Designing new website and need your advise

Eric Rose · Sep 21, 2009

Some people setup their folders(galleries) by geographic location and others by theme such as "doors", "bridges" etc. Still others go with a folio type of layout. I'm leaning towards the folio idea but this takes a LOT more work to put together.

Is it worth it? From a collectors point of view would they respond to one schema better than another?

I have taken down my old site so there is nothing to see on my link as of yet.

ER

Ian Grant · Sep 21, 2009

I think the folio idea is excellent, it's the way I intend to go because it mirrors how I show my work in exhibitions etc.

There's no reason why you can't use both though, particularly while work is in progress.

Ian

JohnRichard · Sep 21, 2009

I have no idea about such things, but my brother who does such things for a living (website design et al.) told me that most people don't have flash installed. The majority of people in the world just install a browser, or use Internet explorer, and go about they're day. If a site says they need to install additional things, they will just close that site. I have noticed a lot of find photographers using flash on their sites because it is the "in" thing. I kept my site simple, and used all plain HTML. Any browser in the world can open it, view it, and it looks good. Mind you, its not flashy and fancy like the Flash sites that have pictures fading in and out, and whizzing about... but it gets the job done in the end.

Just food for thought.

Eric Rose · Sep 21, 2009

I should have been clearer, we are not talking about technology here, just layout. Yes the two can be inter-related but not for this discussion.

Q.G. · Sep 22, 2009

The folio idea is good.
It shows you think about what you are doing. (And if find you have trouble arranging your work in themed portfolios, perhaps you don't think about it enough. )

Flash and other 'fancy trickery' is bad. Very bad.
People want to see pictures. Not be bored with the way Flash c.s. move them about.
And that's all these silly things do: show how brilliant they are at getting in the way of people having a look at what a site has to offer.

If you need some active content (which you well might when the amount of things you want to show grows), make sure all activity is 'server-side', and that all the viewer's browser has to do is show the result.

Anon Ymous · Sep 22, 2009

Q.G. said:
...Flash and other 'fancy trickery' is bad. Very bad.

Very well said! And don't even think about an intro.

elekm · Sep 22, 2009

Personally, Web sites that have a large Flash component on their home page annoy the living hell out of me. I'll usually exit without going any further.

JohnRichard · Sep 22, 2009

Agreed. And you know what makes me I RATE? Music. Now, being a musician, that's a weird thing to say, but I HATE when loud music comes blaring out of my 'puter when I want to look at some fine art.

And, yes, I ment to type I (space) RATE. It's an old joke in which someone wrote a letter to a place I worked one time and we made fun of them for writing it. It's funny... well, I thought so.

DLawson · Sep 23, 2009

elekm said:
Personally, Web sites that have a large Flash component on their home page annoy the living hell out of me. I'll usually exit without going any further.

Another problem (half guessed) with these sites is that they don't play well with flash blockers.

Because of flash ad abuse, I run with flash blockers on. If there is flash, I get an icon. If I want it to run, I click on it. Some sites (youtube) work just fine with this. Some sites give me nothing. I can only assume it is because they don't run correctly (and weren't tested) in that scenario.

Usually, I don't bother. Pardon the pun, but I find that heavy flash usage correlates well with sites that are all flash and no substance.

Ian Grant · Sep 23, 2009

This site, APUG, is an excellent role model, it's very complex yet easy to use, no Flash which is good for some purposes but not really ours as stills photographers.

The Lightbox java script is excellent, many forums & websites use it because it allows easy viewing of images either on a one off basis or by scrolling through all the relevant images on a page. The Portfolio section here on APUG is a great example.

A couple of other suggestions are for sales look at using OS Commerce, it's free very easy to install & run and quite easy to customise, it allows Paypal, Credit Card and other methods of payment with no hassles at all.

The other is Joomla, again very easy to set up & customise, then if you want a forum that easy too.

Don't put your email address online, use a Webmail form with Captcha, and if you use a Guestbook again find one that uses Captcha, and don't display posters email addresses. Unfortunately the US Constitution allows email address harvesting and mass spam emailing, and once they get your email address it's a nightmare Every so often you may get a denial of service attack, at this point the number of spam emails shuts your email server down !!! I've had it happen 3 times now.

Ian

Eric Rose · Sep 23, 2009

Well it seems my thread has been hijacked by the usual debate over flash etc. My OP and subsequent post specifically mentioned this was not to be a discussion of technology etc. Just so you know I have no plans of using any flash extensively.

Thanks all for your comments and suggestions. I have decided to go the folio route.

ER

sar-photo · Sep 25, 2009

Sorry to appear a bit dim - but what, exactly, is meant by 'folio' in this case? :confused:

Cheers
Simon

juan · Sep 25, 2009

Try to put yourself in the place of your customers and think of how they will look for your work.

For instance, my film work is arranged by folios, but my stock photography is arranged by subject matter.
juan

Ian Grant · Sep 25, 2009

sar-photo said:
Sorry to appear a bit dim - but what, exactly, is meant by 'folio' in this case? :confused:

Cheers
Simon

A coherent set of images.

So you might have say a Landscape folio, another of Portraits.

How tight each folio is is quite personal. I have a folio of music images - shots of Rock musicians live & on location and another of B&W Landscapes.

However the landscapes can in my case be subdivided into more specific folios to cover The Black Country, or the Aegean Region etc.

When I go to see a Gallery about an exhibition I show a portfolio of the work I propose to show, this is usually work in progress as UK galleries often book 2-3 years in advance, I also take a more general folio as Gallery Directors/Curators want to see your full capabilities.

My own feeling is a website needs to reflect some of that same approach.

Ian

Designing new website and need your advise

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