New Website Design Feedback

[4colourprogress]

Hi all!

I may have been quiet on the photography front as of late but I haven't just been sitting around doing nothing! Been teaching myself how to build websites and after about a months work I've managed to nearly finish my first Wordpress theme

www.4colourprogress.com

I welcome any feedback good or bad as I'm sure there is plenty of room for improvement

Hope everyone is okay

[Troy]

Hi Chris.

Firstly, it looks excellent. Especially if you've built this yourself. It showcases your images well, and isn't cluttered and awkward to look at.

However, there are some things i'd change.

Firstly, the sideways scrolling has never been a favourite of mine. Much prefer to scroll down the page and view the images, all be it with the side bar staying still.
When scrolling through there are large gaps between the different sections. Seems odd when you just scroll through it all, rather than click on the links. Personally i'd like different pages for each of the sections, but that's just me.

There is also a lot of space left at the end, not sure if this is intentional, as well as a lot of empty space underneath the main section.

The seperate blog page is good. Although i'd like to see some thumbnails, or bigger previews on the first blog page, as it would definitely entice me to read the blog entry if there was a nice photo attached.

Oh and finally, the social networking icons. They are grey and lifeless, and i first thought they weren't active because of this. I'd definitely make them larger, and bring the colour back in to them.

Anyway, i'll stop rambling. Generally a great site, but i'm just being over critical.

[4colourprogress]

Hi Chris.

Firstly, it looks excellent. Especially if you've built this yourself. It showcases your images well, and isn't cluttered and awkward to look at.

However, there are some things i'd change.

Firstly, the sideways scrolling has never been a favourite of mine. Much prefer to scroll down the page and view the images, all be it with the side bar staying still.
When scrolling through there are large gaps between the different sections. Seems odd when you just scroll through it all, rather than click on the links. Personally i'd like different pages for each of the sections, but that's just me.

There is also a lot of space left at the end, not sure if this is intentional, as well as a lot of empty space underneath the main section.

The seperate blog page is good. Although i'd like to see some thumbnails, or bigger previews on the first blog page, as it would definitely entice me to read the blog entry if there was a nice photo attached.

Oh and finally, the social networking icons. They are grey and lifeless, and i first thought they weren't active because of this. I'd definitely make them larger, and bring the colour back in to them.

Anyway, i'll stop rambling. Generally a great site, but i'm just being over critical.

Hi Troy!

Thanks for the feedback There are currently large gaps between certain sections because there are still a few things I need to add in/remove, once I'm sure it's finished I'll make sure the gaps between the sections remain consistent (the gap at the end is pretty ridiculous though so I'll make sure I change that now lol).

At first I started designing the site as a normal vertical site but I saw a few other photographers and artists portfolios that made use of horizontal grids so I thought I would give that a shot. I agree about the blog page needing thumbnails for the individual posts and as soon as I figure out how to do it I will. lol

The reason I made the social icons less opaque was so that they wouldn't distract from looking at the pics, but mainly because I wanted to mess around with css effects as I'm teaching myself from scratch

Thanks again for the feedback, no such thing as overly critical in my book

[Troy]

Thanks again for the feedback, no such thing as overly critical in my book

Fine then, it's rubbish.

Personally i really dislike the horizontal, partly because you aren't using the whole page, wasting precious screen space, but also because it's just not natural!

I do think it would be nice to have some sort of introduction on the home page. There is nothing that really welcomes you to the site. Even a short sentece on the left, above the social network links, would be good.

[Chris Humphreys]

In the words of Louis Walsh......"Oyyy lyyke it"

The side ways scrolling doesn't trouble me. Though it looks like you do have some format issues, when I view the site on Firefox the horizontal band dissapears up the page and doesn't tier in with the menu on vertical scroll. The way of solving this is to remove the vertical scroll bar (which you don't need) and anchor the whole site in the top left. You've chosen quite a wide native resolution so be aware that not all of the content will fit in everyone's screen, I think I made my site 1024 wide from memory and even at that it's pushing it.

Niggles aside the overall appearance is very clean and slick, just my cup of tea. Nice one!

C

[simon3116]

I didn't like the sideways scrolling at first but once I got use to it I quite like it. Nice bright images, nice layout. One spelling mistake though. On your "About" it reads "photos from OUT trip to Japan" instead of "photos from our trip to Japan".

