New site

[hudstoneimages]

Could you look at our website and give me feedback? First site. Particulary interested in loadspeed. All other tips are very much appreciated.

Also, what is best way to get webstats on who is visiting, who long they are staying, type of browsers used, etc?

And can't seem to get the site to appear in searches. Is there a particular order in which the META tags need to appear?

One more -- suggestions for protecting copyrighted images (and I know there are all kinds of screen capture tools)? I added some right-click protect code that works in AOL, somewhat in IE 6.0 and not at all in Netscape 7.1.

Thanks for any and all suggestions!
Barbara Stone
www.hudstoneimages.com

[antizero]

I'm on a cable modem, so most things load quickly...but your site popped right up without a hitch. I might try to do something about the image links on the first page...your first page should load as fast as possible, and you've got over 55kb worth of images...that could slow up some modem users. You might want to make smaller thumbnails of the images instead of resizing them in your code on the front page. But not really a huge deal, since it's a photo site :)

As for copyright protection, there's really nothing you can do. Even disabling the right-click doesn't change the fact that the picture has already been downloaded by the visitor. That's the nature of the internet...everything you are looking at has been downloaded to your computer already. All someone needs to do is find their temporary internet files folder and voila! There are all your pics. Your best bet is to just tag your images with your name someplace conspicuous as you've done.

The site looks good to me :cool:

[Atomic-Design]

I didn't like the color theme (dark grey background)

[antizero]

Atomic...is your gamma set properly? It's not that dark at all on my screen...only the second shade of gray in Photoshop.

[Atomic-Design]

Originally posted by antizero
Atomic...is your gamma set properly? It's not that dark at all on my screen...only the second shade of gray in Photoshop.

It's around the 2nd shade to black in my Fireworks. Maybe its not :confused:

[The Visitor]

Originally posted by hudstoneimages
Could you look at our website and give me feedback? First site. Particulary interested in loadspeed. All other tips are very much appreciated.

A couple of things. First of all, frames really take good sites and make them bad. I strongly suggest either using SSI (http://help.powweb.com/tutorials/ssi/common.php) or php's include() (http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php) function. Both allow for easy changes to a site's navigation, while making the user's experience on your site to be more pleasant.

If you insist on using frames, you may want to change your doctype to a framset doctype. And get a script that'll redirect a visitor into the frameset if he manages to get to one of the individual frames (i.e., if she goes to http://www.hudstoneimages.com/main%20pic%20page.html, it'll redirect her to hudstoneimages.com so she'll get the full naviagtion and logo).

Also, the black on grey doesn't do anything for me. The site itself looks drab, especially compared with some of the colors in the pictures.

Throughout the site, you list the email address as @aol.com. It looks more professional if you use your domain as the address.

If you're going to take orders, I'd use a shopping cart rather than have people email you what they want. It's more secure, and probably a little more professional.

That said, what is your site about? Looking at the URL, I'd think it was an image gallery of your work, possibly showings if you're professionals. I get there and I see a section devoted to cat haikus?

Also, what is best way to get webstats on who is visiting, who long they are staying, type of browsers used, etc?

Check out the Site Statistics forum about the seventh forum from the top. ;)

And can't seem to get the site to appear in searches. Is there a particular order in which the META tags need to appear?

Any search engine that's worth searching on doesn't pay much attention to meta tags (meta tags are too easy to fool). They really look at text content, which, at least on your main page, is somewhat lacking. Maybe throw a mission statement up, or your ideas on photography. (We strive to only take high quality images of statues, for example. Go into detail about what's going on with each picture. Tell us what kind of pictures you take. Tell me why I'm there.) If you want to see what a search engine sees on your site, check out the Lynx Viewer (http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html).

One more -- suggestions for protecting copyrighted images (and I know there are all kinds of screen capture tools)? I added some right-click protect code that works in AOL, somewhat in IE 6.0 and not at all in Netscape 7.1.

Copyright info, watermarking, and only put up lower rez copies. Anything more really just annoyes visitors, and/or dares them to try to bypass your security. And no-right-click javascript is prety easy to bypass (not to mention annoying).

[(jj)]

As mentioned above, Meta keyword tags do little to help your site these days. Most search engines ignore Meta tags. Also, frames are not search engine friendly, even with the correct DocType used.

No-Right-Click scripts are, for the most part, a waste of time and just irritate some visitors. Many users like to open links in new browser windows or tabs, a no right click script is just annoying to them. As for your particular script, it doesn't even work with Mozilla Firebird.

One thing that I did not notice, was any sort of copyright message on your pages.

That all said, I enjoyed looking through your site and through your eyes. I did like your color scheme, it lends a soft mood to your pages.

I am on a dialup connection, and your site loaded quite fast for a graphic site.

[hudstoneimages]

Great feedback everyone!

I knew nothing about creating websites a month ago, so as soon as I figure out what the phrase "SSI or PHP's include function" means, I'll look into redoing the site. I use Adobe GoLive -- anyone have any ideas? Or can you point me to some good tutorial for web design basics?

Am busy prepping for our very first exhibition (happening the next two weekends) so will probably not respond again any time soon.

Thanks again -- keep those comments coming!

[(jj)]

You can find many HTML and SSI tutorials on one of my links pages HERE (http://links.rccomputer.net/htm/devtutor.html)

Good Luck with your exhibition, I'm sure it will not be your last :)