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wisnuclear
Posts: 92
From: toledo, ohio, usa
Status: offline
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Go ahead, tear into it. - 8/30/2008 17:59:02
Ya know, the harder I work at this the dumber I feel. I started this site probably 7 or 8 years ago and knew very little about what I was doing. Now that I know just enough to be dangerous I am thinking a redo with css and php, and all new cool photo galleries may be the thing to do. The site probably has a basement full of superflous code and images, but do I owe my time to it? I should be painting. So. Does it hold up? Go ahead and don't hold back. DW.
http://www.davewisniewski.com
< Message edited by wisnuclear -- 8/30/2008 23:16:16 >
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womble
Posts: 5702
Joined: 3/14/2005
From: Living on the edge
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 8/31/2008 7:29:59
Well it's got some potential. Your paintings are really good. First off the animated slide show at the top of the page gives it a very 1990s feel, and generally it seems to have rather a cartoon-y feel, when that really doesn't fit in with the style of your paintings.
You've an awful lot of links there on the homepage, maybe some of which don't need to be there right on the home page. Maybe you could have a page for links rather than putting them all on the home page? The white text, crammed very close together, over the wooden background really isn't easy to read, and the whole page feels rather cluttered somehow (maybe because for me in Opera the whole page is pushed over to the left of the screen).
On your menus the text is almost falling off the "buttons" on the right of them for me on Opera (not checked it out on the other browsers, but it's important you do check out your site displays reasonably well in all of the browsers in common usage. On your galleries page, you've got a completely different background, and it doesn't feel like you're still on the same site - it's important that all of your pages, even if they have a different layout to the home page, have a similar style and keep the same theme, and bright primary colours for borders around your artwork really doesn't do it any favours - it could be a lot more sympathetically displayed, with a simple border that fits in with the theme.
Similarly, on the other pages of the site the navigation goes strange, and bears no similarity to the navigation on the home page - again, you need to make sure your site's consistent throughout or visitors will feel disoriented by changes in style on different pages and may think they're on another site. Your nav should be in the same place and in the same order on each page, so a visitor knows quickly where to find it without hunting around the page for the link they want. If you need to have sub-navigation on a particular section of your site, that's fine, but it shouldn't replace the main navigation. Just a quick note on text - you need to make sure the text throughout your site's in the same font, and the same size for consistency, and centred text really is difficult to read. It's fine for a short piece of text if you particularly need to emphasise it, but long pieces of text centred are a big no-no.
And on to the contact page....I like the message on the page - it shows a sense of fun, but the page is completely lacking any style. It kind of feels as though it was added on as an after-thought. Displaying your email address in plain text on a page is never a good idea - you're liable to find yourself innundated with spam from the bots that zoom around the web collecting email addresses. Much safer to use a contact form. Mike Cherim does a super-secure and accessible form script that's got so many ways to stop spammers getting at your email address and such like I've lost track, and is very easy to install and configure.
As I said earlier, it has got a lot of potential - you've got some excellent paintings there that need to be displayed sympathetically to show them off at their best. You could bring the whole thing more up to date by making more use of "white space" and cutting down a lot on the background graphics. Yes, your site has a western theme, but like 99% of the western themed sites out there you've gone for a stereotypical "wooden" look with cactus and such like. To show your artwork off at it's best you need to stand out from the crowd and be a bit different, and you could make the site more up to date in style while keeping the western theme by making much better use of "white space" and spacing out your content, and using some subtle graphics and icons (not just your artwork) to maintain the western theme, but not fill the screen with western images.
I'm into western stuff myself, and the biggest turn-off I find when I visit online western web stores is those clad entirely in wood-effect graphics and so stereotypically western it feels like you've wandered into a Disney theme-park. I recently visited the western store in Brussels with some friends, and that's the same - stuck in the 1950s/1960s in the John Wayne era (they do have a huge selection of cowboy boots though  ).
