Well...I finally got a site up. It's nothing phenomenal, but it's a starting point. After some consideration, I decided to end up working around a blog rather than a straight forward website. The blog route offered some advantages and some disadvantages (like a poor gallery implementation unless you build something from the ground up). I'm not interested in really "selling" through the website at the moment, so it should be ok - hopefully.
Anyhow, let me know what you think. I still have work to do, such as title the photos, write in the "about" section, etc. I checked the site on all current browsers except Safari, and it seemed to work as intended. IE 6 (the old version) had some issues, but 7 was perfect. I'm a bit concerned about how well the portfolio images will display at low resolutions, but I'm not sure of a good way around it short of creating very small files.
Thanks in advance for the feedback. You can click WWW link at the bottom of my post, or simply click on this: http://www.joeltruckenbrod.com
Posted by Paul DeCesare on November 9, 2008 at 12:38 AM
Joel, it looks GREAT. The site is classy, easy to navigate (confusing sites bug me to no end), and looks very professional. Most of all, your photo work is stunning. Superb job.
Posted by Mitch Erwin on November 9, 2008 at 3:23 AM
Joel, the new site / blog is easy to navigate which is great and has some stunning work posted on it. Very good! Personally, I'm not into blogging, YET, but think you have implemented this style well into a site. And the best thing, not really knowing though, is that it is probably cheaper to run than any type of actual website out there!
Joel, the new site looks great!! As other's have said, its easy to navigate, and simply, yet elegantly designed. I checked it out in Safari and it looked just as good as Firefox with no issues that I could see. I am curious to know what blogging software you are using, is it wordpress? How did you integrate the gallery? I'm using wordpress and aside from trying to find a theme that will look as good as the one you are using, I've had trouble integrating a gallery. Any info you'd be willing to share about the gallery would be great.
Beautiful pictures by the way! I will need a to take a few road trips up to Minnesota this year as there seems to be a lot to see up there.
Posted by Toni Lankerd on November 9, 2008 at 9:28 AM
Looks great, Joel!! No glitches and the images beautiful and well done.
Thanks for the feedback, it's greatly appreciated. I have some gripes, but I don't know that I'll be able to overcome them until I build my own from the ground up.
Eric, the site is built with squarespace (http://www.squarespace.com). It's easy, nice and quite powerful, but you have to pay a monthly fee to use it. It's definitely not the cheapest option out there, but it's not terrible either considering you'd be paying about $5 a month for a hosting fee if you built from the ground up. The main plus is ease of editing and ease of use. It's good on both counts and doesn't look too bad. It's non contractual, so I can cancel the site and jump into something else at any point. I've looked into smugmug.com and some other fast/easy options (including freebie blogs - blogger/wordpress), but wasn't really thrilled with them either.
Like I mention in my first blog posting, I just kinda needed to get something up and running. Hopefully in the next few months, I can build a site from the ground up to exactly what I want.
I had no trouble getting on or around. Looks like you have got a good thing going.
Posted by Tim Mulholland on November 10, 2008 at 10:03 AM
Hi Joel,
You have a beautiful site! Great work!
I think that you've got a good idea there to experiment with focusing on the blog, rather than the gallery. I'll be interested to see how that works for you.
My only critique is that I'd like to see some titles/tags on the images, so that I have a sense of what/where I'm viewing...
Tim!
Posted by Philip Schwarz on November 10, 2008 at 10:39 AM
Easy to use. Great collecton of photos.
Posted by Bernie Kasper on November 11, 2008 at 11:47 AM
Looks great from here Joel, I have been using wordpress for awhile now and it is about time to upgrade to something more like this soon, I hope you can keep me up to date on how it is working out and your thoughts on the site.
Posted by Darren Huski on November 11, 2008 at 12:08 PM
Joel-
The site looks great. It has a clean simple look. Some nice images to show.
I was doing the blog thing via Blogger and finally set up a site with Smugmug. I found it a reasonable tradeoff of ease and offering prints although I wish I knew coding better (I stopped at BASIC in 1985) to get a more custom look.
Very nice, Joel. The design is clean and the work within (I just finished going through your entire portfolio) superb.
