Marje — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 10:21:02 +0000

Thanks Suzanne ...

Suzanne — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:26:53 +0000

If you're on a unix/apache server, you can use the rewrite option with a database that wouldn't affect positioning (i.e. straight looking urls that are really dynamic).

But what I usually recommend to clients is a database that pulls one "static" page (i.e. can be dynamic as long as it doesn't have a query string) as the entrance to each section and to optimize that page for search engines. Deeper pages (i.e. in this case individual works of art) would be fully dynamic.

The advantages are primarily for the developer (ease and quickness of development) but also for the client (cost, ease of updating) and the user (consistency if done well, feeling of freshness of content).

There are a lot of people here who work with server-side changes (I'm one of them) who would be happy to help you if you wanted to explore that in the future.

Also, looking at the current site, this redesign is a nice smooth "upgrade" -- without losing the feel of the site. Nice!

Marje — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 14:33:36 +0000

>When will you have the artists online? I'm curious about how you will handle such a diverse set of work.

I just realized I misunderstood Suzanne's original question. You can actually see all the other artists in the old (current) website. http://www.artshopnc.com/artists.html

I hope to have the artists completed within a week or so. I'm working on several other projects and can't devote full time to the gallery site at the moment.

And Roo, thanks for looking at it in Opera ... I'm really not sure what I can do about the right-hand menu. I've tweaked and tweaked it for Win IE and Firefox and am generally satisfied.

And, I agree, the Artists page is very long ... I'll try to tighten it up a bit.

Suzanne, I look forward to seeing your illustrations at istockphoto ... they have recently changed their pricing for illustrations ... so you have a chance of making a bit more money from them. Of course, it'll never be much, but it's cool to see your work downloaded and even cooler when it shows up in a design or website somewhere.

No we're not using databases for our galleries at the moment ... I'd like to learn how to do that ... but I don't want it to interfere with search engine positioning.

Roo — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 00:03:19 +0000

It looks nice and I can't wait to see the artists galleries

In Opera 6.5 there is also horizonal scrollbar, no scrolling needed to view the content, the scroll bar is just there. None of the popups work in Opera either.

Also, on the right nav menu, the lines and mouseovers are overlapping the top gradient part on the right. It's all okay once it's all white but up top there it's not all nice and flush with underlying gradient. The first three links that sit on that gradient are hitting the side of it, giving those first three a squahsy look.

The Artists page is a bit too long for me, though I'm dying to look at some of that work!

Suzanne — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 22:17:41 +0000

I don't have a portfolio on istock -- yet. I've been accepted as an illustrator, however I'm not yet in a position to work on doing things for stock. I'm collecting ideas, though and hope to have some more time to attend to this over the summer.

Niches are useful sometimes. I've been working for so long behind closed doors (sub-contracting, working for larger companies as a secret weapon, lol) that sometimes I long for a niche, or even something I could show off.

I would be tempted to use a gallery or other form of database for all the artists -- will you be doing that static or dynamic?

Marje — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 21:56:38 +0000

Yea ... I am Marje from istock ... I didn't know I was even known there. Are you a member? Do you have a portfolio ... ?

>When will you have the artists online? I'm curious about how you will handle such a diverse set of work.

Well ... as I mentioned, I've done several art gallery and photography sites over the years ... I've lost count ... At the moment I'm working on three more ... hope to have them launched within the next few weeks. I was just lucky ... I fell into this little niche about 7-8 years ago ... my first sites were the old-fashioned HTML ... but during the past 1 1/2 years I've been getting stricter with myself ... XHTML transitional, css formatting and positioning, and no tables except where appropriate. It's a challenge ... I love it!

Suzanne — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 00:49:32 +0000

So you are the Marje from iStock! My goodness, my world shrinks daily!

When will you have the artists online? I'm curious about how you will handle such a diverse set of work.

Gallery Redesign

Marje — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 22:20:12 +0000

Suzanne:

Thanks for the critique and for being so specific. That kind of response is invaluable to me. No, I don't live in Greensboro ... my client's gallery is there; I'm located in sunny Sarasota, Florida.

I've made several changes based on your feedback including:

1. increased the size of the submenu and underlined the menu items to make them more readable as a menu
2. added vertical margin space above the right-hand logo (checked it out in icapture and seems to have improved the vertical spacing)
3. fixed broken links
4. brought order to the newsletter page

Suzanne — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 16:50:30 +0000

Are you in Greensboro? Oddly I know people there.

Slight scroll at 800 wide in Safari.

Pop-up on main page doesn't work in Safari and it's inaccessible js coding as well. DW isn't the best at accessible js. I only get this page.

Error in display on last lesson -- also, why use instead of or or similar?

You're using XHTML and CSS, but also have redundant coding. Is this just DW?

The navigation sits on top of the logo/emblem on the right -- it needs some space as the lines conflict.

None of the artist pages are ready? Oh, I see you say that, okay.

The newsletter archive is a lot of text. Especially for newsletters, use headings for the year. It would be really nice to have thumbnails of the "cover" if you have them, particularly for the pdf files.

I don't recognize the sub-nav as navigation (it's also too small) -- why not put it under the main category as a nested list?

Sorry for the scattered thoughts, it's Monday! Sunday critiques are better organized.

Will get right to it ....

Marje — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 13:35:34 +0000

Thanks!