steve40 — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:59:06 +0000

I looked into your suggestions, the first sentence on the front page had been sending me uncomfortable messages also - so I changed it. The %20 thing also looks better on my end, sent myself an e-mail to see.

You are right about the guestbook, I had not noticed the . Removing that also removed the italics from the header, but I can live with that. If you try to make a custom header for the page (which they will let you do) it also messes with the please sign link, and just says "sign". It seems you can't have everything your way on free services, but that's their fault, they could have done a little better job of coding. But all the way around, this is the best provider I have found to date though.

I also removed the sessions thing from PhotoGalaxy's link, don't want to cause anyone any more problems than they probably already have.

Photos? The server I am on had a major hard drive crash, and they could not recover all the photo files. I did not have all of them backed up - so I lost them. Since I have installed a burner here so that can't happen again. Its going to take a little time to re-process the files I do have left, to get the albums up, then they will not be as full as I would like. I wish it were not that way - but as they say that's the way the cookie crumbles I guess?.

I am not going to submit the site until I do get the albums somewhat operational, search engines do not like sites under construction as you know. I submitted it here to get some feedback, and the changes you mentioned have made an improvement - I think.

If you see anything else let me know ...... Steve.

A1SiteNames.com — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 15:34:39 +0000

Very nice site. I think the first full-stop on the front page should be a comma since it seems to stop mid-sentence, but I guess that could just be personal opinion/writing style.

On your links page, the first link has a PHP sessionID on the end of the URL (maybe you copy+pasted the URL just after logging in to PhotoGalaxy). The sessionID and everything after and including the question mark should be removed from the URL, it's not really important, but sessionID's can cause havoc with search engines. Wouldn't cause any problem for your site though, maybe just for PhotoGalaxy

A suggestion for the 'Add My Link' - it opens an email with a default Subject line, and the subject words are separated by underscores. If you change each underscore to %20 then it will automatically insert spaces, looks much nicer than underscores.

On the guestbook page, the page title has italic codes in it - if you look at the browser's title bar you can see the codes. I'm not referring to the text on the page, but the title (between the pages HEAD tags) which cannot use html code. The italics codes will show up in search results, so it's better to remove them. But this may be a side-effect of FreeGuestbooks.net - I'm guessing that you can't remove the italics from the title without also removing the italics from the text heading at the top of the page?

Overall a very nice site, a bit disappointing that the photos aren't on it though

steve40 — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 17:41:07 +0000

mayek.

As I said, its a go as you build thing. There are no albums connected to the links as yet, so that's why none are found.

That's not usually the way I do it but in this case, that's how it happened. Really the server I am on has a thing about empty accounts. And I did not want to leave mine empty that long, and loose it.

The albums are actually the hardest part, so I wanted to get everything nailed down first. Albums will be forth coming in a few days.

I might look into the open on a different window thing for the links.

mayek — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:02:34 +0000

I tried to access some of the images from the Gallery page and all of the links produced a "Page cannot be found" message - somewhat of a surprise given the comments yesterday.
Other than that, it has a good feel for a photography site as the black background will set off the images well. I would perhaps set the links on the link page so that they open in a different browser window - that way if I got too excited visiting all the different photography sites that are available, I wont forget where I found them.

steve40 — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 03:59:48 +0000

Contrary to my usual, I am building this one and uploading as I go. So some of the links were dead. All the links are live now - but all the pages do not have full content.

It will be several days before it is mostly complete. You might have a look at some of the layouts, and let me know what you think. It would be a lot easier to change things now! than later.

arena — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 07:40:20 +0000

Nice color (i like black).The photo nicely blended.some links are dead check it.
Nice site overall.

Acadia — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 04:27:54 +0000

Nice work, but there are too many commas in your text. I like the white on black.

steve40 — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 19:30:24 +0000

Busy.

The fixed width, came about from surveying my past visitor percentages. It seems if you go Liquid, the site will always look its best at the resolution you created it at. That was one of my problems with the first design. I based it on 8 x 6, and at higher res it just continued to stretch until it looked ridiculous.

This one is based on 1024, and liquid at 8 x 6 it just looks all jammed up. The text also becomes magnum in size, and looks funky. So with a 90% 1024 visitor rate, I just decided it would be best to keep it that way?.

I tried the links bold, but since I wanted to keep them non intrusive, I really don't know whether I like it or not. I know this is not the usual way to do it, but I am trying for the slightly unusual. You know the go "where no man has gone before" thing. As far as a different color goes, I am open to suggestions on that. I just couldn't come up with one that I thought looked good.

But since getting a review is about asking for others opinions, I have to at least take them into consideration. And make any changes, that would remain within my theme for the site.

The monitor is a Gateway EV-700 CRT, one of the best they ever had by the way. Its simi flat, and 17 inches. There is a under the header all the way across the page, the links also are hanging on the bottom of it. I don't exactly get the picture question though. It is supposed to be a low contrast blend in, with no decrepit edges visible?.

Anyway I guess I will quit here, before I fill up the forum with this post.

Steve.

Busy — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 10:44:28 +0000

Shame about the fixed width.
The links really need to be another colour, or even bold if just those.

Try use a under the heading, it keeps within KISS and can give that balance to heading/content. My model site started out very similar to this (is now greys) and the reviews were favorable.

I don't think you really need a logo, maybe just play around with some fonts, Trebuchet etc as ANS-jen suggested.
While the image has a good effect I'm wondering if you have a LCD screen or a crappy one.

Keep it up

Nomax5 — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 05:01:02 +0000

I'm getting a pege not found error its 6am (GMT) on the 7th July in case you are working on the site at this moment