Topic: Suggestions for site

I'm going to be redoing my site again, since I'm already bored with the look. My big question is about the art sections that I have now. I'd like suggestions on better ways to show the works that I have online. I already use thumbnails to the larger image, but those still take up a lot of room. I suppose I could make them even smaller (which is entirely possible, I have no problems putting that work in), but I'm limited with what sorts of scripts/server apps/etc that I can use atm.

Eventually, I'll upgrade to my own domain and a real host instead of the crappy one-step-up-from-free site that I currently have. I'm still working on converting to completely CSS based, the tables I have for news entries are the bigget problems atm, since I would need to go back and do those by hand, and I'm dreading doing that for 2.5 years worth of entries.

I guess what I'm asking for is just some advice ingeneral. I know my site is rather plain and has no decided focus, but it's a personal one and I haven't decided what I want to do with it other than some place for me to show off any art / images and writings that I do. Eventually (again), I'd like to make it look a bit more professional and not so "personal homepagey" but that's still a bit in the future.

So, any suggestions about the presentation of the artwork files? I can use javascript, but I like to know what it's doing, and since I don't know java very well.... No CGI, no PERL, nothing that needs server support, it's not there from this host.

Site is at http://lahutton.50megs.com btw. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

PS - Oh yeah, new theme is going to be similar to my most recent avatar :


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quote:

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I'd like suggestions on better ways to show the works that I have online

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Consider isolating part of an image. The one featuring the Tiger for example. Perhaps part of one eye and part of its long nose. You can then make the thumbnail much smaller while still putting forward something of 'interest.'

DL-44 does this rather well. Here's the link to his page but right now I'm getting a bad gateway message. You might have better luck. I think it's an effective approach because it's kinda like a 'surprise' behind each thumbnail and then I want to see what's behind all of them. =)

http://in-dented.com/

Well, I still haven't redone the graphics pages yet, which means that I haven't tackled the thumbnails issues. But I think I've settled on a redesign look, and have been working on getting my css up to par. I frankly never really realized how much of a mess my code was in because I haven't looked at it that closely. It's "worked" for me, and didn't appear to have many horrible breakdowns otherwise. I found out when I was making my sample pages to show here. I've only redone the index and the writings page, but the mess on the writings page... *shudder*

Index - http://lahutton.50megs.com/testing/index.htm

Writings - http://lahutton.50megs.com/testing/writings.htm

Those are the only 2 I have completed right now, the others will give you errors.

Here is my css - http://lahutton.50megs.com/testing/coeur(16).css

Some things I know about right off, but I don't know why they are happening :

1 : My navigation menu links shift slightly when you hover over them. I don't know why this started happening, and I can't find what is causing it.

2 : If I try to put any sort of margin or padding in the footer section, it shifts my entire box over that amount of pixels, and it's out of line with everything else.

3 : Both Netscape and Opera do ugly things to my header. The background doesn't fill in all the way, and you can see the nasty jaggies around my title logo.

4 : Also in NS and Opera, the border between my navbar section and my content section is twice as large as it's supposed to be, but the spacing for the menu rollover is correct.

I rather like how things are going, and NOTE! - I have not yet validated any of the code involved in either page. That's a completely new thing for me, so I'm not exactly sure what to do to make sure it all validates. I thought I read somewhere that the "target_blank" is no longer valid, but I use that for my images. I haven't figured out a way to allow people to see the linked image (this is from my art pages, btw) without a lot of clicking the back button in the browser. I like how DL-44's is done on his site, but I don't have the option of using php at this time. Perhaps in the near future.

That said, I would like to express gratitude to DL-44 and krets - I spent a lot of time looking at their sites and css to figure out what I wanted to do with my own. Sometimes, the only way I can figure out new code is for me to see it in action, then work with it for myself. I'm not that strong on just writing code off the top of my head. I will say though, I spent the majority of my time in the code view of Dreamweaver (what I use for my pages) rather than in the design view. I think it helped me a lot.

