new website design

[the_ultimate_evil]

i've been reworking my portfolio site and this is the 3 main pages, whats every one think



possibly animated gif fading from the background to the final image shown



the main contents page, may have an image there instead of just a grey section though not sure if that's overkill



an example of where the image possible thumbs and subsections will be and how they'll be laid out(side scrolling), though not sure about adding a space between each thumb

[77]

looks very nice, only thing i think it really needs is some more PINK!

[Mr. Hamrick]

looking good

[Avalon]

Very good layout. Buttons are clear and visible. Navigating is easy to find. Background give it that "artistic" feel. Did you design the tab buttons? If not, you should come up with a unique design for those as well.
Work on the animation more. That will make it more professional. Also, I would re-word your disclaimer. You should check out other artist sites and see how they word it.

[the_ultimate_evil]

what's wrong with the disclaimer?. and i haven't uploaded the animation yet. everything was created from scratch in PS, including the buttons and the logos

[GogglesPizanno]

I like the overall look and feel of the site. Its artistic but simple.
I like simple.

My 2 cents...take them with a grain of salt.

Animation might be nice on the front of the site (if done minimally and sparingly), but dont make the loading of the site dependent on the waiting for the animation to load or play through. It might look nice the first time someone sees it, but after that, they probably will not want to wait to sit through it to get into the site.

Also IF you were going to incorporate some kind of animation I would definitely go Flash or SVG over animated gif. I think animated gif's are to large (filesize) and limiting in terms of color pallet and smoothness.

Also my personal preference (others will vary) is that horizontal scrolling (well scrolling of any kind) within a div or an iframe really detracts from a site and breaks the flow. You might look into some kind of JavaScript gallery library like lightbox.

Final thought is the links at the bottom. I would reduce the size of them. You already have them featured very predominately at the top with the nice tabs... making them big in the "footer" area is a little redundant and I think pulls your eye -- especially if the site isn't going to be scrolling down vertically below the fold.

[Avalon]

what's wrong with the disclaimer?. and i haven't uploaded the animation yet. everything was created from scratch in PS, including the buttons and the logos

Grammar is off. Should use "are" instead of is"
I mean to say that if this is his "professional" site, make it sound more legal like:


All images, photographs, and other media contain wherein created and not copyrighted by their original authors, are sole property of Dean Irvine. Any distribution and use of images created by Dean Irvine shall only be used with consent from the author and unauthorized use strictly prohibited.

If it is just a person site, then just ignore that comment.
Other than that, its a great looking site and I think it does present itself as professional.

[UnkoMan]

I think goggles says most of what I would say. Flash is the standard for animating sites. Lightbox is basically becoming the standard for photography, as far as I can tell. Personally I sometimes find it annoying, but agree it's a better solution than scrolling at times.

I don't think the bottom links are too big, but I do think the whole bottom area is a bit too large. That could be shrunk. I see you want it the same size as the top, but I don't find it needed. Actually... you don't really need the text links come to think of it, but it's not terribly detracting.

[AfghanAnt]

If it is possible I would use alt image tags or live text for your nav (good artists keywords there) it could help potential clients find you better.

[the_ultimate_evil]

I like the overall look and feel of the site. Its artistic but simple.
I like simple.

My 2 cents...take them with a grain of salt.

Animation might be nice on the front of the site (if done minimally and sparingly), but dont make the loading of the site dependent on the waiting for the animation to load or play through. It might look nice the first time someone sees it, but after that, they probably will not want to wait to sit through it to get into the site.

Also IF you were going to incorporate some kind of animation I would definitely go Flash or SVG over animated gif. I think animated gif's are to large (filesize) and limiting in terms of color pallet and smoothness.

Also my personal preference (others will vary) is that horizontal scrolling (well scrolling of any kind) within a div or an iframe really detracts from a site and breaks the flow. You might look into some kind of JavaScript gallery library like lightbox.

Final thought is the links at the bottom. I would reduce the size of them. You already have them featured very predominately at the top with the nice tabs... making them big in the "footer" area is a little redundant and I think pulls your eye -- especially if the site isn't going to be scrolling down vertically below the fold.

i've been thinking about the animation, having no experience in flash, i'm now thinking of not using it and just having the opening entry page as you see above, the same goes for the horizontal scrolling, i was all for it cause i thought it would look more profeshional, but after going through my image gallery i've got nearly 40+ images in some sections, so that many not work.

you're right about the footer links, they are around 2.5 point but will look at it

I think goggles says most of what I would say. Flash is the standard for animating sites. Lightbox is basically becoming the standard for photography, as far as I can tell. Personally I sometimes find it annoying, but agree it's a better solution than scrolling at times.

I don't think the bottom links are too big, but I do think the whole bottom area is a bit too large. That could be shrunk. I see you want it the same size as the top, but I don't find it needed. Actually... you don't really need the text links come to think of it, but it's not terribly detracting.

i had no idea what lightbox was, so looked into, cheers. that should be an immense help, it would also cut down on the number of "pages" needed for each separate image. i just now need to figure out how to bloody use it

If it is possible I would use alt image tags or live text for your nav (good artists keywords there) it could help potential clients find you better.

could you explain what you mean, i'm being daft here :doh:

[GogglesPizanno]

Initially in the early days alt tags -- or more accurately alt values in an image tag were used for browsers that didn't display images or had images turned off for bandwidth issues (way back when) and it renders the text of the alt tag in place where the image would go. It still works this way, but in the age of Google and other search engine algorithms for ranking sites, they now use those alt tags when spidering sites as a sort of descriptive key word that is one of the facets they use for determining site ranking and placement in a search result (among a gazillion other things. Theres a reason there is a whole industry built around search optimization) -- it also makes the site more w3 compliant if you're into that sort of thing.

Code Select Expand

<img src="image file location" alt="Image description here" width="x" height="y" etc... />

It should be a few words or a short sentence (3-7 words) that describes what the image or message is.

[AfghanAnt]

For SEO purposes the better the keyword density and page relevancy to search terms (which are define by potential traffic) could lead to higher page rank in Google and possibly more conversions (i.e. more people wanting to give you money for services). The keywords in the nav bar look like good keywords for potential customers/employers who are looking for photographer or graphic design artist (both of which should be in the meta description, keywords, and title).

[the_ultimate_evil]

fair enough had a bit of brain fart.

it strange you google my name and the second site was my old site and now my blog

now to work out how to use that lightbox java thing

[GogglesPizanno]

Lightbox is pretty simple actually.
A couple of javascript include files in the head section, then a few extra parameters in the image tags....

[AfghanAnt]

fair enough had a bit of brain fart.
it strange you google my name and the second site was my old site and now my blog

It makes sense actually. Your old site is being linked to by FF site and other sites I sure and it has been grandfathered in because it was probably index years ago and the data has dramatically changed.

It's weird but I purposely did not include seo data on our heroforce page (other than the name) so that Marvel, DC, whoever didn't try to shut us down. I don't know if that even matter anymore but I should probably go in and add some FF words and see how high I can get it ranked.