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New Website Concept
winnjewett
Registered Users Posts: 329 Major grins
I would love your advice on a new website concept I am working on. There isn't much content in the new site, but the basic ideas are present.
Old website: http://brilliantphoton.com
New website: http://dev.brilliantphoton.com
-Winn
Old website: http://brilliantphoton.com
New website: http://dev.brilliantphoton.com
-Winn
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Missing some features of the old one, but very nice.
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Weddings, etc. pages have a beatiful top - love the photo across the top and the tabs.
But after your expansive, open feeling front page, the first page of weddings, and portraits etc., feels really cramped. I realize the type is a placeholder, but a small image and a mass of type is not at all inviting. Feels like work.
Perhaps a design with more than one photo, with a sparse amount of wording threading through it?
The Galley and Pricing tabs might not be obvious enough for folks who aren't terribly proficient with the internet, and aren't aware that those tabs are what they need to hit in order to advance.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
DavidTO: Thanks for the compliment. I hope to encorporate most of the features into the new site. All of the "pretty pictures" will now find a home in the fine art prints section. All other sections will be dedicated to the services I offer as a photographer. Website development and design is being pushed to a new site entirely.
PhotoDoug: I love the idea of an email contact on the left side of the footer. Thank you. Do you have any suggestions regarding the width of the site? I realize that I am pushing the limits of page width; I just hope I haven't gone too far.
wxwax: I agree 100%. The current weddings page has way too many words on it, and not enough photos. Can you think of any ways to make the sub navigation (gallery, pricing, etc...) more obvious?
Questions to all:
Is the website too wide?
Do you like how the background color changes when you mouse over items on the home page?
Do you like the flower on top of the weddings page, or should I cange it to a wedding ring on a hand, or a bouquet, or something more recognizably wedding-esque?
I very much value the opinions of those who frequent this forum. Thanks to those who have taken the time to help.
-Winn
About the site width. According to the W3C as of Jan 2006, a full 1 in 5 users are still on monitors with 800x600 resolutions. Your site is optimized for 1024x768 and on 1024x768 it looks excellent. But on 800x600, not so much. There is a lot of scrolling and nobody likes scrolling.
The Man in Blue to the rescue. You will have a MUCH easier time with changing up the widths in the stylesheet if you aren't using tables for layout.
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/
Thank you very much for your advice and research. That man in blue page is very interesting. I am excited to try that technique out.
As far as CSS vs. Tables go, I believe there is still a use for tables in certain situations. I sometimes find it difficult to create bomb-proof css that works with varying text lengths as well as font sizes. That is why I used one table with three rows to house the content of the home page. Every other aspect of the page is css.
The whole idea of CSS is to provide a clean, simple, easy to implement way to lay out a web page. I have found that in a few situations in order to use CSS, big ugly hacks replace a very simple table. I have a hard time believing that when you want a simple two column layout with a border around the page, and between the two columns that the hacks you have to implement are better than a very simple two column table.
Thanks again for your help,
Winn
http://photos.mikelanestudios.com/