iWeb and My New Website

[Joel Brown]

After reading threads from Walt Calahn and Mark Woods, I decided I could build a website too. After buying a domain name from GoDaddy.com I decided to use iWeb for my website. I wasn't sure how I was going to get my photos on the computer as most of my images are larger than the scanner I own, and most of them are mounted and over-matted. I ended up photographing each mounted image with my EOS camera and then downloading them to iPhoto. It was easy enough to drag and drop photos onto the template pages. I have been told that I won't be found on a Google search because I don't actually own the site I'm building, I'm just using templates owned by Apple. I'm still searching for some dates and titles for a few of the images, but would appreciate any comments from the form.
www.joelbrownphotography.com

[roteague]

Whoever told you that Goggle wouldn't find you, doesn't know what they are talking about.

[Walter Calahan]

Nice job

Here's my iWeb web portfolio: http://www.walterpcalahan.com

[Scott Knowles]

Nice Website and images. I use GoLive (almost overkill for smaller Websites) and BBEdit, and haven't used iWeb yet. I'll look at it. My only suggestion would be to convert the frames to tables. It's more work, less independent pages. Frames are generally an artifact of earlier Web design before better tables, css, etc. html code came along.

As for Google these days, you have to let them know, they use their own files uploaded from your Website to search your Website. Yahoo will find you within a few days, but Google won't until you send them a file, which means you need an account. It generally takes 3-6 weeks for them to get your Website in their database. Use good metadata keywords unique to your Website or first in the keyword string.

Good luck.

[roteague]

As for Google these days, you have to let them know, they use their own files uploaded from your Website to search your Website.

That is only true if you want to use Google tools, like Google Analytics. To submit your site all you need to do is go to: http://www.google.com/addurl/.

[Brian Ellis]

It looked good to me. My only suggestion would be something other than a solid black background. The images I looked at (mostly Gallery I) had a lot of contrast and the black background seemed to accentuate that.

[Bill McMannis]

Joel,

Nice website indeed.

As others have stated you can submit your url to Google. I also suggest a similar submission to MSN.com. Yahoo nolonger accepts submissions for free. You should make the Google/MSN submissions every thirty days. Repetition seems to really help, but I understand they ignore submissions made more frequently. It is surprising how Google and MSN sniff out my pseudo private pages for my clients to proof their images.

[Joel Brown]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I noticed Walter Calahan's images come up in a frame when you click on the thumbnail. I can't get mine to do that. I don't like the look mine has when you enlarge the image and there isn't a border around it. Am I missing something in the design, or did I choose the wrong template.?
www.joelbrownphotography.com

[Scott Knowles]

That is only true if you want to use Google tools, like Google Analytics. To submit your site all you need to do is go to: http://www.google.com/addurl/.

I forgot about that. I used it initially and after a month gave up and registered to track Google's seach on my Website. I also got a software package that scans my Website and uploads the new file to Google to update their files. It create the sitemap.xml file Google wants, but you can also send a simple text file with each url per line. This was only slightly faster, as it takes 6+ weeks to get Google to find your Website.

That's where the header information is important, the metadata for keywords and page title. I think it ignores duplicate Webpage names or titles, which I use for the template. But I'm still testing this.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

After reading threads from Walt Calahn and Mark Woods, I decided I could build a website too. After buying a domain name from GoDaddy.com I decided to use iWeb for my website. I wasn't sure how I was going to get my photos on the computer as most of my images are larger than the scanner I own, and most of them are mounted and over-matted. I ended up photographing each mounted image with my EOS camera and then downloading them to iPhoto. It was easy enough to drag and drop photos onto the template pages. I have been told that I won't be found on a Google search because I don't actually own the site I'm building, I'm just using templates owned by Apple. I'm still searching for some dates and titles for a few of the images, but would appreciate any comments from the form.
www.joelbrownphotography.com

I don't remember seeing nude with crossed legs before...I really like that one. Wish I would have chosen that one also.

[David Spivak-Focus Magazine]

Joel,

Nice website indeed.

As others have stated you can submit your url to Google. I also suggest a similar submission to MSN.com. Yahoo nolonger accepts submissions for free. You should make the Google/MSN submissions every thirty days. Repetition seems to really help, but I understand they ignore submissions made more frequently. It is surprising how Google and MSN sniff out my pseudo private pages for my clients to proof their images.

What really helps websites' noticeability, are links to and from the website. The more links, the more relevance the website has. This is why every single photographer here should have links on their websites to each other....it would create a huge network of websites that google and yahoo could easily find.

