My New (Jan 12, 2012) Website

[Frank Petronio]

I just went live with my website using the A Photo Folio service (hopefully the DNS will be updated in your area by now.)

It's a Flash site with HTML, iPad, and Mobile versions. The idea is to be on par with other commercial photographers, with a minimalistic interface that displays my images as well as possible.

It replaces a 6.5 year old Movable Type-based blog and gallery format that was well received. But I wanted to display larger images with a modern, art-buyer friendly interface (i.e. make it like other contemporary photographers's sites so it is familiar to navigate). I also wanted to eliminate the old blog with over 1000 entries, since most of them were irrelevant - and I want to control my public image a little better. (Everything is archived of course.)

I still have to set up the iPad app and link to Facebook (yes I succumbed and made an artists' fan page). And frankly there are a couple of frustrating things I can't do with the A Photo Folio template that would make it a better and more consistent design - but to their credit, they may well adapt my modifications system-wide. (One is to have a persistent copyright notice in the footer of every page, an oversight that really bugs me.) (Or I can hire someone to modify the template myself.)

Still, even though it is not exactly how I would want to design a site from scratch, the image management and gallery system is rock solid, and while I hate to admit it, images in Flash have a really nice look, especially on a larger monitor.

Comments are welcome, especially if you find a typo ;-p

Oh and while I have toned down the R-rated imagery to just a few topless female boobs and a torn Trojan wrapper, you might not want to look at it in front of the kids or during your political campaign.

[Leigh]

It's a Flash site

All I get is a white screen with a message saying "Please upgrade your Flash player".

Mine is up to date as far as I know.

Flash is a very poor choice for visual sites.
It hogs bandwidth, forces visitors to view content in a mode not of their own choosing, and is not compatible with some devices.

Sorry to rain on your parade.

- Leigh

[Ben Syverson]

All I get is a white screen with a message saying "Please upgrade your Flash player".

Mine is up to date as far as I know.

Frank, I got the same thing. I'm up to date. I reloaded the page, and now it works fine. But just a heads up that a potential client may see the Flash upgrade message and close the window never to come back...

[Mike Anderson]

Well other than being a little sluggish it's a good viewing experience. Except I don't like the thumbnail view scrolling - I hate that kind of scrolling, maybe I'm unusual that way.

I think you have a google-fence up, that is there's no way google can walk, hence put links into, your site. I think.

[Mike Anderson]

...
I think you have a google-fence up, that is there's no way google can walk, hence put links into, your site. I think.

Ah. I looked at aphotofolio.com and they advertise a feature called "HTML Mirror Site For SEO" so it looks like there is some tricky behind the scenes stuff to enable google to link into the site. True?

[Richard Wasserman]

Works fine for me, although I have to say I am not a fan of Flash either. Can you make the red numbers that count up to 100 disappear when clicking on a new page? The new site has a nice clean look, but I find the white background a bit bright.

[Oren Grad]

I really liked your Movable Type-based site, especially the blog front-end - it was clean, straightforward and responsive.

Afraid I'm less happy with what I see of the new one so far:

* It feels sluggish by comparison; waiting through the counts is annoying.
* The different spacing of the gallery menu links vs the other links is awkward - perhaps have the gallery menus in one closely-spaced set and then the other links in a separate closely-spaced set.
* The navigation links look awkward floating at the lower left.
* Having the thumnails float on a transparent layer above the picture currently on display looks messy and distracting.
* Having the "About" content - and no other content - come sliding in from the left is weird. I'd rather that nothing came sliding in from anywhere.

I'm afraid it feels like a step backward. The bugs and distractions sabotage the minimalist feel.

I have no idea how much weight you should place on my reactions. FWIW, I'm an extreme minimalist when it comes to my own website design preferences. But I've never tried to create a website intended to sell anything and I have no intuition for how your intended audience will react.

[Oren Grad]

* It feels sluggish by comparison; waiting through the counts is annoying.

Some context I should have included to help you interpret this: I'm viewing it with IE9 on a recent-vintage desktop machine running Vista, connected to the web through a slowish (typically ~600 Kb/sec download) DSL line.

[vinny]

I guess I need a new computer.

[Tom J McDonald]

I have no complaints.