Posted by Kalin Wilson on November 29, 2007 at 3:15 AM
It's been a busy few weeks. Some recent events and Christmas gift plans have driven me to finally catch up on scanning and processing. Still more to do, but I finally have more to show for the hard work.
So I decided it was time to take another look at my website. It still has a lot of work ahead of it, especially the front end and integration of the blog and some other elements. But I'd like to get impressions of the gallery end of it.
I decided to go with a more keyword/tag driven approach rather than a heirarchy or specific collections. There's a few things I wish the software I'm using (gallery2) would do differently, but I kinda like the approach. I have no time (or desire) to roll my own right now.
So I'm interested to hear what you think. Some of the style elements, colors, fonts, etc will be refined. Does the organization, navigation, etc work for you? Anything else I need to be aware of?
Thanks for looking and for any time spent commenting!
Posted by Mel Ladewig on November 29, 2007 at 11:41 AM
I think Gallery 2 is a good choice. Its also what I use and it makes life easy.
I'm personally not crazy about the keyword navigation/organization from the left menu. There are a couple links that wrap around and they are slightly difficult to click. Its also kinda hard to read with the various font sizes. This section also changes size when you click on it sometimes. I'm not sure why that is happening.
Otherwise from a software testing standpoint, I have a couple observations.
1) the album frame under portfolio does not fit around the picture correctly. This should be configurable in the theme.
2) within the portfolio navigation, you might consider increasing the rows to 3 in order to get more content on each page. There isn't a problem with 10 per page, but 7 pages may be alot for your viewers to click through, especially since it isn't broken into sub albums.
3) Search does seem to work well, but the white tag text is difficult to read on the yellow highlighting.
Just as another point of view, here is my personal gallery site for family and friends. http://www.ladewigs.com/Gallery/main.php A professional site will be in the works next year.
Posted by Don Grall on November 29, 2007 at 11:43 AM
Really enjoyed the beautiful photos, but the different font sizes on your clickable links on the left hand column is confusing and a bit frustrating to use. I would suggest one font size for all links. Everything else is quite easy to use and enjoyable to view.
Posted by James H Egbert on November 29, 2007 at 1:11 PM
Kalin, I am pretty much in agreement with Mel right down the line. Your images are wonderful and need to be presented a bit more favorably. Lord knows I've changed my website more than Some change their underwear, but I think all along I was after just one thing. I was after something that had the look and feel of those who's works I try to raise mine to the level of. I also look from the business side and see sites like Galen Rowell's, Art Wolfe's, John Shaw, John Fielder and many other of the top names and I am for a design that has the same quality over all.
I think you are too, but are getting a little caught up in some things that most everyone does from time to time on their first sites. There are some great sites here by many of the members you might want to look at.
As a fellow RMNPer I offer up any help I can for you too. Contact me through my website if you want. If you want i can help out over the phone and see what we can collaborate to get what you want.
Posted by Kalin Wilson on November 29, 2007 at 1:38 PM
Thanks so far. I agree about the tag links. The different sizes and colors are the default and are meant to reflect the number of images associated with each tag. I think I can control the styles for those. I like the coding of the relative importance/frequency but it shouldn't be obnoxious.
I agree with you, James. I've looked at many of those sites and many of the RMNPer sites. There are some great ones. I strive for a polished, professional, quality presentation. I think to get what I really want, with a good dynamic management system I'll end up writing my own. I know I could throw images into a good looking template and manually manage it, but that turns into a lot of work to maintain it. I really like Jack and Jesse's work but as a professional software engineer working in the web space, I have not been able to get myself to pay someone else for their system (or to develop one), although I can envision that more as time goes by and I don't do it myself. So right now I'm trying to wedge gallery2 into something I like. Derek and I have discussed this a lot. I don't know that gallery2 will get me where I want to go but it's a start.
One more question for the crowd: At what size do you think it's necessary to watermark your images. Before this iteration, the largest size image I had on display was 800px on a side and I watermarked this to disuade piracy. Currently, the largest image I upload is 640px on a side. I thought the watermark as I had it was too obtrusive, so I removed them. My feeling is a 640px image that someone lifts wouldn't be useful for much. Do you agree or would you watermark at this size too?
- Lose the tag links altogether. They're interesting for about 2 min to a few users who actually understand the correspondence between font size and tag count. For the rest, it's just confusing. Better to have a good search feature.
- The website loads incredibly slowly for me on my broadband connection (1.5M DSL). It's expected that it won't be 100% snappy because it's a photo site, but the cover page should really pop up quick so you have the ability to grab people's attention...Maybe some image file sizes need reduction, or maybe just use text in place of that quote image...?
- You should have a couple of (larger) killer images on the cover page to really increase interest. The one you put there is a start, but it's not very colorful, nor is it very big...
Just a few suggestions...hope they help.