[4colourprogress]

Thanks again for the feedback, no such thing as overly critical in my book

Fine then, it's rubbish.

Personally i really dislike the horizontal, partly because you aren't using the whole page, wasting precious screen space, but also because it's just not natural!

I do think it would be nice to have some sort of introduction on the home page. There is nothing that really welcomes you to the site. Even a short sentece on the left, above the social network links, would be good.

It took me a while to get used to horizontal sites too but after a while they grew on me. I don't really want to be throwing text at people the second they land on the site which is why I made it as minimal as possible to make sure they spend more time looking at the pictures and less time reading.

In the words of Louis Walsh......"Oyyy lyyke it"

The side ways scrolling doesn't trouble me. Though it looks like you do have some format issues, when I view the site on Firefox the horizontal band dissapears up the page and doesn't tier in with the menu on vertical scroll. The way of solving this is to remove the vertical scroll bar (which you don't need) and anchor the whole site in the top left. You've chosen quite a wide native resolution so be aware that not all of the content will fit in everyone's screen, I think I made my site 1024 wide from memory and even at that it's pushing it.

Niggles aside the overall appearance is very clean and slick, just my cup of tea. Nice one!

C

Thanks Chris! I'll make sure I look into removing the vertical scroll bar and make sure it stays the same with window resizes and such. Yeah I think each section is something like 1050px but the only reason I made them so wide was so that when viewing one section you wouldn't be able to see the next one.

I didn't like the sideways scrolling at first but once I got use to it I quite like it. Nice bright images, nice layout. One spelling mistake though. On your "About" it reads "photos from OUT trip to Japan" instead of "photos from our trip to Japan".

Cheers for spotting that Simon, I've made sure to fix that!

[Troy]

It took me a while to get used to horizontal sites too but after a while they grey on me.

Well that's not right.

I can understand just having photos at first. After all, that is what you're promoting. You're a photographer and not a writer.

Oh something else i just noticed. 4 out of your first 5 images are of Durdle Door. Now they are great photos, but after a quick glance it looks like you only know the one location. For me, mixing them in and perhaps bringing some others forward would really help. Personally the night shot of Tokyo and maybe the firework shot show you are a more diverse photographer amongst the other landscapes.

Oh and some of your photos aren't placed under your portfolio section. Is this intentional?

[4colourprogress]

It took me a while to get used to horizontal sites too but after a while they grey on me.

Well that's not right.

Nice spot

[quote=Troy"]I can understand just having photos at first. After all, that is what you're promoting. You're a photographer and not a writer.

Oh something else i just noticed. 4 out of your first 5 images are of Durdle Door. Now they are great photos, but after a quick glance it looks like you only know the one location. For me, mixing them in and perhaps bringing some others forward would really help. Personally the night shot of Tokyo and maybe the firework shot show you are a more diverse photographer amongst the other landscapes.

Oh and some of your photos aren't placed under your portfolio section. Is this intentional? [/quote]

I'm still trying to decide on a "final order" for the shots at the start and yeah I won't be including all the shots of Flickr as I'm not happy with a lot of them lol

[4colourprogress]

It took me a while to get used to horizontal sites too but after a while they grey on me.

Well that's not right.

Nice spot

I can understand just having photos at first. After all, that is what you're promoting. You're a photographer and not a writer.

Oh something else i just noticed. 4 out of your first 5 images are of Durdle Door. Now they are great photos, but after a quick glance it looks like you only know the one location. For me, mixing them in and perhaps bringing some others forward would really help. Personally the night shot of Tokyo and maybe the firework shot show you are a more diverse photographer amongst the other landscapes.

Oh and some of your photos aren't placed under your portfolio section. Is this intentional?

I'm still trying to decide on a "final order" for the shots at the start and yeah I won't be including all the shots of Flickr as I'm not happy with a lot of them lol

[Troy]

Oh yea, understand that. But i meant some of the shots on your website, as you scroll across, aren't in your portfolio section. Tokyo night shot and the Kilamanjaro(?) bath shot i believe.

[topherkhon]

I go through your wordpress site, its just amazing! I really like the design, awesome picture You really did a good job, thanks for sharing with us.

[Grant Stringer]

Hi there
I like the site - the horizontal is fine with me - its nice to be different!
Wordpress is awesome and you show whats possible - I use it for my blog tho I need to start posting on it! - not a good advert