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Author Topic: New website help  (Read 7124 times)

tom b

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Re: New website help
« Reply #20 on: January 11, 2011, 10:12:26 pm »

With my name I've go no hope.

Cheers,
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Tom Brown

jhemp

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Re: New website help
« Reply #21 on: January 11, 2011, 11:37:20 pm »

Thanks Tom,
  Your points are great, its what I was looking for.  I was not looking for compliments for my photos.  I feel that have an OK selection of work but felt that my website kinda sucked, but I didn't know what was bugging me about it.   After spending some time on the discussion board and looking at other's websites I see I've got along way to go.  Some of you on the board have awesome websites.

jhemp

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Re: New website help
« Reply #22 on: January 11, 2011, 11:40:38 pm »

Nice!  I think it's a great website and looks very professional.  It was loading a bit slow, but that might be my connection?

tom b

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Re: New website help
« Reply #23 on: January 12, 2011, 12:10:12 am »

The site has been hosted by a friend of mine for about eight years. He said he was going to change things but instead of speeding things up it has been slow to load but not too bad with galleries.

I rarely give comments in this part of the forum but I thought everyone would be supportive and you wouldn't get any realistic comments.

Good luck with the site, it's taken me eight years to get to where I am now. Photoshop has come a long way in that time and it's time I had a major overhaul of the whole process. I'll probably have to pay for hosting, sigh I saved over $1000 having free hosting.

It was very plesant to get a positive response, thanks.

Cheers,
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Tom Brown

EduPerez

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Re: New website help
« Reply #24 on: January 12, 2011, 02:38:56 am »

My two cents:
  • No flash, no music, no gimmicks; thanks!
  • Nice and clean design, and easy navigation too; thanks again!
  • I liked your photographs very much (I am sorry if that is not what you wanted to hear; next time, put worse photographs up there).
  • At least in my browser, "http://www.jhemphillphotography.com/" redirects to "http://www.jhemphillphotography.com/www.jhemphillphotography.com/Welcome.html"... cannon understand why.
  • A width of only 8000px is probably too narrow; most people (everybody?) interested in photography has bigger monitors nowadays.
  • I think the site needs a bit of reordering: "New Work" should have its own menu entry (on a 600x600 screen, it is completely invisible), I would put "About Me" after the galleries, etc... .
  • In "Welcome": the space reserved for the quotation is too narrow, and it appears wrapped.
  • In "About Me": "What you should know" seems a bit too aggressive to me (I am not an English native speaker, however); you may want to proofread that text (I found some sentences weird or hard to understand), and perhaps concentrate more on the photographic part; I could not care less about your current camera.
  • In "Landscape Work": "Here are a few images" seems a bit too disrespectful to me (again, I am not an English native speaker).
  • In "Urban Landscape": the footer on each photograph is just the file name given by the camera; you made the effort to put nice footers at "Landscape Work", however.
  • In "Contact Info": there is no need to shout.
  • The main header is centered on some pages, but aligned to the left on others; and on most pages there is a big gap between the header and the content. Speaking of headers, the text displayed on each page does not match neither the "title" tag nor the menu entry.
  • Is Apple an sponsor? Did they pay you for the add at the bottom?
  • Did I say I liked your photographs a lot?
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jhemp

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Re: New website help
« Reply #25 on: January 12, 2011, 09:37:28 am »

Thanks EduPerez,

   Points well taken.  I have designed the website on iWeb and there are certain restrictions I am stuck with, and I think one of them is the apple at the bottom of the page.  Another thing I dont like about iWeb is it seems I cannot have the images display any bigger in the slideshow.  Anyone suggest another site design program thats simple?
         

Justinr

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Re: New website help
« Reply #26 on: January 12, 2011, 10:42:09 am »

Strange! I just googled "myrvaagnes photography" and out of the 17,000 some hits, the very first one was my own website (and quite a number of the rest, too).

So any of the millions of people who wake up some morning thinking "Today I think I'll google 'myrvaagnes photography' just to see what happens" will see my website in the Number One Spot!!! How cool is that?

Eric

Let's settle down and think about this sensibly. Your domain name is unique to you so if you google it then it should appear at the top of the list because there is nothing else out there the same as it, hardly surprising really for it is a very specific search term. But if I were to wash up in Massachusetts and look for a photographer in the state then what happens? Well I did just that Eric and you were not on the first four pages probably because 'Massachusetts photographer' is a much more general search term, but crucially it is far more likely to be a search term that a potential customer is likely to use. If I wanted to find you then you will appear, if I wanted to find a photographer you are nowhere (I am assuming you are based in Massachusetts still).

Now which is the more important to a commercial concern, being found using general search terms or being found using unique search terms?

Come on, wake up there at the back of the class!  ;)
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Justinr

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Re: New website help
« Reply #27 on: January 12, 2011, 10:46:46 am »

Thanks EduPerez,

   Points well taken.  I have designed the website on iWeb and there are certain restrictions I am stuck with, and I think one of them is the apple at the bottom of the page.  Another thing I dont like about iWeb is it seems I cannot have the images display any bigger in the slideshow.  Anyone suggest another site design program thats simple?
        


I rather fear that web design cms software is a bit like the inverse square law in that to double its flexibility  you have to square its complexity, and of course the reverse applies. Well perhaps not square the complexity but you get my point.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2011, 10:51:27 am by Justinr »
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jhemp

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Re: New website help
« Reply #28 on: January 12, 2011, 11:12:52 am »

Thanks justinr,
  I kinda figured if I wanted more control over my site I'll need to start learning a more complex site design software.  I guess it's more pinwheel eye's for me.

Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: New website help
« Reply #29 on: January 12, 2011, 11:21:11 am »

Let's settle down and think about this sensibly. Your domain name is unique to you so if you google it then it should appear at the top of the list because there is nothing else out there the same as it, hardly surprising really for it is a very specific search term. But if I were to wash up in Massachusetts and look for a photographer in the state then what happens? Well I did just that Eric and you were not on the first four pages probably because 'Massachusetts photographer' is a much more general search term, but crucially it is far more likely to be a search term that a potential customer is likely to use. If I wanted to find you then you will appear, if I wanted to find a photographer you are nowhere (I am assuming you are based in Massachusetts still).

Now which is the more important to a commercial concern, being found using general search terms or being found using unique search terms?

Come on, wake up there at the back of the class!  ;)
Justin,

I was joking! Sorry I forgot to add a smiley.

Since I am not a commercial concern, in order to find me one would need to have come across my name somewhere else, such as at one of my exhibits, or here on LuLa. But if you had a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand computers, just maybe one of them one day might happen to type in "google myrvaagnes photography." But I admit the chances are pretty slim.

Eric

P.S. Here is the missing smiley:  8)
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-Eric Myrvaagnes (visit my website: http://myrvaagnes.com)

Justinr

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Re: New website help
« Reply #30 on: January 12, 2011, 11:57:47 am »

Justin,

I was joking! Sorry I forgot to add a smiley.

Since I am not a commercial concern, in order to find me one would need to have come across my name somewhere else, such as at one of my exhibits, or here on LuLa. But if you had a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand computers, just maybe one of them one day might happen to type in "google myrvaagnes photography." But I admit the chances are pretty slim.

Eric

P.S. Here is the missing smiley:  8)

Hi Eric

I did wonder, so it's good to hear. Justinseye now finds me straight away, but it took a while to happen and I have a children's entertainer and a wrestler as my namesakes. Getting the Number one spot with the search term, 'Photographer Tipperary' is the ultimate goal, without paying for it of course. What I didn't realise until a few months back is that the listing may also be browser dependent.

All this talk of websites has made me think that my own gallery page is pretty much a dogs dinner that needs sorting, the additions are all  a bit ad hoc I'm afraid and it shows. Oh well, the untidiest hair in town is always the barbers I guess!

Justin.
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jeremypayne

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Re: New website help
« Reply #31 on: January 12, 2011, 12:10:53 pm »

What I didn't realise until a few months back is that the listing may also be browser dependent.

Are you saying you think Google returns different results depending upon the browser technology used to invoke the query?
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Justinr

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Re: New website help
« Reply #32 on: January 12, 2011, 01:38:23 pm »

Are you saying you think Google returns different results depending upon the browser technology used to invoke the query?


Now this is getting interesting. I thought I had better check my facts before replying and lo and behold in Firefox I am number four on the list with the Search Term 'Photographer Tipperary' but I am now nowhere on Opera or IE where as in fact I used appear on the first page of all them. However, another photographer in the area that dropped off the list completely has now reappeared in the top spots on all of them. What was I saying about needing to pay Google? Firefox is my default browser BTW.

Edit. On Bing my Youtube video is on the first page and using the term Justinseye I have 9 of the 10 slots on Bing's first page.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2011, 01:47:09 pm by Justinr »
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jeremypayne

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Re: New website help
« Reply #33 on: January 12, 2011, 03:58:50 pm »

Now this is getting interesting. I thought I had better check my facts before replying and lo and behold in Firefox I am number four on the list with the Search Term 'Photographer Tipperary' but I am now nowhere on Opera or IE where as in fact I used appear on the first page of all them. However, another photographer in the area that dropped off the list completely has now reappeared in the top spots on all of them. What was I saying about needing to pay Google? Firefox is my default browser BTW.

Edit. On Bing my Youtube video is on the first page and using the term Justinseye I have 9 of the 10 slots on Bing's first page.

Very interesting ... I cannot explain that and I reproduced something similar.

I'll get an answer ... stay tuned.

EDIT .... my colleague (a software engineer and 5-time Jeopardy champ) says that it likely has to do with the search history in the Google Search cookies being different for each browser.

Sounds like a reasonable explanation to me ... Should be able to verify by deleted cookies for all browsers and retrying ...
« Last Edit: January 12, 2011, 04:02:49 pm by Jeremy Payne »
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jeremypayne

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Re: New website help
« Reply #34 on: January 12, 2011, 04:22:30 pm »

... other possible causes:

** One browser logged into a Google/Gmail account and one not ... search history again would be the culprit

** Database replication across the various Google datacenters can get out of sync a little bit, apparently
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Justinr

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Re: New website help
« Reply #35 on: January 12, 2011, 05:00:11 pm »

It's weird all right but I would have thought that if it was a caching/cookie issue then you would have been unaffected.

Can he explain why I have suddenly disappeared again having been on the first page in the summer (when I last checked) in all browsers?

BTW, the upshot of our debate has been a complete rethink on my part as to what I want to achieve with the site. Some tidying up has been done but I think a refocus on direction is now in order with emphasis on the using the slideshows to push the documentary style rather than the gallery which had become a complete mish mash and has now been trimmed.

Cheers

Justin.
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EduPerez

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Re: New website help
« Reply #36 on: January 17, 2011, 05:20:08 am »

... other possible causes:

** One browser logged into a Google/Gmail account and one not ... search history again would be the culprit

** Database replication across the various Google datacenters can get out of sync a little bit, apparently

And another one: different language settings.
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