# Website Redesign



## Digital Matt (Sep 17, 2007)

Hey gang, I just finished updating my website and slightly redesigning.  I'd love any feedback you have, and if you see any bugs please let me know   There's still a bit of fine-tuning to do, but I wanted to have it live by today.

http://mattperko.com/


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## Digital Matt (Sep 17, 2007)




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## jeroen (Sep 17, 2007)

Very good looking website. A bit unpersonal, but very slick. Congratulations, it looks good. And your photos are stunning!

A few suggestions.

- You might want to consider putting up thumbnails. 
When I want to get back to a certain photo say the next day, I have to go through all shots again. And when I am in search for a photographer for a certain job, I don't want to see all his photo's, but I want to just pick out the few that have a reference to that job.

- Your bio and contact buttons are very hidden.

Cheers, Jeroen


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## Chris of Arabia (Sep 17, 2007)

I like the neat, clean appearance, but would agree with Jeroen about the navigation. The other thing you might want to look at is the colour of the 'visited' links, they are much too close in tone to the background colour.

Great set of images too - my wife would like to buy some of your trees...


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## Digital Matt (Sep 17, 2007)

Thanks for replying guys.  Some good points that I'll have to think about.  I have to admit, I designed this using Firefox, and it does look ****ty in IE.  The visited links color doesn't even show up in firefox because css supersedes it.


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## Chris of Arabia (Sep 17, 2007)

Digital Matt said:


> The visited links color doesn't even show up in firefox because css supersedes it.


 
Ah, the joys of web standards, don't you just love 'em?


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## Digital Matt (Sep 17, 2007)

Chris of Arabia said:


> Ah, the joys of web standards, don't you just love 'em?



Love to hate em


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## mr e (Sep 17, 2007)

Site looks pretty good all around, only two things I saw, which have already been said

The visited link color is almost invisible, and you should add some thumbnails so I could skip around to the ones that I like the most

Also if you're going for that one pixel border look, you can do something like this


> <table bgcolor="#FFFFFF" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="1">
> <tr>
> <td bgcolor="#000000">whatever</td>
> </tr>
> </table>


It's just using cellspacing instead of border to get the color, the border color will be the table's bgcolor, and then just set the cell color

Although you should ideally be using CSS to style everything (it'd be much easier too), but this will get you a nice one pixel border in both browsers


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## Digital Matt (Sep 17, 2007)

Thanks Ian   When I originally went with this layout about 6 months ago (same basic design, different color scheme), I attempted to do all of the layout in CSS, but could not for the life of me, get it to work.  When I actually have time to sit down and learn what I'm doing, I would love to redesign it that way.


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## Digital Matt (Sep 18, 2007)

Thanks again everyone.  I fixed the site to work correctly in IE.  Thank you again Ian for your little trick.  Works great.  I'm keeping in mind your other suggestions, but I just don't have time at the moment to implement thumbnails.


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## mr e (Sep 18, 2007)

Very nice!

One more thing I saw is that I would make the back/forward arrows change color on rollover, probably to the same color as the links

Looking good though!


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## Digital Matt (Sep 19, 2007)

Thanks Ian.  Good point


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## Heck (Sep 20, 2007)

It looks fine to me but I was checking out the awsome photos most of the time lol.


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## Digital Matt (Sep 20, 2007)

Thank you Heck.


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## Chris of Arabia (Sep 20, 2007)

I'd go with Ian's point regarding the nav buttons, but to be honest that's very minor in the overall scheme of things - I've seen much worse presented in these parts as professional (i.e they were prepared to take money off people) websites.

Worth noting that as a consequence of this thread, I finally got off my arse and downloaded Firefox. As things stand I'm not seeing any major discrepancies between its presentation and IE7, but early days and all that.


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## kundalini (Sep 20, 2007)

Yeah, there's some navigation issues,but the images dude, I could get lost for a while. Well done.


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## TheBrainchildGroup (Sep 30, 2007)

Love the site Matt! 

One thing I would do is make the site itself a tiny bit smaller so there's no scrolling that occurs. Having everything fit in one page is a huge plus. I'm running a 21" widescreen monitor so I'm sure other visitors have more scrolling to do than myself. 

Just an idea, I hope it helps. 

Sincerely, 

Aaron


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## Digital Matt (Sep 30, 2007)

Thanks guys.  Aaron, what resolution are you running a 21" widescreen monitor at that is not fitting this entire site?  It fits 1024x768 no problem.


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## TheBrainchildGroup (Sep 30, 2007)

Digital Matt said:


> Thanks guys.  Aaron, what resolution are you running a 21" widescreen monitor at that is not fitting this entire site?  It fits 1024x768 no problem.



I'm running 1440x960


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## Digital Matt (Oct 1, 2007)

TheBrainchildGroup said:


> I'm running 1440x960



Yes, I see that it does jump a tiny bit in height.  I'd hate to resize the pics all over again   I'll see what I can do.  Thank you.


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## Digital Matt (Oct 9, 2007)

Thanks again to everyone.  Aaron, if you see this, hopefully the site fits into a 1024x768 window now


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## LA-Photographer (Oct 29, 2007)

Cool Looking Site, I wish My site was as clean looking, its going through a MAJOR overhaul and isn't done yet. I especially liked the bike trials work! Have you thought about putting more attention on that by creating a SPORTS category? Sports photography can be a great niche.
My Fashion Photography


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## Digital Matt (Oct 29, 2007)

Thanks Warren.  I enjoyed looking at your site and your photography.  Thanks for your comments.  To be honest, the bike trials thing was a complete accident.  I went down to the lakeshore and just stumbled upon them.  I asked if they would mind if I took some shots and they had no objections.  It was definitely fun, and something I'll try again for sure.


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