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KilaTsunami
October, 2024

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Looking for people to critique my website.

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Scottnetphoto
Posts: 72 - Karma: 361
Hey everyone, I'm new to the website game hence being a little shy and posting this thread here.
I'm looking for a few people to just hit this link:
http://www.scottnetphoto.com
And tell me what they think, whether its content (what people want to see more of or less of)
or the layout of the website (changing the orientation of buttons or what ever you can think of)
Positive or negative feedback is what I'm looking for, if you've got a few extra minutes that all I want before releasing something that will turn away viewers.
The goal of my site is to attract attention, and showcase my portfolio, hopefully leaving the viewer with wanting to see more, or best case hiring me for a job.

Again this is my first time ever doing any kind of website stuff, so I'm learning, and if this post is in the wrong forum please just send me in the right direction. I understand that this is newschoolers, and its about skiing 90% of the time, but that said I know there are alot of people with this kind of knowledge on here.

Thanks for your time,
Scott.
Feb 17 2016 8:56PM
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ascent_studios
Posts: 2157 - Karma: 4,580
Thats a sick website! I love the simplicity and the night photos were so sick
Feb 17 2016 9:24PM
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CameraWiz
Posts: 735 - Karma: 2,112
I was in the process of building mine and after looking at yours, I need to step up my game.

One thing I noticed is that all the load times are pretty slow and hovering over stuff is slow as well.
Feb 17 2016 11:07PM
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Scottnetphoto
Posts: 72 - Karma: 361
Thanks guys!
and @CameraWiz im looking into the long load time, I think I need to downgrade the file size of all my images again haha.
Feb 17 2016 11:46PM
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CameraWiz
Posts: 735 - Karma: 2,112
ScottnetphotoThanks guys!
and @CameraWiz im looking into the long load time, I think I need to downgrade the file size of all my images again haha.


What's your file size? Who's your host?
Feb 17 2016 11:55PM
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Scottnetphoto
Posts: 72 - Karma: 361
CameraWizWhat's your file size? Who's your host?


Im using e-host, and the site is built with wordpress, all my files are down to 2mb a photo, but I'm going to take them down to 1mb and see if that works, just balancing between trying to get them as small as possible but still get some decent quality out of them.
Feb 18 2016 12:53PM
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Austin.ski
Posts: 1034 - Karma: 2,582
just a small thing. I would move the info from about tab to the front page where your can scroll down/click read more button.
Feb 18 2016 3:07PM
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fortyvalve
Posts: 1442 - Karma: 1,573
Nice man! Wordpress is a great platform. I use it for my site and every client site that I build due to how streamlined content creation and management is.

A couple of things I noticed:

The landing page has an odd white space with a black line after you scroll down past the parallax header. I think this is supposed to be your bio? I am viewing in the Chrome browser.

Are you optimizing your photos for web? I'm noticing some long load times and images taking a bit longer. There are free programs to do this or you can use the "Save for web" option within photoshop.

This one is just my personal preference but if you create or use a child theme you can get rid of the "Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Harmonic by WordPress.com." and replace it with "Copyright 2016 ScottNet Photo." It just makes it look a bit more professional.

Feel free to message me if you want any help or advice on themes and such, I love seeing people use and learn WordPress! If you feel like checking my site out: http://www.springvisuals.com/
Feb 18 2016 6:58PM
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fortyvalve
Posts: 1442 - Karma: 1,573
ScottnetphotoIm using e-host, and the site is built with wordpress, all my files are down to 2mb a photo, but I'm going to take them down to 1mb and see if that works, just balancing between trying to get them as small as possible but still get some decent quality out of them.


Ok sorry I just realized this was already addressed. I would shoot for under 1mb honestly. When you have a portfolio loading a lot of images even 1mb per can cause some decent load times.
Feb 18 2016 7:01PM
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patagonialuke
Posts: 1626 - Karma: 8,673
looks awesome, very clean. The only thing that bothered me a little was in the Skiing section the photo widths vary and when scrolling down they seem kind of scattered.
Feb 18 2016 7:03PM
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slc_utahboiii
Posts: 1755 - Karma: 1,441
Overall really nice! I noticed some of the skiing images just weren't on the same level or caliber as others giving it the appearance of multiple photographers works on one page. The font could be something a little more "designery" not a big deal though, also your watermarks on your photos weren't consistent, could be nice for them to appear uniform. I really enjoyed a lot of your photos!
Feb 19 2016 4:23PM
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grantwhitty
Posts: 854 - Karma: 9,380
Really simple, and clean site overall, well done. The only thing that bothers me is the water marks.

In my opinion, I don't like watermarks on portfolio website, it takes away from the photo. The viewer keeps seeing the same logo over and over, etc. I don't know how you set up your site but mine has "Right Click Protection" on it, so people can't just snag photos from my site.

I think my website link is in my signature below if you want to see...
Feb 23 2016 2:30PM
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Sklar
Posts: 8864 - Karma: 31,612
It's pretty rough. Image selection is okay for someone just starting out, trim carefully and think if you really need a website (we've all been there).
I played with many options before finally settling on a website platform/host. While there's no way to be completely satisfied, I have found http://format.com/ good enough.
If you want to stick with what you have, here are my thoughts.

No Favicon
Home page scrolls to a blank white block. "Read More" button leades to this empty block.
Portfolio landing page is blank white and bland.
Gallery pages take a long time to load.
Gallery pages don't need a "Read More" button, scroll is intuitive on portfolio sites nowadays.
Watermarks should go.
Events section is very weak compared to the rest, I'd axe it all together.
Car section shot selection should be pickier, loose/sloppy comps in some of the show shots.
I'd try and narrow it down to around 4 categories, 6 seems a little excessive.
I'm personally not a fan or 3rd person about pages, but that's up to you.
Feb 23 2016 6:24PM
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Bmillerz
Posts: 42 - Karma: 100
Hey dude love your photography work by the way.

About the website the load times they are something you seriously need to get sorted. Images at 2MB are too big try to scale them down as small as you can, I usually aim for a maximum of 400kb so they keep a good enough quality. Like someone mentioned before photoshops "save for web" will work well.

Get some content on your homepage once you scroll down theres just a black bar. Also maybe add a header above the read more making you want to hit that button.

Also try and keep the photos the same aspect ratio and size as it looks so much cleaner when on a page. Also make sure you have enough white space separating them.

On the about page you have loads of white space to the right of your picture so maybe fill that with the text bellow so you have two columns.

Also i'm not a fan of the third person description, but its totally different so its unique I guess.

Anyway its a good start dude your getting there!
Mar 1 2016 3:50PM
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