Ready to launch my custom site...does this work?

net1994

www.paintbypixels.com

Im ready to launch the site to family, friends and co-workers. I'd like to ask ou folks if you think its ready for 'primetime?'

I hope the theme/feel is different. I am going for a clean look. Minimal, but not barren. I still have few things that need touching up: some grammar, I would like to hide a few more things; etc.) But for the most part 90% of it is there.

If you can spare a few moments let me know:

-How is the navigation? Is it intuitive when you navigate the banners? Going into galleries? Opening pictures, or switching between photo sizes in galleries? Does anything seem out of place/whack?

-How is the speed of pages/photos loading?

-What do you think of the custom theme? Would you add anything?

-Are there enough galleries/photos on the site now? I have quite a backlog to add, but I needed to get the site done now.

-Do you have a picture or gallery you liked the most?

Any feedback is much appreciated.

(Also a great THANKS to all the folks in Dgrin who helped out. Especially Allen, Barb, Andy and Ivar!! YOU GUYS ROCK!!!! :bow )

scwalter

Overall it is a very nice site, good job... If I had to nitpick, and I do...

net1994 wrote:

-How is the navigation? Is it intuitive when you navigate the banners? Going into galleries? Opening pictures, or switching between photo sizes in galleries? Does anything seem out of place/whack?

I don't really like how your banner and navbar change when going from the homepage to the other pages. I believe the navigation is the one thing that should nearly always remain constant.

You should also fix the viewing style on many of your HTML pages. Specifically, all these should be fixed at whatever viewing style you designed them for.

http://www.paintbypixels.com/gallery/2747415
http://www.paintbypixels.com/gallery/2747416
http://www.paintbypixels.com/gallery/2747426
http://www.paintbypixels.com/gallery/2747436

Also, since virtually all of these are linked from the banner, I would remove the breadcrumbs because I can navigate back to your "more category", which seems to be all this stuff, but they are all private. I get here and see no galleries

http://www.paintbypixels.com/More

net1994 wrote:

-How is the speed of pages/photos loading?

Good for me.

net1994 wrote:

-What do you think of the custom theme? Would you add anything?

Make it work with stretchy.

Very clean looking, I like it a lot. I would remove the blue text color that is visible on the last part of the breadcrumb and a few other places (pagenav, etc). The rest of your site is black & white, and this jumps out a bit too much, IMO.

I know you have your email in the footer, but I would also explicitly add it somewhere in your "about" page text. The footer on my 1600x1200 screeen is off the bottom of the page and I had to scroll to see it.

Your caption text color is right on the limit of being too light. It is a light grey on the white background and would strain my eyes if I had to read a lot of text. You might considering darkening it a tad.

I would hide the update time on all galleries.

net1994 wrote:

-Are there enough galleries/photos on the site now? I have quite a backlog to add, but I needed to get the site done now.

There's quite a few galleries with only a few pictures in them. Not really a big deal, but it is a lot of clicking to see just a few pictures. I guess this will fix itself as you add more pics. (e.g. B/W has 2 galleries with 4 photos). If it's gonna be a while until you upload more, you might consider consolidating them.

net1994 wrote:

-Do you have a picture or gallery you liked the most?

My $.02, hope it helps.

-Scott

net1994

Hi Scott,

Your $0.02 is worth more than you know!!!

-I have sooo many more pics I can add to the site, but to get them ready and put up I would never get my site done. So for now....going to put up some of the really good stuff. Will add more after I'm done with the launch....

-I tried to change the blue text above the breadcrumb before...but there isn't really a way to or so the experts say. The only other option I have is to change to Gradient Grey. But everything looks a bit flat with this one...

-I will set the viewing style on the galleries linked through my banner page.

-I will see about hiding the breadcrumb for the 'More' category that your seeing the empty category. I thought if set to remove breadcrumb from one gallery or category it can only be site wide on all categories/galleries??

Or, I could move those banner galleries out of the 'Other' category and put them right into the 'galleries' category...thereby eliminating that extra breadcrumb they must navigate through. And then eliminate th other category.

-Perhaps the best thing you pointed out was the need for darker font color for the gallery captions. I will do this right away...not sure how hard it is? To set it site wide for all galleries?

Thanks man!! If you can think of anything else to check/change/remove/add let me know.

net1994

(And I think this is in the wrong forum......??)




Any other thoughts guys....?

Allen

net1994 wrote:

(And I think this is in the wrong forum......??)




Any other thoughts guys....?

One thing bothering me is the gap on your homepage at the top. Usually a
small gap looks good above the banner, but in this case her head is cut off
and the white area is distracting so no gap might look better.:D

.homepage #myImageMap {
display: block;
margin-top: -10px;
}

presence

Nice site, clean & minimal. I especially like the urban facade gallery.

You'll probably disagree with me but something to think about is that 3 of 5 (60%) of your header links sorta have nothing to do with you and your photography (sales business), i.e, your gear, your inspirations and a links page.

If you absolutely needed to include that info, your gear, inspirations and half your links could go into the about page by replacing your photo with that info.

Also, none of your photos are watermarked.

Finally, there's a typo in your copyright notice -
No works contained herein may be reproduced without without written consent.

Good luck and have a nice Christmas.

net1994

presence wrote:

Nice site, clean & minimal. I especially like the urban facade gallery.

You'll probably disagree with me but something to think about is that 3 of 5 (60%) of your header links sorta have nothing to do with you and your photography (sales business), i.e, your gear, your inspirations and a links page.

If you absolutely needed to include that info, your gear, inspirations and half your links could go into the about page by replacing your photo with that info.

Also, none of your photos are watermarked.

Finally, there's a typo in your copyright notice -
No works contained herein may be reproduced without without written consent.

Good luck and have a nice Christmas.

Thanks for the comments Prescense. BTW, your site is great...very clean and gets to the point.

I was thinking that watermarking all of my photos would/will leave them a little inaccessible to those trying to look and enjoy. Having a watermark dead center in the photo can be a bit distracting. Anyone else reading this, what do you think? Is that possible 'annoyance' worth it? Is there a way I can create a Watermark that is subtle but obvious? Contradicting goals I know...

Yep, your right about the 60% of my banner links For version 1.0 of my website I may leave it as is. But many have mentioned and bring up a good point that most people don't care what my 'gear' is. Alas, its too late now....I'd have to redo the banners. For paintbypixels 2.0 I will probably do this.

net1994

Hi GUys,

Okay so I did some reworking of the site in the last few days. I removed 'gear' from the site, changed some colors...hid some of this and added some of that.

Would you folks mind taking one last look? Let me know if everything is in order, or still out of place.

Thanks!