Website overhaul - thoughts?

Soldato
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Well I've finally finished an overhaul of my site. I've moved from a completely html based system, with each image having a separate page, to using lightbox, which makes updates a hell of a lot simpler. The homepage has been changed to include a (now heavily modified) guestbook now too.

So, I was just after some thoughts. Like it / loathe it etc? Thanks :)

http://www.gyphotography.co.uk
 
I like it,

Its nice and simple, I don't really like sites with tons of flash as the back button never works and its just a general ballache to navigate, yours is very easy to use, something which is hard to find these days lol..
 
From usability prespective it is easy to navigate and view photos, but from design prespective I personally feel it can be done a little better e.g all links lined up and better use font and background colour.

have a look at http://kuler.adobe.com/ for themed colours.

I also think seperation of each section (banner, navigation, content and footer) will make it far more visually appealing. You could seperate using border or background colours.
 
The only things I don't like, at a glance, would be the font used and the square white change when you mouse over. It seems a little, I don't know, out of place?

Everything loads quickly and it's clear what each section is, so that's a definite plus :)
 
I would also be inclined to make the main black square that forms the website to remain the same shape or at least width throughout. At the moment it changes size depending on the page you are on - it makes it look less polished. Should be an easy fix though :)
 
Font-wise I'd go with Georgia, and lose the guestbook. And go with a shade of grey for the background rather than black.
 
Overall its nice. Easy on the on eye and easy to get around. I like the fact that you can see the exif info when you open a picture. :)
 
I would also be inclined to make the main black square that forms the website to remain the same shape or at least width throughout. At the moment it changes size depending on the page you are on - it makes it look less polished. Should be an easy fix though :)
I just noticed it is the same size but its gets bigger then reverts back to original size once thumbs have loaded. I'd defo try and fix this.
 
Below is just my 2p worth. I'm no website designer so please take with a pinch of salt...
Good Points:
Nice Layout
Easy to Naviagate
Fast Loading
Does what it sets out to do

Bad Points:
Colour choice leaves a little to be desired
Design is quite harsh and doesn't give a good "im a photographer" vibe
 
Wow. Thanks for all the feedback - really appreciated. I'm pleased it went down well overall and that the navigation was a good point. That was one of the things I concentrated on, as completely flash websites that mean you can't use the browser navigation buttons annoy me, as do those that rely on drop-downs or are slow as a result of flash.

@ nolimit
Thanks for the link, it's really useful. I might take a look at splitting up the page a bit with background colour. What did you mean by making the links line up? If you meant that the thumbs displayed in different sized boxes in firefox then that should be fixed - it's due to the way IE and firefox process tables differently or something. My fix might have altered the size of the boxes in Safari, though - I need to check later.

@ ElDude
Yeah I guess the white was a bit out of place. Changed it to the background colour - better or do people think the highlighting should go entirely?

@ syke and Sic
Might have a think about the font. Overall I was going for bits that would be written by me in a more handwritingy style and other stuff (EXIFs, natigation, footer etc) in a more standard text. I personally think it's a bit strange when people design a website (and it's shown in the footer that they did) and then refer to themselves in the third person, making it look like they had someone else do it. I was trying to emphasise the fact that it was me writing it.

@ SilverPenguin
I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about either web design or web coding, although I've a head start from doing programming at A2. Modifying the guestbook was the first time I'd played with php. I'm aware that the first time the website is loaded and before things are cached, the sizes change a bit - frankly I would have no idea how to go about fixing this.
 
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Navigation is simple, which is good. You need to get to a single font and go with something that is readable like Tahoma, Verdana or Arial.
 
@ SilverPenguin
I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about either web design or web coding, although I've a head start from doing programming at A2. Modifying the guestbook was the first time I'd played with php. I'm aware that the first time the website is loaded and before things are cached, the sizes change a bit - frankly I would have no idea how to go about fixing this.
Seems to be because the tumbnail spacing loads up with them far apart and then they move close together. I had a nightmare trying to get cell and table spacing right on my last website, used to drive me crazy!
 
The layout is fine, its easy to navigate etc. Its a decent basic site that works, what more can you ask for? Well..

Aesthetically, lose the grey background, make it black, i think this would be a dramatic improvement, the whole "black box in the middle" thing doesnt look great.

The dotted borders around everything are bad. Users understand the dotted line to represent a current selection in windows.. like when you are tabbing you get that dotted line effect. You have dotted lines around everything, make them solid or at least a different effect, but less prominent.

The navigation rollover is pretty basic, could spice it up.. maybe use a bottom border when you are rolling over or maybe think about representing the currently selected page in the navigation? Maybe think about a rollover effect for the images too.
 
Aesthetically, lose the grey background, make it black, i think this would be a dramatic improvement, the whole "black box in the middle" thing doesnt look great.
Of course I don't mind the black box on the screen thing ;)
However, I would suggest you give it some form of softening of the edges and have it sit in the middle of the open browser page. As it stands it does look a little like its just been thrown on the page - hadn't thought about it until it was mentioned!
 
Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for their input. It really is appreciated. I've made some changes now and would appreciate some thoughts. These pages aren't accessible from the main site, so the links etc don't work.

Main site for comparison: http://www.gyphotography.co.uk/
Design 1: http://www.gyphotography.co.uk/uploads/design/
Design 2: http://www.gyphotography.co.uk/uploads/design2/

Main site. I've changed it so that the guestbook doesn't display the e-mails of people who comment - don't what them getting spammed. The link for deleting posts is now hidden unless you roll your mouse over it.

Design 1. Changed the font and darkened the background colour of the website. Apart from that, it's basically the same. The links at the top still use the changing background colours, coordinated with the main background of the page.

Design 2. Lots is different. The whole site is now black. There's a border around the main frame of the site and in Firefox, the corners of the border are curved. The fonts are the same as Design 1, but the links at the top work with underlines instead. The page that you're on will be constantly underlined instead of being printed again underneath (though that's just an example, as it isn't the journalism page). The footer has been made less prominent.
 
I would also be inclined to make the main black square that forms the website to remain the same shape or at least width throughout. At the moment it changes size depending on the page you are on - it makes it look less polished. Should be an easy fix though :)

Your site is beautiful. Did you download a flash viewer or did you code it all yourself?
 
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