[Bruce M. Herman]

Joel,

Very nice images.

I agree with Brian that the black background doesn't complement your work. I also suggest disabling the reflection option at the bottom of the image when slide show is running.

Bruce

[Joel Brown]

Thank you everone. I have taken some of your suggestions and have already improved my site. Bruce I spent an hour looking for a way to disable the reflections during the slide show, but have not found a way to do it. Walt, I still want to set up my slide show to work like yours, but haven't found a way to do it yet. Happy New Years to all!

[Andrew O'Neill]

Hey, maybe I should get off my butt and make a website...just love being in the darkroom too much.

[windpointphoto]

When I click on the links to the iWeb site in theis post they load up fine. Then all the type and links disappear. The mouse shows athe pointy finger, but the type is gone. What am I doing wrong?

[neil poulsen]

Both your website and your photos look very nice. Were the dark grays the original iWeb background colors? If not, how did you change them?

If they haven't already, I hope they bring more templates and some different formats under the iWeb umbrella. It's a terrific product that has a lot of potential.

[Drew Bedo]

Hello Joel;

I am an I-Tech Idiot. To get my work digitised, I bought a flat-bed scanner (< 1K) and to get it on-line I paid a consultant to put it all together (also <1K). My site is not yet in its final form yet, we will tweek a few items and re-edit the portfolios. At this point I am happy with the way it is going. Many folks told me that building a site was easy and that this or that friend/nephew/son-in-law could knock one together as a favor to...It was like a Seinfeld episode. A lot of Yadda-Yadda and still nothing online. Finally I contacted a professional and just got it DONE. Bight the bullet and find an IT professional who builds photo/art websites. Best wishes.

[Joel Brown]

Both your website and your photos look very nice. Were the dark grays the original iWeb background colors? If not, how did you change them?

If they haven't already, I hope they bring more templates and some different formats under the iWeb umbrella. It's a terrific product that has a lot of potential.

Neil, no one cared for the standard black background I first submitted. I didn't know it could be changed. It was quite easy to do using the Inspector button and then changing the colors for page background and then browser background.

[PViapiano]

The best way to build a website is from scratch using CSS and XHTML. It takes longer becuase you need to learn those formatting and markup languages, but you intimately learn what is goingon. Packages like GoLive and Dreamweaver insert so much crappy code that slows a site down. Google also uses "code cleanliness" and compliance to web standards as criterion for better placement in searches.

Google's robot crawler will find your site...there is no need to submit anything at all to them. It's a waste of time if you do.

One last thing...if you don't have a design sense, hire a professional to do it for you. Shop around...there are a lot of very good designer/builders out there who are very reasonable.

Also, in response to the original question...your site comes up with light greenish-blue blocks around the text headings and then the correct color pops into view after a second or two. Very distracting. I've noticed this on several sites made with this package.

Note: This happens in IE Explorer 6.xxx, but not in FireFox.

It's always a good idea to check your reults on several browsers and optimize for as many as you can. At the moment, the most used ones are IE6, IE7, FireFox and Safari.

[Frank Petronio]

I tried iWeb as I was looking for a simple package I could give my kids and even some clients who never seem to have the time/money to do things properly... but I found it forced me into doing things I didn't want to do and I had to invent kludges to prevent it from making graphics out of stuff, etc. so I canned it. It was sort of a consolidation of everything I don't like about "i-xxxx" software because it tries to force you into doing things its way (and I am a Mac fan). It's effective if you know nothing, but when you know a little bit it is painful to use.

That package and template that Kirk Gittings and "what's his name" were touting -- written by a forum member -- looks like a better option for someone who doesn't want to invest a lot of time.money into doing it, umm..., right and scratch building a proper CSS site.

[Reinhold Schable]

I owe Walt a big thank-you for alerting me to the possibility of a do-it-yourself website. iWeb may a simpletons toolkit for cooking up a website, but it suits this old fart just fine. It's kind of like the home made panoramic 617 camera I hacked out a few years ago... no bells, no whistles, no chrome plating. But I know it's limitations, and we dance nicely together...

Take a look...
www.classicBWphoto.com

Reinhold

[Jan_6568]

I also made my web site with i-web package and I must admit it was pretty inconvenient to foce this programm to do what I wanted. Especially I could not find any way to built multi-layer (I mean sub-page which is linked to next sub-pages) site. I had to edit the code manually with Emacs to enter links to independent "sites" I built. Very easy, nice templates but extremly limiting software. On the other hand I just did not want to spend time to search for alternative free software for Mac, not to mention learing CSS.

