Feedback on my website please.

B

BrianI

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108
Name
Brian
Edit My Images
Yes
Thought I'd get some feedback on my website as I'm thinking of redoing it this year.

At the moment my site runs with Lightbox2, with the image captions stored in the image caption exif field. However i'm not sure if a database type gallery system, although a bit more complicated to install might be easier to maintain in the long term, i.e. I won't have to worry about editing the image caption field in the exif.

Anything wrong with the layout / functionality of my site? If it's all good I'll try and keep the new site similar.

http://www.brianinnesphotography.co.uk

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

:)
 
Home:

Nice homepage with a tidy design. Nothing seems out of place and there's plenty of scope to add more to the page when the time comes. I quite like the rotating banner at the top but I'm not massively keen on the images underneath the text as it looks a bit out of place just stuck up the top. I'd like to see something a bit sleeker.

The main image is fine, albeit a little too big for my liking, and I'd quite like to see another bit of image rotation to keep the homepage feeling fresh.

Landscapes:

Nothing wrong with the look of the page at all, but I'd prefer to see a slightly tighter layout for the thumbnails with the same amount of space between them on both the horizontals and the verticals. And as nice as the images are, I feel some are a little bit too big. Some of them force me to have to scroll the page down to get them all in the browser window.

Panoramas:

Again, I'd like to see the thumbnails spaced out equally and I'd also like to see them all the same size. And with the images themselves, you've got a problem with showing them off at their best. At the size they currently are I just can't see what's there. it's all a bit too small.

Wildlife:

Pretty much the same comments as with Landscapes but this time there's a few images in the mix that don't really work. I'd probably cut the images down on this page by a third and really concentrate on the very best of the bunch.

Overall:

Admittedly it's a basic site but what's there is done well and it should be very easy to add more content without changing the overall feel of the site. I'd like to see more pages with some information about yourself and what the website is for. At the moment I can't work out if it's a portfolio or just a place to share your work with a wider audience.

I do like the way the images are currently being displayed but I'd question using this system in the long-run as it might get hard to maintain when you start adding more content. I think your database idea is a more realistic long-term prospect.

I'd also look at getting rid of the Firefox link at the bottom though as it takes the viewer away from your page. Or at the very least change it so that it opens in a new window. And your © is out of date so that needs bringing into 2009.
 
There is a strange issue in IE7. On the main page you have the logo at the top and it's on the left and then on every other page it's in the middle.
I have noticed that this could be caused by an error in your code.
On the main index page you have no opening valid body tag, it's for some reason slung inside the header tag
<body style="text-align: center; background: #282828">
This also seems to appear on every other page in the ehader tag which is wrong. But on every other page you seem to have another body tag in the correct place.
<body bgcolor="black">

In your head tag you have some HTML code
HTML: 
<div align="center">
<br>
<font size="2" face="Arial" color="#f0f0f0">
<div align="center">
	<a href="/index.html"title="Home"><font color="#f0f0f0"><b>Home</b></font></a>	| <a href="/pages/landscapes.php" title="Landscapes"><font color="#f0f0f0"><b>Landscapes</b></font></a>
	| <a href="/pages/panoramas.php" title="Panoramas"><font color="#f0f0f0"><b>Panoramas</b></font></a>
	| <a href="/pages/wildlife.php" title="Wildlife"><font color="#f0f0f0"><b>Wildlife</b></font></a>
	<br>

Take that out of your <head></head> tags

Also the pics here http://www.brianinnesphotography.co.uk/pages/panoramas.php dont appear in the middle they go to the left.

Then i suggest you look at meta tags, these can help browsers and search engines determine your site etc
heres a free online generator
http://www.clickfire.com/tools/searchengine/mettyonline_meta_tag_generator.php

Appart from that the design is nice and simple and clean, just dont let your website not support IE, as sure IE dont do rendering correctly but it's currently mostly used browser.
 
Thanks for the suggestions / feedback on the site.

Panoramas are somewhat difficult to display on a website, either they are sized small to fit in the browser window losing detail, or so big they need to be scrolled!

Good point about the copyright date + firefox link.

I'll have a play with the site and see what I can come up with.

Thanks again.
 
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