SITE REVIEW: Todd Sandberg Photography

I finally finished this site for my step-dad's side business.

Let me know what you think.

http://www.toddsandbergphotography.com

Hi,

I'm no expert, but here's what I thought.

I like the layout (although the orange isn't to my personal taste), and the gallery idea is good, BUT ...

there seem to be an awful lot of instructions on how to use the gallery, and I reckon that these might put a lot of people off. It might be better to put a small "gallery instructions" link at the bottom of the gallery, perhaps. I would imagine that the majority of people visiting the site would be using IE anyway, if the stats are anything like mine, and will just be confused by the montion of all the other browser names.

I've also never seen the point of a comment like "This website is best viewed using the FireFox web browser at 1024 x 768.", purely because no-one is ever going to change their monitor resolution (most users wouldn't even know how to do it) and they're stuck with whatever browser they happen to have.

Only my opinion, mind you.

Did you design the gallery yourself? It's a neat idea.

I've been debating on the instructions part, I may try and come up with a better solution.

I'm not 100% crazy about the colors but he is from Arizona and wanted a southwestern color scheme and he seems to like it.

The gallery was used with permission from http://www.cssplay.co.uk

I was looking at it, and looks alright, though I couldnt help to notice quickly, that I think that you have different size fonts and differnt fonts on different pages..

I personaly would stick to one font and one size and one colour, for the reason looks a bit more professional.

by the way what is the related links for? there isnt anything there.

Thanks for the heads up on the font. I will get that changed ASAP. Only the gallery page had a different font.

The related links are obviously for related links. I'm still waiting for a list from my stepdad. If I don't get any then I will dump it.

I would advice you to take off the "Sitemap" on the Sitemap. That is kind of akward to have it on the page.

I was just looking at a topic on this site and came across masking email addresses from spammers, and you might want to mask your email address from spammers. Just a thought.

On "Contast Us" page I would advice you to make a form.

Just some thoughts.

i don´t know much about this, but are good photos and the packeages are good, fine metod of payment, original locations

i like the site overall, here are some comments

• colors are nice, the sidebar colors were a bit disorienting at first, but i got used to them. however on the contact us page, the email text clashes with the rest of the page.
• and as all the others have mentioned, the gallery instructions thing is a bit extraneous.
• referring back the the gallery instruction thing, its good that you have the instructions on the default page, and then the galleries on seperate ones.

The sitemap I am going to change when I get some time. The e-mails are masked check the source code and so far no SPAM. The form is a good idea, I may just do that.



I think I am going to simplify the instructions a bit. So far others (PC illiterates) who have viewed the site haven't mentioned the intructions being too much but I think I'll change it nonetheless. The e-mail link colors are a bit off, they were blue which I didn't like and tried to find a color that matched but now I don't think it is so hot.


Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Tood. A Logo is a very important thing. Work on it and be sure that it is very clear. Great website!

I'm not Tood (Todd I assume) but thanks for the comments.

Yeah I would have to agree that the color you have used aint really fitting!

I changed them this morning but I am still not digging it. Oh well. I'll find the right color.

Let me run this by you guys. Some comments were made about the instructions and I think I came up with a solution to making it look less. I don't have it uploaded yet but here is my thought. When you go to http://www.toddsandbergphotography.com/gallery.html you will see this below the gallery navigation:

When you click on the More... text the rest of the instructions show up.

Would this be a better solution then having the entire set of instructions as soon as you enter the page?

I like the colors of the site although I would combine them differently (I talk later about that). I did not have problems with the gallery but I already knew Stu's Gallery at CSSPlay so I did not read the explanation and did not even notice it was a problem.

A little advice. Don't do this:

#masthead img {
height: 120px;
width: 100%;
border: none;
}

It looks awful when the image stretches. Especially on higher resolutions (I use 1280x1024. Also on normal size the quality of the header image is somewhat poor. If you still have the original resave it for the web.

Maybe you should give your web a fixed width.

Since I wasn't really able to tell you with words how I would combine the colors I made some Photoshoping and some screenshots. Of course these are only suggestions and you have to see by yourself if you like them or not.






Well basically I added a shadow nothing else. But I think it already looks nicer with one.