There are ways though to update the theme a little, while still retaining a strong western feel. As an example, I saw an eBay listing the other day that very effectively used a simple isolated black and white photo of a pair of cowboy boots and hat to give a strong visual cue of a western theme, without filling the listing with images of ropes, horses, cactus, horse-shoes, etc. It was very simple, but very efective, and because the listing used a magazine layout, it was in keeping with the kind of layouts people are used to seeing in everyday life and on the web, but by using strong but yet subtle visual cues of western themes it was still clear just from a glance what the listing was about. This article's about using CSS and PHP to automatically generate magazine style graphics (personally, I'd probably do it manually), but if you look at the illustrations and the examples you'll see the idea about how using images grouped together can be very visually appealing.
Going back to where I first started though, you've got some good content and good graphics there in your artwork, and yes, despite my nit-picking, it's a perfectly passable site. To do your artwork justice though I feel that you need to stand out from the crowd, and make your site a little bit different. Making use of CSS is definitely the way to go - it can simplify styling across your whole site and cut down on code clutter, and there are some excellent CSS image galleries available (my favourite's still Lightbox JS v2). If you've got areas of identical content on many pages, such as navigation and headers and footers, using PHP includes can simplify the whole business of making any updates to any element of those areas, because if you're including content across your site, you only have to change something once rather than on each page, and even showing the current page on PHP included navigation can be done.
Good luck with it! I'd be interested to see how the site progresses. 
_____________________________
~~ "A cruel god ain't no god at all" ~~
~~ Erase hate. Practice love. ~~
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wisnuclear
Posts: 92
From: toledo, ohio, usa
Status: offline
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 8/31/2008 11:15:52
Absolutely. I can't argue any points you have made and I totally appreciale your candor. You have convinced me that I do need a redo. I think I will start another site in FP and bring strff over. Any thoughts on that? Seems like there should be a catagory just for renovations and reconstruction...?
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TexasWebDevelopers
Posts: 214
Joined: 2/22/2002
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 8/31/2008 11:35:26
My 2 cents on re-dos.
Do some keyword research via a site like Wordtracker and use those keywords to drive page naming conventions--this will help search engine rank.
Watch re-naming pages that alread DO have good rank in Google.
Take a look at using an editor other than Front Page--Front Page doesn't support CSS well and uses deprecated code.
If you want to rebuild the site, do it right the first time out.
Use include pages for areas that might need to be changed site-wide--navigation, headers, footers, etc.
Design without tables using CSS and you will be able to "re-skin" the site again in a few years by simply changing the CSS file.
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wisnuclear
Posts: 92
From: toledo, ohio, usa
Status: offline
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 8/31/2008 13:37:02
"A penny saved is a penny earned." Thanks for the two cents. I have gotten so comfortable with FP it is really going to be difficult to teach this old dog new tricks. I got to admit the tables are awful to work with so I would not miss that. I am a wysiwyg guy but not afraid of the code view. I though FP2003 was css friendly but what is good for ccss with a reasonable learning curve? Appreviate the help.
DW.
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Tailslide
Posts: 6290
Joined: 5/10/2005
From: Out here on the raggedy edge
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 8/31/2008 14:15:04
If you're happy working with the code then go for an HTML editor - there are tons of excellent ones out there and most of them are free. I switch back and forth between several of these freebies - I do rather like PSPad but Crimson Editor is good too. HTML-kit has lots and lots of functionality (too much for my liking) but if you're coming from a WYSIWYG background then it may be helpful.
All WYSIWYG editors have similar problems - none are very good at CSS unless you go round after them and clean up (sort of like a big puppy - nice to look at but messy!). Dreamweaver is probably the best of the bunch but it's expensive and complex so you spend a load of time learning to use the software rather than learning to build good websites.
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"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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d a v e
Posts: 4177
Joined: 7/24/2002
From: England (but live in Finland now)
Status: offline
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 8/31/2008 14:31:42
though i much prefer dreamweaver (with topstyle for editing my css) why not have a look at expressions web trial?
