Hi everyone!
I’ve spent some time over Christmas working on a personal website. Not something I have any experience of at all, so it’s as much as a learning exercise as anything. (read: lots of mistakes ) I also wanted to have somewhere that’s easy to point to, for my motorsport photography.
Would any of you like to take a look and let me know if there’s any glaring errors, or ‘oops!’ moments in it? It’s obviously a bit short on content at this point, but I feel like it’s starting to look respectable.
Thanks!
Edit: I don’t know why the logo is the default… on the ‘box’ that pixls is showing for the link… another thing to work out!
Very nice and clean. Nothing distracting from the photos, which is awesome.
I’m on mobile FWIW
Do you really need the name of the site three times on the landing page: once for the logo, twice for the text next to the logo, and a third overlayed over the hero photo
The text over the hero photo has bad line spacing, its too tight.
I expected each photo on tbr landing page to be a link, but they’re not.
In your galleries, so photos have borders while others do not. It looks a bit strange.
If they’re not links to galleries (as they are now) then I assume those are your best photos and I don’t need to look elsewhere (but you have some nice stuff in thegalleries, so that’s why I think they should be links).
I agree. Those images on the home page were dumped there early on as a sort of filler, then I didn’t really consider how it tied in with the rest. I’ll think about. But thanks again for the tips
It occurred to me that the name of the site may puzzle… Monaro is the name of this region of NSW, between the Snowy Mountains and the Far South Coast. Seemed appropriate. And no-one else had used it!
I like it–very nicely done. I have a few thoughts:
1.) I find the scrolling/animated text (“Capturing the Monaro”) on the homepage to be a distraction and I wonder whether it will even work for all of your visitors (i.e., depending on browser). I would still include it–just not as an animation.
2.) I think the text: " This is a gallery of my best better photos. I try to add new photos regularly!" is unnecessary. It almost seems as if you are a little tentative about your selection. I think it is implicit that these are what you consider to be your best photos.
3.) On the About page, I would move your biosketch up and increase the font size. I think this should be the first and most obvious thing people see on this page. You might even consider leaving all the photos for a different page/gallery. The biosketch itself seems really hidden under the photos–almost as if you’re tentative about it.
I like the neat and tidy presentation. A couple of observations.
Monaro is both a place and a car. As you photograph both it is not immediately clear whether you intend to specialize in one or the other. On top of that you have photographs of other subjects, so I would consider a name change to something less confusing.
As you build a portfolio it would be better to split the gallery into different categories - landscape, animals, motorsport, etc…
Nice, clean, usable and easy to navigate. What more do you need? Oh yeah, great images – You have that, too!
One suggestion, if the platform you’re using supports it. Make the enlarged images full screen instead of in a (only slightly) larger isolated frame (especially on mobile).
@Soupy Thanks! I agree about the confusion, now that you mention it! I won’t change the name though, (I think) but will try to make it clearer what’s going on. Splitting the gallery, again, sounds a very good idea.
Yes, that would be good. Unfortunately I haven’t worked that one out yet. I think I need a different Wordpress gallery plugin, instead of the free one I’m using… it’s ok on desktop, but not on mobile.
Ha! More useful info… I had to do some research to be clear about these options. I think the ‘don’t touch’ option is what I’ll do for now, but I’ll bear it in mind, especially the webp suggestion - not how I’d implement it, but when I get a chance I’ll delve into it a bit further.
Thanks!
I’ve found webp to have some tradeoffs vs JPEG on in smooth areas like open sky. Keep an eye out for posterization. Even more compressed JPEG didn’t seem to exhibit that kind of artifact when I tested it.
Right, thanks that’s interesting. I’ve already looked into it a bit and considering that I intend to push images to the site fairly often, I think the extra bother of converting to webp is more trouble than it’s worth, considering that the site seems fairly quick anyway. I’m open to all ideas though…
if you know you can go back to just jpeg might be worth trying it out. I use webp for all my sites (i’m a designer for print and web) but for a photography site might be best to stick with jpeg — it all depends on the level of optimisation (and if it’s at all customisable) and how much you might save. testing with pngs uploaded to https://squoosh.app/ etc you certainly get smaller sizes with webp compared to jpegs BUT if you go too far then you may get smeary patches of colour and loss of detail, ok in smaller images on ‘normal’ websites but not on a photography site
Your site is quite a reasonable size anyway and loads fast for me here in Finland (i have fibre optic 600/200 connection). try it and see if you’re curious. a faster site can also help with google ranking and of course it’s better for everyone — no matter how fast or slow the connection
Aside from the previous suggestions, here you have a few more comments, which you may agree or disagree with:
at the home page when loading it on mobile, the website name would look nicer if rendered only in a single line, maybe moving down the menu burguer
at the home page and yet on mobile, it’s a bit annoying that the hero image changes its size when scrolling up and down, as everything else is moved up and down
at the gallery, I can’t see anything but the page title and the main image, even though I can click the links (tested on safari, opera and firefox, on desktop and mobile)
page titles font size may be a bit too large on mobile, and even in the motorsport page, it overflows the screen
at the contact page, when loading it on a desktop browser, the content should have the same width as the header and main image
at the contact page and on mobile, the first part of the content has too much padding, while the form fields have no padding at all
HTH
on a desktop browser, the gallery and motorsport pages content have the same width, while the contact page don’t
the page main image should have the same width on all pages
the page title should be over or under the main image on all pages
page title justification should be the same in all pages
image thumbnails should have or not have padding between them in all pages
on mobile, paragraphs should have some padding, so text don’t touch the screen border
I just wanted to congratulate you on putting your own website together; doing so can often be both challenging and time consuming, even for experienced developers (of all the tasks set forth by the internet gods, I hate building websites the most — whenever I hear the word “breakpoint,” I lose a little more of my soul ). The rewards — of which thete are many — are well worth all the work, though.
) I also wanted to have somewhere that’s easy to point to, for my motorsport photography.
Oh yeah, great images – You have that, too!
). The rewards — of which thete are many — are well worth all the work, though.