general website dos and don'ts

msbarnes said:
Any general advice for "about me" sections?
I don't really know how to approach this. I feel that everything I write is
bland, overly romantic, or pretentious.

e.g. 'I shoot film' can interesting to the lay person but to many others it can
also equate to 'I am hipster', 'I hate digital', and etc. lol. For the time present
I'm cutting it out entirely.

daveleo - I actually like yours. It is interesting, short, and honest.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Just be yourself when you write, and be aware that your readers are
probably more intelligent and more talented than you are, so . . . . don't get too
snarky or too pompous, or (as you said) too pretentious.
 
VinceC said:
One advantage of Flash ... it makes it much more challenging for visitors to "borrow" your photograhic content.
Click to expand...

Not really. It makes it harder/impossible to hotlink (i.e., link directly to your images from another website) your images but a simple screenshot and crop is all it takes to grab the desired image.
 
Dwig said:
iv: don't put the slideshow on the Home page.

The Home page should load very fast on all browsers. Keep it very very simple. When the site's entry page, the Home page, loads slowly people often don't wait and simply go elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Poorly written slideshows will load every image before/while displaying the initial photo, but most slideshow plugins these days use progressive loading to load only the initial image for display while (optionally) loading the previous + next images in sequence to keep load time at a minimum. If you want, you can even just have the current image load while loading other images only as they're needed so it's basically no different than loading a single image.

And once all images have been loaded, there's no additional load time to deal with since your browser will already have everything in its cache (the images, CSS and JavaScript that make up the slideshow).
 
DerekF said:
Poorly written slideshows will load every image before/while displaying the initial photo, but most slideshow plugins these days use progressive loading to load only the initial image for display while (optionally) loading the previous + next images in sequence to keep load time at a minimum. If you want, you can even just have the current image load while loading other images only as they're needed so it's basically no different than loading a single image.

And once all images have been loaded, there's no additional load time to deal with since your browser will already have everything in its cache (the images, CSS and JavaScript that make up the slideshow).
Click to expand...

Agree. Also keep in mind different platforms, if I'm browsing on a sh** 3G connection and an old phone I don't want to wait hours to see your pictures load. Take a look at magnific.js which does parallel loading of progressive jpegs to reduce load times (that's a modal box though, not a slideshow)
 
what is a good file size for images?

I'm currently building my website and at first I used 500 by 500 and that was too small and so I'm thinking 800 x 800 or 1024 x 1024. Is 1024 appropriate? I'm not sure how much this impacts loading time but I'm sure it does. If individual application matters than you can you check my site below (still under construction and hence some mixed sizes).
http://cargocollective.com/michaelsergiobarnes/

I just don't want to go 1024 and then realize it is absurd. I'd limit to ~10 images per page, tops, but mostly half that amount.
 
msbarnes said:
what is a good file size for images?

I'm currently building my website and at first I used 500 by 500 and that was too small and so I'm thinking 800 x 800 or 1024 x 1024. Is 1024 appropriate? I'm not sure how much this impacts loading time but I'm sure it does. If individual application matters than you can you check my site below (still under construction and hence some mixed sizes).
http://cargocollective.com/michaelsergiobarnes/

I just don't want to go 1024 and then realize it is absurd. I'd limit to ~10 images per page, tops, but mostly half that amount.
Click to expand...

At one time when designing a website I would ensure it looked right, but probably not ideal, on screen sizes down to 640x480, then that became 800x600, and now I consider 1024x768 as the bottom of the optimum range.
These days you need to consider users viewing on tablets as well as desktop monitors, and also consider that many will be using a wide 16:9 format so there will be limited height but an excess of width.

Conclusion: if you want most photos to be visible without scrolling for the majority of users I would suggest no more than 700x700.
 
You could load a page of 600px or 700px images,
each one being a link to a larger image that will display in a window by itself,
when the 600px image is clicked.

Please do not do mouse-over popups - they are hateful.
 
-For email, is there a preference between contact forms and just including your regular email? My email is gmail and just my name.
-When linking to another site, is there a preference between opening in the current window and a blank page?

Personally I'd rather email someone than fill out a contact form. I open new links in a new tab, always, and so this doesn't really matter to me. I don't know anything about website design so I'm just trying to figure out what people do and do not like about websites because sometimes the little things can get really annoying (music is the biggest offender in my book).

Right now I don't have an about-me section. I'm still trying to figure out what to say and how to present myself but is it weird to not have an about me section? Or is it somewhat normal. I think most websites that I've seen say a little bit about the photographer. I might have one or I might now. I want to think carefully in what I want to say and how I would be doing so.
 
You remind me of young writers who say they want to be writers but have no idea what they want to say.

Websites should be simple regardless of what the design is-

1) Compel me to look at your images. That is what I am there for. That means that any design you have should not take away from that goal. Anything else is ok. Simple is better, always.

2) Don't bore me or I will leave.

My advice to you is to stop navel gazing with your website (you have been at this for weeks) and go make some compelling images that are worth looking at. That may sound harsh to you but that is the best advice you will ever get. Do you want to be a web designer or a photographer?
 
Probably true. This website thing is completely new to me and I probably got carried away. I will stop tinkering with it, lol. thanks but I have to say that a lot of advice has been helpful.
 
yeah it seems a good majority of people like different things. people have mentioned how they dislike flash, elaborate animations, music etc.

i personally use them. but i guess i don't care what visitors think. to say the least, i still get regular traffic even though i havent touched my website since i first made it almost three years ago. plus i'm going to school for something entirely different now. so the site remains as a tribute to my past life.
 
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