in the meantime why not download the free topstyle lite for your css
(under the heading 'lite version' on this page http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/topstyle/default.aspx )
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David Prescott
Gekko web design
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womble
Posts: 5702
Joined: 3/14/2005
From: Living on the edge
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 8/31/2008 15:00:53
I used to use Topstyle for all mine until about 18 months ago - the nice thing with Topstyle is that while it doesn't mess with your CSS or code, you can have a preview pane under the code window so you can get a rough idea of what the finished thing's going to look like (though the only true way to check is to actually load it in a browser). It's also rather handily got an auto-complete on tags as well, so if you put the opening tag in it'll close it for you, and also contains the full CSS specs that lets you choose attributes from a drop-down list. It also has some handy tools in it like a colour picker and such like
I can't remember why I stopped using it now (it must have been fairly serious as I used to like it a lot ). My current favourite editor's PSPad (one that Tail recommended to me - she probably liked it because it's free even for commercial use  ) - some nice features, but it's not over-cluttered with stuff you'll never use, and there are a number of extensions available for it if you want to get more adventurous. I did used to use HTML-Kit, but as Tail says HTML-Kit has loads of features and more you can add on, and like Tail, though I did use it for a while, I found it was all just a bit too much, and the toolbars just got too cluttered with umpteen buttons, though it's browser preview can be handy.
The thing with all the freebies is that none of them are monsters of applications and aren't going to completely fill your hard drive, and being free you can try out the various different ones and see which you like best. Tail's definitely the lady to talk to about text editors though, on two grounds: 1) she's tried most of 'em and she's very picky about her text editors, and 2) she never pays for anything unless she has to, and can probably name every freebie editor available on the web!
_____________________________
~~ "A cruel god ain't no god at all" ~~
~~ Erase hate. Practice love. ~~
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wisnuclear
Posts: 92
From: toledo, ohio, usa
Status: offline
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 9/1/2008 8:13:45
Bottom line. Dump FP?
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Tailslide
Posts: 6290
Joined: 5/10/2005
From: Out here on the raggedy edge
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 9/1/2008 8:36:14
I guess it depends. I'm biased. I do this for a living so I wouldn't touch FP with a very long pole. But then again I wouldn't touch Expressions or Dreamweaver either as I'm a hand-coder!
If this is your business... then I'd suggest either:
1. Spend the time learning HTML/CSS to build a more modern site experience (but it really will take time - allow a few months of frustration and messing around to get something fairly simple but solid)
2. Pay someone else to build the framework for you using a Content Management System so you can easily add images and text but don't have to even think about the layout and styling.
3. Have a play around with WordPress (a blog system which you can easily use as a CMS and can drop in literally thousands of different themes to change the appearance - get some ideas here: http://www.templatemonster.com/category.php?tid=-+Any+-&search_words=-+Any+-&from_=-+Any+-&to=-+Any+-&type=17&cat=40&style=&author= )
Personally... unless you have a load of time I'd think about option 2. Might well save your sanity!
If this is just for fun and the world won't end if your site doesn't look like a "pro" did it:
1. Have a look at Nvu It's a freebie WYSIWYG editor which is meant to produce better code than FrontPage but doesn't have all the extra functionalities (but then it's free!). Like all WYSIWYG editors it is far from perfect.
2. See number 3 of the above list.
I'd suggest that a move away from FP would be wise (all my personal biases apart) as eventually you will end up hostage to the few hosting companies that still offer FP extensions and you can bet you'll be paying a lot more than a normal hosting package.
_____________________________
"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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wisnuclear
Posts: 92
From: toledo, ohio, usa
Status: offline
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 9/1/2008 19:48:52
NVU sounds like me but I am having trouble finding it. I do want wysiwyg but like I said, I am not afraid of dropping in code. I stopped using the FP ext and I FTP so I have been using it for the basic strff. I just really know the program. I do hate the tables. I do believe you, I must move on.
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d a v e
Posts: 4177
Joined: 7/24/2002
From: England (but live in Finland now)
Status: offline
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 9/2/2008 0:34:03
nvu has been superseded by Kompozer http://www.kompozer.net/
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David Prescott
Gekko web design
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Tailslide
Posts: 6290
Joined: 5/10/2005
From: Out here on the raggedy edge
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RE: Go ahead, tear into it. - 9/2/2008 3:06:04
Yep Dave's right - Nvu has been superceded by kompozer.
To be honest I have no idea whether these programmes will allow you to build a tableless site... as they're free they're certainly worth a go though!
If you're happy delving into the code you might want to have a look at an HTML editor - just have Firefox open at the same time and check stuff as you go along.
_____________________________
"My strategy is so simple an idiot could have devised it"
Little Blue Plane Web Design | Blood, Sweat & Rust - A Land Rover restoration project
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