So, reviews please of the direction I'm going in. Thanks!

_____________________
le coeur du feu
Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête!

OK-

I went back and validated the css and the content for the index page. Right now the only errors that are being generated for the html are the scripts that 50megs drops at the end of all pages uploaded for site statistics. It refuses to validate properly and there's nothing I can do about that part. I went through and corrected everything else though.

Question, do you have to run each page through the validation to confirm it? Is it a good idea to do so? I've already found out that some of the code that DW automatically generated for me (like the doctype and meta tags) aren't valid, so I'll fix all those myself. DW also added some funky javascript code near the beginning of the pages that I have no idea what they are for. Feh. I'm really starting to understand why people use text editors for this...

Second question (slightly related to the first) - what is the easiest way to create a "template" for your pages. I'm talking for common elements such as the header/footer and main content bodies of your pages. Do you just create that and then do "save as" for each page you will have, or what?

EDIT - Oh yeah, once again a big thanks to DL-44, I found the validation links from his page. I've been spending a lot of time on in-dented.com lately
_____________________
le coeur du feu
Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête!

(Edited by RhyssaFireheart on 08-16-2004 02:50)

quote:

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I know my site is rather plain and has no decided focus, but it's a personal one and I haven't decided what I want to do with it other than some place for me to show off any art / images and writings that I do.

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You just answered your own question. You want to show your art and writings. Simple.

quote:

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Eventually (again), I'd like to make it look a bit more professional and not so "personal homepagey" but that's still a bit in the future.

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Why?, Is there any reason for you to make it more professional? It *is* a personal home page, isn't it?

Suggestions:

Move away form the scrolly box thing. Seems like it's a bit of a crutch at the moment and I'd like to see what you can do without it.

Play with white space more (margins, padding, line heights etc...)

Don't try and brand your site with that image, design the site first, then put the details like that in. Right now the new design looks like you're trying to sell it with that graphic alone, and it just isn't working.

Try re-structuring your website into something that?s not so, well, directory structure like. You artwork is good, put it up front where people can see it. Your current "home" or index page isn't really home to anything but your weblog. Try slotting in bits and pieces of the other section on your home page rather than keeping everything locked away in its only section.

All I see with your current *re-design* is a few new graphics but basically everything else is the same. You need to let that site die an honorable death, and start afresh.

Try different layouts, move the menu, expand any sub sections into the main menu. Think about what groups of content you have. Write them down, draw them out. List different ways you could display them (in full, in dot point, a list of abstracts etc?). How do these relate to different possible layouts? Are you presenting too much or not enough information for the user? Focus on the content and how it?s presented. Everything should fall into line from there, so just play with it some more and mix it up.

Thanks for the suggestions, Cameron. I think part of my problem is that I tend to think graphically first, before anything else, instead of doing the underpinnings and then building up from there. It's just how I tend to work, and changing that will be different.

I have a few other questions, but they might be more suited for the CSS forum above here, since they deal with controlling placement of the divs (layers in DW), so that if I do away with the "internal" scroll bar, how do I set things so that the copyright box stays in place at the bottom. Can I set a size for each separate div without setting the position as well? Those are some of the areas I'm having problems with. If you look at the code on those redone pages, the divs have position and size information inside the tag. Can I take that out, or does some need to be there, how can I control placement of the divs otherwise?

As you can see, I'm learning as I go, and things keep getting easier for me. I'm not dreading redoing all my pages to do away with tables, for example.

EDIT - oh yeah, the reason that I was eventually aiming for a more "professional" appearance is because while it is a personal site, I don't want it to look like it was thrown together by someone with no clue. I want it to look good, and look like it was made by someone who (sorta) knows what they are doing. I've done some outside webdesign work, but only from the graphics side of things. Still, people do come look occasionally, and I don't want them to go away thinking "Gawd, what a train wreck!"

_____________________
le coeur du feu
Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête!

(Edited by RhyssaFireheart on 08-18-2004 17:55)