Needs some opinions

[M_Six]

Hey All,

I'm trying to put together a site for just my images. My blog works ok, but it's a pain doing all the coding for each image. I coded my own photography site, but it takes a great deal of work to post each gallery in the slideshow method I use, so I end up putting it off and not getting it done. I'm trying Squarespace because I love the ease with which you can upload lots of images in a new gallery. But before I commit to this and get too far into the look and feel of the site, I'd like some opinions. Keep in mind that the site will have more text in the About section and on each gallery page. I just uploaded enough content to get the feel of using the software and to let folks see how the site will look. What I'm really interested in is the look and feel. Is it easy enough to navigate? How is the style of the site (text, colors, arrangement, etc)? Does it work ok with your favorite browser?

I'd appreciate any time you might devote to this. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. I just threw this together and want to get it right before I get too far and have to redo tons of pages. Let me know what you really think.

Thanks again.

http://mark-johnson-zxxi.squarespace.com/

[andnowimbroke]

As a side note: Did you use any promo code from the folks at 5by5 or Leo Laporte for the squarespace stuff?

[ddt0725]

Overall, I like it! The galleries have a very clean and classy look to it. I like the tan color and the fonts. I'm not a big fan of the black on the homepage unless you add some tan to it. Otherwise there seems to be too much of a disconnect to the other pages. Also, I don't notice any problems but when I first go to it, I get a "Done but with errors on page" icon in the lower left of my screen. I use IE. The details of the message are ..."Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
Timestamp: Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:03:10 UTC

Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 21
Char: 986
Code: 0
URI: http://mark-johnson-zxxi.squarespace.com/"

Whatever all that means!

BTW - I also like your blog! Whatever lens you used to shoot most of those pics is really sharp!!

[M_Six]

As a side note: Did you use any promo code from the folks at 5by5 or Leo Laporte for the squarespace stuff?

I haven't, but they offer you 10% off if you go with a biannual deal (I'm assuming that means you pay two years up front). The code for that is GIMME10.

Overall, I like it! The galleries have a very clean and classy look to it. I like the tan color and the fonts. I'm not a big fan of the black on the homepage unless you add some tan to it. Otherwise there seems to be too much of a disconnect to the other pages. Also, I don't notice any problems but when I first go to it, I get a "Done but with errors on page" icon in the lower left of my screen. I use IE. The details of the message are ..."Webpage error details
User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
Timestamp: Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:03:10 UTC

Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 21
Char: 986
Code: 0
URI: http://mark-johnson-zxxi.squarespace.com/"

Whatever all that means!

BTW - I also like your blog! Whatever lens you used to shoot most of those pics is really sharp!!

Thanks, D. The street candids were shot with the 135L, which is indeed a sharp lens. Most of the others were either the 24-105 or, in the case of the Bath images, the Roki 14mm f2.8.

[DavidEccleston]

I don't like the auto-resizing on the welcome page. A user will have no idea when their browser is scaling, or if they're viewing at native resolution. Most browsers really suck at scaling, making things really soft. It will make things look less sharp than they should, potentially losing you a visitor, or worse, a potential client. I noticed it most on the cat images, since I expected to see sharp fur, but didn't. Then I noticed the image was window sized, and tried resizing. Somebody else might see a soft shot of a cat, assume you suck, and leave. It's not a good first impression.

If you make your window too small, the images scroll away off the bottom. If you make the window skinny and tall you will see the image, and you'll briefly see 2 images as it's swapping them.

Tried in Chrome on Vista.

[M_Six]

Thanks, David. They do suggest a 1500px image for the entry pages. Those are 1024px, so they are being scaled up, which could be hurting them. Although the cats snuggling image is soft to begin with. It was shot with the 135L at 1/100 on a crop body at 3200ISO, so it's going to be a bit soft. I probably need to consider using only tack sharp images for my entry page. So thanks for that insight. I don't know if there is a way to limit the scaling. I'll investigate that.

I have to say that Squarespace is pretty cool and easy to use, but there are limitations. For instance, you can't nest folders. I was going to go with straight galleries nested (i.e., a folder entitled UK 2012, then galleries for Glastonbury, Bath, London, etc), but they don't allow that. So now I have to go with UK 2012 as the top folder and then one page divided into separate "posts" as on a blog. Each post being a day or a place. Then within each post I can create a gallery. Still, just being able to drag and drop images from my laptop into the gallery is a huge time saver.