-D
Posted by Jesse Speer on November 29, 2007 at 2:38 PM
Hey, I know you're working on the appearance/customization stuff ... but I think the actual interface of the gallery script is not very intuitive (although the browser gives hints when rolling over). Kinda distracts from the nice images. Maybe just move stuff around a bit. I'd probably move the size/related tags under the photo. The actual image presentation works well - although the rollover thumbs are distracting. I'd be inclined to add another row or two on the thumbs page as well.
If you can limit the keyword links to just the portfolio, that might be nice. These can be amazing helpful for search engines. Maybe make them all barely darker than the background, the same size, and separated by line. The function behind the size/color is not obvious.
I wouldn't bother watermarking in the 600 pixel range.
Posted by Kalin Wilson on November 29, 2007 at 10:32 PM
Good points everyone. Thanks! I'm going to work some of these comments in and see how it looks. I think in the long run I'll want something more custom than a script/system can provide but that will have to wait until after the new year.
Choices: Shoot pictures, process pictures, or present pictures - and that's just the photography part of life. Never enough time!
Posted by Ken Wyatt on December 1, 2007 at 2:14 AM
Muir's quote is tough to read with both the glow and drop shadow. I'd choose one or the other effect, but not both. The overlap between the site name and image in the header also makes readibility suffer. I'd center the text over the gray box. I agree with the other comments.
Discussion
9 repliesSo I decided it was time to take another look at my website. It still has a lot of work ahead of it, especially the front end and integration of the blog and some other elements. But I'd like to get impressions of the gallery end of it.
I decided to go with a more keyword/tag driven approach rather than a heirarchy or specific collections. There's a few things I wish the software I'm using (gallery2) would do differently, but I kinda like the approach. I have no time (or desire) to roll my own right now.
So I'm interested to hear what you think. Some of the style elements, colors, fonts, etc will be refined. Does the organization, navigation, etc work for you? Anything else I need to be aware of?
Thanks for looking and for any time spent commenting!
Kalin Wilson Photography
~Kalin
I'm personally not crazy about the keyword navigation/organization from the left menu. There are a couple links that wrap around and they are slightly difficult to click. Its also kinda hard to read with the various font sizes. This section also changes size when you click on it sometimes. I'm not sure why that is happening.
Otherwise from a software testing standpoint, I have a couple observations.
1) the album frame under portfolio does not fit around the picture correctly. This should be configurable in the theme.
2) within the portfolio navigation, you might consider increasing the rows to 3 in order to get more content on each page. There isn't a problem with 10 per page, but 7 pages may be alot for your viewers to click through, especially since it isn't broken into sub albums.
3) Search does seem to work well, but the white tag text is difficult to read on the yellow highlighting.
Just as another point of view, here is my personal gallery site for family and friends. http://www.ladewigs.com/Gallery/main.php A professional site will be in the works next year.
I think you are too, but are getting a little caught up in some things that most everyone does from time to time on their first sites. There are some great sites here by many of the members you might want to look at.
As a fellow RMNPer I offer up any help I can for you too. Contact me through my website if you want. If you want i can help out over the phone and see what we can collaborate to get what you want.
I agree with you, James. I've looked at many of those sites and many of the RMNPer sites. There are some great ones. I strive for a polished, professional, quality presentation. I think to get what I really want, with a good dynamic management system I'll end up writing my own. I know I could throw images into a good looking template and manually manage it, but that turns into a lot of work to maintain it. I really like Jack and Jesse's work but as a professional software engineer working in the web space, I have not been able to get myself to pay someone else for their system (or to develop one), although I can envision that more as time goes by and I don't do it myself. So right now I'm trying to wedge gallery2 into something I like. Derek and I have discussed this a lot. I don't know that gallery2 will get me where I want to go but it's a start.
One more question for the crowd: At what size do you think it's necessary to watermark your images. Before this iteration, the largest size image I had on display was 800px on a side and I watermarked this to disuade piracy. Currently, the largest image I upload is 640px on a side. I thought the watermark as I had it was too obtrusive, so I removed them. My feeling is a 640px image that someone lifts wouldn't be useful for much. Do you agree or would you watermark at this size too?
Here's my $0.02 worth:
- Lose the tag links altogether. They're interesting for about 2 min to a few users who actually understand the correspondence between font size and tag count. For the rest, it's just confusing. Better to have a good search feature.
- The website loads incredibly slowly for me on my broadband connection (1.5M DSL). It's expected that it won't be 100% snappy because it's a photo site, but the cover page should really pop up quick so you have the ability to grab people's attention...Maybe some image file sizes need reduction, or maybe just use text in place of that quote image...?
- You should have a couple of (larger) killer images on the cover page to really increase interest. The one you put there is a start, but it's not very colorful, nor is it very big...
Just a few suggestions...hope they help.
-D
If you can limit the keyword links to just the portfolio, that might be nice. These can be amazing helpful for search engines. Maybe make them all barely darker than the background, the same size, and separated by line. The function behind the size/color is not obvious.
I wouldn't bother watermarking in the 600 pixel range.
Have fun playing around!
Choices: Shoot pictures, process pictures, or present pictures - and that's just the photography part of life. Never enough time!
Nice start, though. Web design is non-trivial.
Ken