Jan

[Terry Hayden]

Joel,

Wonderful images.

If this package makes it easy to get them up and out on the web - more
power to it.

I, too, am not crazy about the black background. If they have an option for
a very slight texture, and a lighter tone, I think it would do more justice to
your fine images.

I might also speculate that your thumbnail file sizes are a bit larger than
they need to be. When I go to your gallery pages I see titles, then there
is a waiting time before the imagery comes up.

I used Dreamweaver to do my site. I also took an html class. It was a lot of
thrashing about, but it worked out ok.

That being said to show that if I can kludge together a site with dreamweaver,
I would speculate that most anyone could.

Best of luck on the site's future - it's an awesome start

Terry Hayden
www.terryhayden.com

[John Flavell]

Joel, I'm also interested in using iWeb for my web site. How do you get the images to pop up like that when they're selected?

Keep in mind, you can also use quicktime to run slideshows with audio. I've been doing that with the newspaper web site and it's very effective. iPhoto>export>quicktime

[Edwin Lachica]

That is only true if you want to use Google tools, like Google Analytics. To submit your site all you need to do is go to: http://www.google.com/addurl/.

Another way for google to find you is to add a sitemap that Google can read and have google crawl your site. You have to open a google account. Here's the link:https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/.

Don't forget to clean up your meta tags.

Your ranking of course is another matter altogether.

Cheers,

Edwin.

[Photomax]

[QUOTE=Terry Hayden;206227]Joel,



"I used Dreamweaver to do my site. I also took an html class. It was a lot of
thrashing about, but it worked out ok.

That being said to show that if I can kludge together a site with dreamweaver,
I would speculate that most anyone could."

*** Dreamweaver is like $400 in America? Then there is all that time required to figure out all the features. I made this investment and spent days learning it to build a tables driven site. A friendly guy in London (I'm in Seattle) then walked me through doing it on my own without tables, using modern web standards design and CSS with zero expensive software. I have not used Dreamweaver since.

The problem with iWeb and other template sites is that they are... templates: everyone is using them. If XHTML and CSS is intimidating then I would look to hiring a designer to set you up, maybe explain the design he/she is creating etc. Its money better spent than expensive kludgy WYSIWYG programs like Dreamweaver.

There are SO many advantages to separating the actual content from the presentation. CSS saves a ton of code and makes updating pages a lot easier. It should be noted that Dreamweaver and other programs of its kind do not not produce the best code.

Just my $.02

Max

[Joel Brown]

Jan, how did you get the brushed metal look when I click on the thumbnail? Your work is wonderful!

[Jan_6568]

Jan, how did you get the brushed metal look when I click on the thumbnail? Your work is wonderful!
Joel, thank you for warm words. Do you mean the slide show window? I have no idea I how did I get it. I actually was trying hard to get rid of it :). It does not match the overall design. I guess it was in the template. My initial idea was to have the pop-up windows, exactly what you have but I could not figure out how to do it.



cheers,

Jan

[Reinhold Schable]

Jan, Joel...

I suspect that the slideshow style depends to some extent, on which version of iWeb and Mac OS you are using.

See this page on Apple discussions:
http://discussions.apple.comsearch.jspaobjID=f1108&search=Go&q=slideshow+style

I suspect you, Jan, are using iWeb 1.1x and Mac OS 10.3.x
Joel: I suspect you are using iWeb 1.2 and Mac OS 10.4.x

I'm using iWeb 1.1, and Mac OS 10.3.9 which defaulted to the "Brushed Metal" slidsehow format. After seeing your stronger format, Joel, I poked around and found a simple download that changed my slidehow pages to a (for me) more appealing style. Take a look... http://www.classicbwphoto.com/More_Planes.html

That alternate style is available here:
http://www.codemanic.com/blog-archives/000084.htm

Joel, Jan; your works are excellent and don't need a lot of "Flash & fireworks".
They stand on their own merit.

Reinhold

www.classicBWphoto.com

[Reinhold Schable]

Grrrr...

That alternate style is found here;

http://www.codemanic.com/blog-archives/2006_01.html

And that Apple discussions site is here;
http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?objID=f1108&search=Go&q=slideshow+styles

Reinhold

[Jan_6568]

Reinhold, those slideshows are great! Thank you very much, I will use this software to update my little site.
BTW
I am using iWeb 1.1.2 on MacOSX 10.4.8

cheers,

Jan

[Joel Brown]

John,
The program itself enlarges the image when you click on it. I didn't do anything but drag and drop the images onto the page. I think Reinhold Schable's statement that different versions of iWeb tend to work a little different than others is probably correct. I am using OS X v.10.4.8 with iWeb 1.1.2

[Joel Brown]

What really helps websites' noticeability, are links to and from the website. The more links, the more relevance the website has. This is why every single photographer here should have links on their websites to each other....it would create a huge network of websites that google and yahoo could easily find.

