my new website - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM

08/01/2012 08:07:34 PM · #28

Originally posted by escapetooz:

error?

if you are referring to the site, its not at that link any longer.

Skip

Canon EOS-1D X

08/02/2012 04:44:05 AM · #29

great job, mike! i would say that it's rather impressive. not that you have eye-popping images (yet) or an over-the-top photo site, but that, not having any prior experience, you were able to pull together all the elements necessary to get your basic point across. and to do this in a fairly short period - you've taken maybe a month to do the shoots, layout the site, and develop the content? it's a great starting point, and a solid foundation to build on. it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

i know it hasn't been easy, but your experience shows how someone with little-to-no programming/design experience can use wordpress to build a business-supporting site that isn't hemmed in by the constraints of subscription-based sites (like bigblackwhatever, smuggie, and other similar services). kudos to you, mike, and good luck!

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM

08/02/2012 10:13:31 AM · #30

Thanks Skip.

well it appears the new layout is working, the old site had an average visit duration of less than 30 seconds. the new site since it went live yesterday has jumped to a 2:55 average.

the purpose was to get keep people there once they got there and its working.

P-A-U-L

Canon EOS R6

08/02/2012 11:16:39 AM · #31

Hi Mike

I have had a very quick peek at your site. Very impressed - nice clean design and very professional looking.

Ok here are some things I spotted with my web designers hat on.

Site search. Does not appear to work. I tried "Photo" and "Photograph"

Home page "Shortly About Me" sounds like bad english - something not quite right

Prices page - "Prices" heading justification - same on About and Contact. Would look better fully left justified in my opinion

Not keen on the fading effect on contact form

Form validation would be better on the same page rather than taking you to the ugly white page

Perhaps you need to add an address and telephone number to give people confidence you are a real business

Email address would be more professional if used XXX@michaelalestraphotography.com instead of Michael.Alestra@comcast.net

Navigation to home page goes to //www.michaelalestraphotography.com/index.html - apparently better just to go to //www.michaelalestraphotography.com/ for SEO optimisation

Hope that helps

Paul

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM

08/02/2012 11:42:22 AM · #32

great advice, i'll take all those into consideration. I'll take all those into consideration.

i have the email @michaelalestraphotography, just haven't switched it yet, I want to make sure it works properly first.

i only have my cell phone so im kind of leery putting that out there, maybe i'll sign up for a google voice number and use that.

search does not work, i need to remove, i dont need it anyway.

P-A-U-L

Canon EOS R6

08/02/2012 12:07:11 PM · #33

Do shout if you need any assistance - I am no expert but do try and blag a living doing web development as one of my skills though less and less these days.

I am sure you have considered other domain names but was thinking alestraphotography.com was a shorter domain name. Having said that, I understand your choice of your full name.

With the domain name, you should be able to quickly set up forwarding for XXX@michaelalestraphotography.com email address to your other email address. Ideally though you want to be able to use the email address for sending and receiving so need to set up a pop3 or the equivalent to do so.

Perhaps over there it is riskier putting your personal contact details on a site - over here it is the norm as far as I am aware for businesses and I am always wary of any business that does not have a postal address or telephone number on their site.

Nikon AF-S Zoom-Nikkor 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED VR

08/02/2012 12:46:28 PM · #34

email is good to go, i just need to modify the page when i get home, just tested it, it works and i get the email on my phone.

how does one switch the navigation of the home page off of index.html?

Message edited by author 2012-08-02 12:47:31.

jadin

Nikon D800

08/02/2012 01:46:55 PM · #35

Google allows small businesses to use the gmail servers to host their domain names. You can have all of your email@michaelstraphphotography.com hosted by them. I use it for my domains and absolutely love it.

Just in case you interpreted his example as a real one, XXX would be a bad choice for a username on your email address ;D

What he means by the index.html thing is whenever you link to your homepage just use //www.michaelalestraphotography.com/ never link to the index.html even from your own pages. The web server will automatically look for the index.html file and send clients there anyway. So basically change any links that has index.html and remove the index.html.

The reason is sites like Google rank your page based on how many people link to it (among other criteria) So if 5 people link to index.html and 5 people don't. Your rank would be 5. Whereas if all 10 linked to .com and none to index.html that would count as 10.

08/02/2012 01:57:47 PM · #36

thanks, i used expression web to build it so it creates the links automatically. i'll fix those tonight

i have bluehost and they allow me 3 email address at my domain for free, and SMTP too. i tried to get google's email to work but couldn't get it set up, so i just gave up knowing i was switching away from my old host.

the email will be "mike@michaelalestraphotography.com"

by the way, my old host Bigblackbag was good, i wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone looking for a simple site setup. even though i paid the whole year up front and was with them for over the refund period, they still refunded my full payment even though i offered to pay a prorated price for what i used.

Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM

08/16/2012 09:10:16 AM · #37

following up after two weeks, it seems the new site is successful at what I intended with the redesign.

its seems more people are sticking around and checking the site out rather than being turned off at first glance. aug 1st he new site went live and you can see the jump in average visit duration.

Message edited by author 2012-08-16 09:11:16.

Skip

Canon EOS-1D X

08/18/2012 07:22:01 AM · #38

mike, just went to visit your site and it came up really slow. when i went to the galleries and click on an image, the individual images took forever to load. not sure if the speed issue is on your end or mine, but you might want to check into it. keep in mind, you really don't need your online images to be any more than 720px @72dpi and 70-125kb.