SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

***************** New Website ***************

Ok, decided after a long time to design a new website for a number of reasons.

• I was getting a bit bored of having to use Photobucket everytime someone wanted a picture of something that I had on or had done to my car
• I looked through my photo library and though..dear god I have been taking quite a few photos over the years and needed somewhere to show them off
• I also wanted a record of all the mods and changes I have done to the car since I first bought it and no better way to do that than a photographic record.(yup got tons of bills and invoices as well )
• I am a big show off

So here it is.
Been working on it for the last few days and although there will be stuff that may need changing , I need your feedback guys and girls.

**** All comments, feedback or idea's all welcome, good or bad *****

Please click on the link below. Thanks


http://web.mac.com/cdodsworth/iWeb


P.S I have designed this site on a mac, but I have tried to make sure it looks good on either a mac or pc, safari, firefox or IE and that is why in the movie section there are two formats available. Anything not working just email me.

P.P.S all spelling mistakes will be rectified soon. thx Mr Palmer

pslewis

The home page needs to load quicker I think.

Nothing is so bad as waiting for the first image ....... make the home page simple and it will draw the viewer in - get the page up fast.

It may have just been slow because people on here are accessing it now?

Pete

bob r

iTrader: (46)

what a load of kak! only messin you clever twa*.
well done for keeping such a comprehensive photo diary, and great end result. not quite as well designed as s/n but your getting there

bluenosewrx

iTrader: (2)

very good IMO,

Mac

JTaylor

Very Chris, nice one

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

Just don't criticise it I've just been threatened with a wedgie

pslewis

Oh **** .............. I would like to say, "It's perfect, ignore my previous statement!"

Pete

wacky.banana

Nice site, if a little dark. I had to turn up the brighness on my monitor to see some of the text against the very black background.

The site has a very clean, well laid out, organised look which is no bad thing. I like the consistency between pages.

Why do I get the feeling you are a little obsessed with your car? Not discovered girls yet then?

Keep up the good work.

WB

spufus

iTrader: (2)

Looks & works tops matey.

Well done.

As PS says, you need to optimise the images...300k on the homepage is too much. You could get that down to 30k with very little noticeable loss.

The pics look bloody good too!

Well done I say!!

Thomas Wainwright

It worked fine for me, although with all the pictures if you are using dial up i can see it would be slow.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

thanks guys for the comments so far.
Taken onboard what has been posted so far.
I agree on the slowness of the site, trouble is there is so much to put up that its hard to sift out the good from the bad,but the slowness is a PITA and fixable, so over the next few days will change that.
Obviously when cached it is easier, but caching only works on second and succesive visits which dosent help on your first look.
That goes for the videos as well. each one to be any half decent come out at about 5-6mb which can take some time to load, but may try and tweek that as well.

oh and yes may be slightly obsessed with the car but do realise that girls exist
if anyone saw the pics of my ex-wife's bum, you will know that i know about the fairer sex

keep em coming

spufus

iTrader: (2)

What did you use to build the site?

Silver Scooby Sport

iTrader: (15)

Who's a clever boy then

Looking good there Chris nice and easy to navigate around and I have to agree with keeping the opening page simple and quick to keep the attention... one thing when you go from page to page the buttons accross the top take some loading anyway of speeding that up ?

First class though you should do this for a living

Si

Silver Scooby Sport

iTrader: (15)

I've just realised how much of your money I've spent adding to your car in the last 6 months

T_H_E__c_R_O_W

looks good, pics can be a bitty slow but not too bad. Only main prob i can c after a quick look around is on "Arty" pics page it has while sides all other pages are black.

Hope this helps.

kepp up the good work.

pslewis

I'm on 2.2Mbps .................

When you click on a site, I like it when something, anything, loads fast ... the rest can follow.

A blank screen makes 10 seconds seem like 10 hours, well it does for a lightning mind like mine - I guess if your mind 'ticks along' then it may be fast enough for you

Pete

Nevetas

I like it, very impresive

Swen6

I get a mention so it can't be all that bad

Lexx

Good stuff clever cloggs!
I'm on dial up (on purpose to stop sales calls etc. of an evening), and found it almost instant.
Lexx.

M1BJR

Good work. Takes awhile doesn't it?!
Loaded pretty fast on 2.2ADSL so guess its just a crap server that couldn't cope earlier. I would change the font on the frontpage for something a bit more spaced out. Is there an LSD Bold Italic available?

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

So do I but I was still threatened with a wedgie Chris still needs one of these

Tuts

Great site, nice layout.

Agree with the above posts about speed. I'm on 2.2 aswell so it loaded reasonably quickly but even though most users are on broadband these days it is good practice to keep the opening page size down. People get used to sites loading quickly so when they find one that takes 10 seconds they class it as slow.

Possibly look at using frames so the menu doesn't have to load each time the page changes, that might speed up browsing the rest of it. Frames aren't for everyone or every app though so maybe not.

The use of transparent gifs is great as it means people are less able to steal your images, but it does slow things down aswell. Consider doing away with them and using java to disable right click or see below.

The way the transparent .pngs load white first then eventually turn black after everything else has loaded is a slight annoyance as it means you can't start reading the menu text until the page has finished loading. For a lot of people who are impatient (me included) that can be annoying. Transparent buttons have some great uses but seeing as your background is pure black consider making jpgs with a black background as they are smaller.

For example, if you will forgive me for lifting one of your pics, I managed to get your opening pic down from 300Kb to approx 20Kb by turning it into a jpg (there is a loss in quality but I was aggressive with the compression, you could maybe get away with a lower compression). On a black background this will give the same effect. I also placed it as a table background so it cannot be easily saved. If someone wants your pics and knows what they are doing there is nothing you can do to stop them though.

http://uk.geocities.com/tutmeister@b...wiss_tony.html

Oh, one more thing. I noticed that you have two buttons on the interior page linking to the same page and your gauges button links to gauge place which has a separate link underneath.

Hope this didn't come accross as a slagging off as I really like what you have done.

It looks professional and is layed out well.

Excellent header pics and photography too.

V impressed!

P.S. Sorry for the length of the post. It started as a quick 'nice site, good job' and things kept occurring to me.

P.P.S I know your pics are private property and I didn't ask so if it is a problem just say and I will remove it.