New Website

[paulr]

I've been complaining and bugging everyone with questions for long enough. It's finally up, my first redesign since 1996:

http://www.paulraphaelson.com/

If anyone cares to give me feedback on problems (especially if you're using windows, linux, or some interesting browser) I'd be grateful.

Thanks!

[darr]

Paul,

Your link images are not showing up on IE.
For example: http://www.paulraphaelson.com/image/...son_logo54.gif

[cyrus]

If anyone cares to give me feedback on problems (especially if you're using windows, linux, or some interesting browser) I'd be grateful.

Thanks!

Hey Paul here's some constructive criticism I hope


First item:
If the browser window is resized (squeezed smaller) I can see portions of the words "chicago, providence, wilderness " etc under your top logo. I thought this was a trick way to raise your Google index rank but on closer inspections it appears that your meta tags are showing because you are missing a "<"

in this line:

META NAME="Keywords"...>


SECOND:
I would change the tool tips (the little boxes that pop up when you place a cursor over an image on your site, using IE) Tooltips are meant to help users know what they're clicking on when they turn off images but they can be used to help users navigate sites (and help improve your search engine rankings). Web designers often use the alt attribute in the img tag to define them (but there are cross-browser compatibility issues).

For example if you place the cursor over "Portfolios" on the left margin, the tool tip pops up and reads "portfolio_gray.gif" - that's the name of the image file, but that really should not be the text for the tooltip since "Portfolio_gray.gif" doesn't mean anything to your website visitors. Instead it should be something useful like "See my portfolio". You can fix this by altering the ALT= attribute

THIRD
On my browser settings, there is a horizontal scrollbar on the bottom - this shouldn't be. Your site's width should be set to automatically match the size of the browser, and the user should not have to scroll horizontally.

FOURTH
You have a website that has a lot more images than text, which is normal for a photography site. Problem is that search engines don't "see" images - they rank sites based on the text. So, it would make sense to maximize the amount of text on your site (and don't bother with keyword meta tags). But instead, you've taken some important text items and have turned them into images! For example, why have your name "Paul Rafaelson" presented as an image called paul_raphaelson_logo.gif? Google isn't able to read that image and pick out your name. This would make some sense if you want to use some really exotic font to show your logo/name -- a font that isn't supported by browsers -- but you've chosen what looks like just plain white Arial font to display your name as an image, when any browser can present that image as plain text anyway.

As a general matter if a logo or links etc. can be presented as text rather than image forms then they should all be presented in text form rather than images. This will not only improve your site rankings, but in some cases it will cut down on your bandwidth usage a bit and speed up the site loading times.

[paulr]

hmmm. i wonder why those images wouldn't show up. they show up on tho old IE for mac (maybe the worst browser ever), safari, and firefox.

the linked image you posted has 27 characters in the file name. could that be a problem?

other links also don't load?

[paulr]

Hey Paul

Your meta tags are showing!


You need a "<"

in this line:

META NAME="Keywords"...>

good grief! none of this is showing up on my system. where does the '<' go?

[Frank Petronio]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...aphaelson.com/

helps to locate coding errors

i like the look of it tho

[paulr]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...aphaelson.com/

helps to locate coding errors

i like the look of it tho

Thanks, Frank.

do you find the suggested fixes from that site to be reliable? i don't understand the results, so i'd be following them blindly.

did you have trouble with art not loading? that's the issue i'm most worried about.

[Walter Calahan]

Works on Safari.

Cheers

[cyrus]

where does the '<' go?

It should be <meta name= etc etc.....>

But as a general matter, meta-tags have become irrelevant. They used to be important for search engines, not anywmore. Normally you could delete that whole line - but in your case you have so little text on your site that I guess it won't hurt to keep it - as long as you have an opening "<" to go with a closing ">"

[Ron Marshall]

None of the tags on the left border or along the top are visible.