I'm finally going to take David's advice. If anyone from this forum would like to have their websites linked to mine please send it to me and I will be honored to include it on my Links page. In return could you link mine to yours?

www.joelbrownphotography.com

[jetcode]

nice website Joel - I like the opening photograph with the nice shadow side

Some things to consider regarding posting email addresses on web pages. There are spam-bots that surf every conceivable IP harvesting email addresses. If an email address is posted in text it will be harvested and the flood will soon begin. There are a couple of ways to solve this problem the first being the easiest. If you embed your email address in a image rather then a text field the spam-bots cannot find it however anyone who is willing can take it directly from your site. Another technique involves a link that uses a Java script that encodes and decodes the email address link such that spam bots cannot begin to figure out how to harvest the email address yet users get the valid email address.

[Marko]

nice website Joel - I like the opening photograph with the nice shadow side

Some things to consider regarding posting email addresses on web pages. There are spam-bots that surf every conceivable IP harvesting email addresses. If an email address is posted in text it will be harvested and the flood will soon begin. There are a couple of ways to solve this problem the first being the easiest. If you embed your email address in a image rather then a text field the spam-bots cannot find it however anyone who is willing can take it directly from your site. Another technique involves a link that uses a Java script that encodes and decodes the email address link such that spam bots cannot begin to figure out how to harvest the email address yet users get the valid email address.

The problem with an image is that the user cannot click on it nor copy the email address, but is forced to retype instead. The best technique is to have a simple form which submits to the PHP mail module which emails the content to the owner.

And yes, nice looking site and VERY nice looking images, Joel.

[jetcode]

The problem with an image is that the user cannot click on it nor copy the email address, but is forced to retype instead. The best technique is to have a simple form which submits to the PHP mail module which emails the content to the owner.

And yes, nice looking site and VERY nice looking images, Joel.

yes I have seen those, actually I have a Java script that doesn't require a form, you click on it and it decodes the encoded email address and presents it to the user

[Marko]

*** Dreamweaver is like $400 in America? Then there is all that time required to figure out all the features. I made this investment and spent days learning it to build a tables driven site. A friendly guy in London (I'm in Seattle) then walked me through doing it on my own without tables, using modern web standards design and CSS with zero expensive software. I have not used Dreamweaver since.

The problem with iWeb and other template sites is that they are... templates: everyone is using them. If XHTML and CSS is intimidating then I would look to hiring a designer to set you up, maybe explain the design he/she is creating etc. Its money better spent than expensive kludgy WYSIWYG programs like Dreamweaver.

There are SO many advantages to separating the actual content from the presentation. CSS saves a ton of code and makes updating pages a lot easier. It should be noted that Dreamweaver and other programs of its kind do not not produce the best code.

Just my $.02

Max

iWeb and other ready-made template-based web software packages are comparable to Instant Cameras. The only operator knowledge they require is how to load, press the button and send out.

And so are their results.

DreamWeaver is a step up, comparable to modern (D)SLRs equipped with both automatic and manual modes. Big, expensive and complicated to use, but can still get one a quick result.

And then there is the CSS/XHTML route, which is usually done using plain text editors (with a programming slant) like BBEdit or HomeSite. This would be the equivalent of making photographs using a view camera.

Each of these approaches, especially the two "extremes", has its optimal uses and clientele - it all depends on the intended scope and purpose of the site being built. If all you need is a personal site to show your photographs or even a simple commecial one, than iWeb could be just fine. It's a low-cost, low-effort package that returns comparable result.

But if you aim higher and want a more complicated, perhaps even data-base driven site, then your best bet would be to hire a pro (unless, of course, you are one of those!). It would be much cheaper and much more efficient even in the short run, especially if your business depends on it. Just expense it like you would any piece of equipment and use your time and talent to do what you are good at.

[Marko]

yes I have seen those, actually I have a Java script that doesn't require a form, you click on it and it decodes the encoded email address and presents it to the user

The problem with those is that they require JavaScript to be enabled and working in your browser. There are many corporations that restrict or even prevent its usage as a security measure, because JavaScript is a client-side language, i.e. JS applications execute in the user's browser.

PHP is server-based language and as such does not place any requirements on the user and forms are standard HTML as well.

[CG]

Great job on your website.

C