Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Thanks guys so much for your advice!  I really need to do some work here, but I`m doing a little at a time. I have tried a little different approach to the color scheme. See what you think. Although I still don`t think it`s where it needs to be, at least you don`t need to wear sunglasses to view it!  I think it`s easier on the eyes. However, I`m wondering if I need to use a template to seperate things better. The top of the page feels a little strung out to me and I think it`s because it lacks structure. What do you think? 

 

The problem now is that the default color for a hyperlink is sort of cobalt blue. Against the maroon background, it disappears...as would all your links placed against that central background color.

Howdy Lora,
I intentionally didn`t look at the other posts so, if I am redundant please
forgive.
I didn’t want to be influenced by what others had to write.

I am a graphic artist, so my comments will be more about the site itself.

Are you using Photoshop?
I did just a quick look at the site and clicked through it.
I noticed that your copy (writing) in you headline (title) was very jagy i.e.
pixilated you may want to go back into photo shop and redo the headline
to the exact size on you web page and save it at 72dpi at the exact size.
Also, the “squiggly” area behind the headline doesn’t seem to work. I
would suggest you find a nice silhouette of a horse or group of horses
and use them as your background behind the text.

Over all I am not a fan of big text links, but if you must do text links then
try putting them in a table (one link in each cell) and then make the
borders invisible. You will have much better luck and control with layout,
and you don’t need gigantic fonts. Don’t make it so small people can’t
read them, but they don’t need to be huge.

Rule of thumb on pages in general. People HATE scroll bars. Try to build
you page where there are no scroll bars as much and possible. Check it
in your browser and if it has scroll bars tweak it down until you don’t
have any.

On your portfolio page... thumb nails, thumb nails, thumb nails. You can
set multiple pages with multiple thumb nail (set in a table) with the full
size images popping up when folks click on your thumb nails.

Your video clip is too large. It needs to be sized down by at least half.

Finally, you are a beautiful young lady and I’m very happy that you had a
nice wedding, but that sort of thing doesn’t go on you business web site.
You are selling yourself as a proffessional photographer, not a barrel
racer. You need to put down information about yourself and a picture of
yourself (not in a wedding dress). Tell us about your photography
experiance, and your knowlege of horses.

I hope this is helpful, and good luck!

Michael
aka Tex

Tex,

Thanks for the comments. I know I have a lot of work to do to make this better and I agree about the wedding pics now that you bring it to my attention.  I thought of it as making me more personable and "real" rather than a bunch of text telling people what I`m about. But you make a valid point.  I will definetly work on it!

Since you are a graphic designer, I would love to talk to you through email and pick your brain a little. If you have time, that is. Thanks again for your comments... 

Lora,

No problem. I don`t know how much help I can be via email, but I will be
happy to do what I can. I have never used golive, although I`m sure an
html editor is an html editor. I use dreamweaver, and before that I used
frontpage. I built my first webpage in note pad with nothing but code in
1996. It worked, but I wouldn`t want to have to do that again!

I as a rule don`t recomend templates that are canned, but you may want
to look through whatever kind of templates you have that came with
golive and use one or more of them as a "jumping off place" or just to
steal code from.

Look at whatever tutorials that came with it and you will find out things
that you didn`t know.

I may be able to help you with Photoshop questions though. Are you
using regular Photoshop Professional version or Photoshop Lite
(Elements) I put Elements on my son`s computer, and I "dinked" around in
it a little. It does most of what regular photo shop does it is just kind of
the long way around on many things and there a certain things it can`t do.

I can direct you to my website/resume/portfolio

www.michaelphilippus.com

It is not great, because I put it together in a hurry, and it is done in Flash
so there is really no code there for you to steal, but it does have a thumb
nail section in the portfolio area. I put this site up when I was looking for
a job and still direct people to it from time to time, but it has not been
updated in a while, and I have since struck out and I am starting my own
company (hence why I am on this site) I have just gotten started on my
own company website which you would have thought I would have done
first but I have had too much "paying" work to have time to mess with it
yet.

My first suggestion would be that rather than trying to keep changing the
website you have up right now, just leave it alone and start a new one
from scratch on your computer using tables and thumb nails and when
you have what you more or less want then update you live website with
loradavies.com 2.0. Don`t be afraid to use some of the canned templates
as a starting off place and then go form there.

Also, building all these thumb nails with all the links will be very labor
intensive when you don`t know how to run a batch setup, but I would go
ahead and do it.   You have something up right now, take your time look
at other websites and get ideas. If you see something you like, and you
have no idea how to do it, email me the link with your question and I will
do what I can to answer it.

This will be good practice for me because I will be starting on my MFA in
Visual Communication in Febuary (should take me 3years) and when I am
done I most likely will start teaching at a college level.

TTYL
Tex