Website in Progress

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KayJay

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I'm currently working on my new website and thought I'd get some opinions before progressing any further, see what people think of it so far.

The server is a bit slow and the photos aren't great quality wise but I hope you'll get an idea of what I'm trying to do.

Cheers.

http://www.newvibes.com/

PS. The site is powered by Wordpress and uses jQuery for some of the user interface stuff.
 
I like the design and idea, I found that the text was a bit small and not clear, I also found the forwards, next, play toolbar in the top left a bit small, it was only when I was about to close the broswer tab that I spotted it.

I looked at the site in Firefox 3.5.2 and Opera 10 both running under Linux.

Tim
 
First of all I like the simple colour scheme and how things seem to come out of the menu, but a few things I'm not so keen on are:

On blog pages there is a lot of blank space at the top, I can see what you are trying to do aligning it with the logo, but on my Macbook screen it means I have to scroll, when there is blank space at the top of the screen.

On the galleries (I'm writing as I go through the site, so excuse the randomish order) I really like how the UI goes semi transparent and over the images, while they are full screen, a very neat trick. However, I don't like all the links to Wikipedia on the text box, if I want to find out about something I put it into wikipedia myself. I also notice your site forced the info bar to display in Safari, I'm not a fan of websites changing how my browser looks/behaves. I take it all the copy is there for SEO purposes?

If I were you I'd be tempted to host my web development stuff on a separate site too, there isn't much there on its own and it doesn't add anything to the photography site.

A few general observations, that anybody would be good to take heed of:

Contact details, You obviously have a domain name, so get rid of the gmail address!!! Also add a contact form too, which is dead easy in Wordpress.

Links, you are adding lots of ways for people to be distracted from your site.
 
Craikeybaby said:
A few general observations, that anybody would be good to take heed of:

Contact details, You obviously have a domain name, so get rid of the gmail address!!! Also add a contact form too, which is dead easy in Wordpress.

Links, you are adding lots of ways for people to be distracted from your site.
Click to expand...

Totally correct. n00b mistakes. Don't tell anyone lol.

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.
 
I like it, I like the style and how it works! What I would think a little more about though, is the amount of sections (especially if you intend to gain work through it). Too many and you may appear to be a jack of all trades... which isn't what we want :)
 
purpleclouds said:
I like it, I like the style and how it works! What I would think a little more about though, is the amount of sections (especially if you intend to gain work through it). Too many and you may appear to be a jack of all trades... which isn't what we want :)
Click to expand...

This is a good point. The more I think about it the more I think the web stuff should be elsewhere and consolidate everything else.

Thanks for looking mate. I appreciate it.
 
slowloading images was my only problem. otherwise tres nice.

using firefox
 
I agree, everything was very slow, but I assume you are going to sort that out as you are aware of it.
 
Yeah, I'll be moving it to a new host once the site is complete. The speed issue is annoying.
 
Thanks for the feedback, will take it on board. I have a new server to move this onto tonight.
 
xendistar said:
I like the design and idea, I found that the text was a bit small and not clear, I also found the forwards, next, play toolbar in the top left a bit small, it was only when I was about to close the broswer tab that I spotted it.

I looked at the site in Firefox 3.5.2 and Opera 10 both running under Linux.

Tim
Click to expand...

I agree ,I dont like the next ,pley etc...toolbar in the top right corner. I like the idea of having the whole image on the screen , but find the writing abit distracting . Maybe have the ime slighly smaller and the writing to the left of the image against the black. so it would stand out. But def move the next and prev somewhere else if thats possible.
 
Yeah, trying to balance the writing and the image. I put that button to slide the writing off the left edge to show the image more. There is an easter egg in that you can use the left and right arrow buttons on the keyboard to navigate the slideshow images, but it's not publicized. I'll keep on refining. Plus, I need to get more content on there.
 
I've implemented new accordian style navigation to my folio sections, to hopefully speed things up. There is a bug though when you view the About, Blog and Contact Me pages in that the navigation is fully expanded, but works fine when not in those sections. Working on resolving that bug at the moment.
 
Looks great but the navigation buttons could do with 1 or 2 pixels of left padding :)
 
Thanks Matt. Yeah, I think you're right. They are a bit close to the edge aren't they.

Thanks for looking. Much appreciated.
 
really like the idea, well implemented :)

Only minor point I have is that the next/prev etc buttons top right aren't immediately obvious. I'm on a 20" widescreen and my eye is naturally drawn to the text on the left. I didn't even notice the buttons over on the right to start with until I looked at the travel section.
 
I've fixed the navigation and adding some padding to the left hand side. Will focus on making the slide show navigation more visible.

Thanks so far. Feedback has helped a lot.
 
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