Posted by Andy Richards on November 14, 2008 at 5:53 PM
Joel: I echo what others have said. Very simple and elegant. I recently moved my own website to a webhost similar to smugmug. I contracted to have a local sp host my site and had it custom built. I was less than satisfied overall, but wanted to do some things that places like smugmug didn't offer (like provide downloadable pdf files of photo locations -- I currently have one on Vermont and Michigan UP available as free downloads on my site). I recently found one that offered everything I wanted and has a simple, and I think elegant interface (it is flash based). It is www.ifp3.com and I pay about $20/month as an annual fee. (My site is: http://richardsphoto.ifp3.com/). I link to my blog which is set up on Blogger -- but had I known about the site you used, I might have gone that way. Hope I can someday achieve your image quality!
Thanks so much everyone for the feedback. I really appreciate it.
I'm not happy with how the gallery is set up - I don't know that everyone realized that you can click over and keep viewing work (there's a fairly large amount of photos there). But, it will have to do for now. Thanks again!
Posted by Toni Lankerd on November 16, 2008 at 9:34 AM
I did figure out that there were more images, Joel, but I wonder if you could place an arrow there so it would be easier for those who don't notice that?
Joel, I did realize that there were more images to be viewed than those on the first visible screen (I went through all the images). I suppose it could be more obvious than currently presented...
Update - I updated the "portfolio" link to display all the thumbnails at once, which should show the amount of content available - and then allow users to click on the image of their choice for a full screen view. It's a compromise, but it seems a bit less confusing...potentially.
Thanks for the additional feedback Toni and Kerry. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to modify the actual html of the website - it's setup to be user friendly, but it's overly so in the process. And they really don't allow many photo gallery options. I think I'm going to write them and let them know that it's a problem with their service. It bothers me that you can't modify those scroll buttons, and that it doesn't allow me to justify the images to the center of the screen. Oddly enough, it only allows me to justify them to the right or left side of the window...frustrating.
Discussion
16 repliesAnyhow, let me know what you think. I still have work to do, such as title the photos, write in the "about" section, etc. I checked the site on all current browsers except Safari, and it seemed to work as intended. IE 6 (the old version) had some issues, but 7 was perfect. I'm a bit concerned about how well the portfolio images will display at low resolutions, but I'm not sure of a good way around it short of creating very small files.
Thanks in advance for the feedback. You can click WWW link at the bottom of my post, or simply click on this: http://www.joeltruckenbrod.com
Beautiful pictures by the way! I will need a to take a few road trips up to Minnesota this year as there seems to be a lot to see up there.
Eric, the site is built with squarespace (http://www.squarespace.com). It's easy, nice and quite powerful, but you have to pay a monthly fee to use it. It's definitely not the cheapest option out there, but it's not terrible either considering you'd be paying about $5 a month for a hosting fee if you built from the ground up. The main plus is ease of editing and ease of use. It's good on both counts and doesn't look too bad. It's non contractual, so I can cancel the site and jump into something else at any point. I've looked into smugmug.com and some other fast/easy options (including freebie blogs - blogger/wordpress), but wasn't really thrilled with them either.
Like I mention in my first blog posting, I just kinda needed to get something up and running. Hopefully in the next few months, I can build a site from the ground up to exactly what I want.
You have a beautiful site! Great work!
I think that you've got a good idea there to experiment with focusing on the blog, rather than the gallery. I'll be interested to see how that works for you.
My only critique is that I'd like to see some titles/tags on the images, so that I have a sense of what/where I'm viewing...
Tim!
The site looks great. It has a clean simple look. Some nice images to show.
I was doing the blog thing via Blogger and finally set up a site with Smugmug. I found it a reasonable tradeoff of ease and offering prints although I wish I knew coding better (I stopped at BASIC in 1985) to get a more custom look.
Hope to see some regular blog entries from you.
Congratz!
Nice job
I'm not happy with how the gallery is set up - I don't know that everyone realized that you can click over and keep viewing work (there's a fairly large amount of photos there). But, it will have to do for now. Thanks again!
Thanks for the additional feedback Toni and Kerry. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to modify the actual html of the website - it's setup to be user friendly, but it's overly so in the process. And they really don't allow many photo gallery options. I think I'm going to write them and let them know that it's a problem with their service. It bothers me that you can't modify those scroll buttons, and that it doesn't allow me to justify the images to the center of the screen. Oddly enough, it only allows me to justify them to the right or left side of the window...frustrating.