from a SEO standpoint and is good from telling the viewer what they are seeing. But again on a small device, I need to scroll to see the full large photo. I don't think this is an ideal viewing environment.

    --- Denise

    The logo was currently in the process of me editing it so you might have seen one of the ones I was testing out a short while ago. It is hopefully fixed now!

    I've cut down some of the text (particularly on the home page). I'm willing to sacrifice slightly on presentation for the sake of SEO in the short term. Hopefully when my site is more established then I won't have to do this but I take your point! There's a fair few less words and I've shifted the pictures on the home page up to the middle of the page rather than below the text.

    I'm not sure what you mean by the background image jumping as it doesn't seem to do it on either my desktop, laptop or my phone. Is it just on your tablet that that occurs? Is it still doing it? I've had a fiddle around with the settings and deleted some CSS but as I haven't been able to replicate it it's difficult for me to fix! ne_nau.gif


    Many thanks for the comments guys, some really helpful comments and definitely some things for me to be getting on with! Thanks for being so thorough and having a good look through things! bowdown.gif
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