Feedback For Unusual Site

[varietyarts]

:confused: Hello All,

I was wondering if anyone would be willing to check out "yet another site" and give some opinions and/or suggestions.?

This is somewhat of an unusual site... so it might be worth your time.

Thanx to all who help.

http://www.artinsideofart.com

[rapid]

no character encoding (http://www.w3.org/International/tutorials/tutorial-char-enc/), but with UTF -8 the W3 html validator (http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.artinsideofart.com%2F) picked up 25 errors.

'home page' isnt a very good title (http://www.dreamsubmit.net/site/site_title1.html)

and what you call 'home page' isnt actually your home page, its your entrance page. These kinds of entrance pages are usually a bad idea as they mean your visitors have to spend time looking at this page before they realise there is nothing here for them and then they have to spend even more time loading another page (the actual home page). Entrance pages like this are used by porn sites to warn visitors of the content and give them a chance to leave, they are not a good way to invite your visitors into your site.

why do you have a search function for google, yahoo and yellow pages on your home page? firstly, if visitors wanted to search google they would have gone to google, and secondly, why are you using one of the most important spaces of your website to get rid of your visitors before they have evn looked inside your site.

the images on this page are of low quality, which doesnt create a very good first impression for a site about art.

the 'entrance page' is all images, which means itll take a long time to download and that itll be ignored by search engines as none of the images have alt tags.

it isnt clear what is and isnt a link as there are no hover effects (even though you have the css for text links in your source code for some strange reason i cant figure out as you dont have any text on the page).

'click here' isnt a very good link description (http://tech.irt.org/articles/js200/).

following your menu order i have to visit twelve pages before i get to see any of your work. are trying to hide it from your visitors? be brave, put it where it can be seen, put it on your home page and make the menu to explore the artworks near the top so it is easy to click on.

but when i do get to see some artwork, my god was it worth waiting for! your abstract work is excellent. professional web designers would pay to have original artwork like this as images on their websites. you should have some of these as images on your home page. dont call this page 'just designs', its so degrading. i have a masters degree in fine art and i know artists who have worked for years developing a portfolio that is half what you have on this page alone. and the layout of the page is exactly as it should be (well, almost, it still needs the menu), plain and simple so that the artwork stands out to be seen and not covered up by the website.

all that i said about the abstract page applies to all the other pages.

get rid of the unnecessary entrance page to each of the image galleries. think of some better titles for your artwork to give them some individuality and show that you value each one enough to spend time thinking of a title.

the 'softer side' page has a white background. all your background colors should be the same to maintain consistency. lots of people dont like black backgrounds and white can often be too bright. try to find a nice pale color to use for all pages.

your artworks are amazing, but your wesite design could do with some help (which i hope you get from posting your site in webdev forum). have confidence in yourself and your work. make your website shout about your art, not whisper 'oh, by the way, here are a few pictures i did' after it has said everything else. drop all the javascript effects and unnecessay images that have nothing to do with anything and all the pages that dont do anything except ask the visitor to click here. create a simple easy to navigate website that has a welcoming informative home page and links straight to the image galleries. the content of all the other pages you have could be on one other page, you dont need it getting in the way.

i hope you do continue to develop you web design skills, who knows what directions it may take you, and i hope that you continue to develop this site and create a site that is worthy of your artworks, which im going to say again in case you didnt get what i think of them, are brilliant.

[varietyarts]

Thank You,

I have been making changes since I posted. You might want to check out what I have done so far, and see if there are still so many things I need to improve (just a sugestion).

Thank you also for the compliment. You are the first person to praise my work so high.

Any comments you have are greatly appreciated.

[rapid]

put your work on a really simple, clear website and market it well and you'll have to get used to people praising your work.

[varietyarts]

Thanks again,

Can you explain (like you would to a 10yr.old) how to set up and add forms to webpages?

I have had the worst luck getting a grasp on this procedure.

[rapid]

hopefully some of these links will be able to help you.

http://freespace.virgin.net/sizzling.jalfrezi/iniframe.htm
http://www.webreference.com/programming/forms.html
http://www.webcom.com/~webcom/html/tutor/forms/
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/forms/
http://www.cmmwebdesign.com/blog/chronicles/2004/12/12/displaying-your-forms
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39991
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50014
http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43170

if you have any problems post a question in the perl forum (http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&forumid=4) and someone is sure to have the answer.

happy new year.

[palmertires]

Eek! The site takes too long to load. I'd love to look at your art, but I am not very patient when it comes to waiting for a page to fully load. There are ways to make a page a load much faster, like limiting graphics to what is really necessary, etc. The links are all graphics, which could probably be changed to styled text and load 10 times faster. There is nothing that loads fast enough to let me know what is on your site (like some text in plain HTML), and because I don't know what I am waiting for I probably would not stick around. I am on a dial-up connection (as are many users).

[amazing_andr3]

yea it takes forever to load. at least drop the use of images for the menu, use a single background image for all of them, and text. it'll make it easier to update too.

look at

http://www.artinsideofart.com/artinsideofart/screen2/IMAG001.JPG

it's a lot bigger than it needs to be. it keeps repeating itself. make an image that is as small as it needs to be and set it as a repeating background.