New website - what do you think?

[HeidiTatt]

Hi, I've just been sent here

this

Ah Bollocks, pressed the wrong button

Anyway, that is my new website.(above)

I think it's finished.
I keep having problems with the pictures loading on the pet portrait page - sometimes they just won't, and I haven't a clue why!

Do you think the pictures need borders around them, or leave as they are?

If anyone has any ideas for me to improve it, that would be great!

I have a Mr Site erm..site too

I like the plain-ness of it.

I don't like chickens though despite your AMAZING talent

X posts

You know there is an option to show the latest pictures in your gallery?

How do I do that?
(thanks for looking BTW )

erm ... will see if i can find it! i think it's a widget

Ahh - the widgets, I got as far as visitor counter - I'll go and read further.
Thanks

Beautiful pictures!
I really like the hens

2nd time lucky

I think there's too much space to the left and right of your content.

I'd make the text in the navigation buttons much bigger so it pops.

I'd include a link to a larger print version for those with sight ishoos.

If you are going to sell through your site you have to include an actual address as well.

LoveTheArtTiggaxx

Thanks

I agree with the too much space thing, but as yet can't work out how to fill it! (My computering limit is MN)

Your art is gorgeous, I liked the pet portraits best

You've got a typo on the 'under development' pages - 'developement'

Apart from that I think the site looks brilliant, well done :D

I've had a look, and I can't change the size of the navigation buttons - it's on a default setting.

I think it looks great - simple but effective.
Not sure how you'd choose a border which would set off each piece iyswim.
I suppose paintings are normally framed individually, so maybe it's best to leave them as they are.
Although maybe something like a pale cream 'mount' if it didn't complicate things too much.
And I'm really sorry to point this out - I hope it's not too late and pointless, but this is how to spell 'development.'
< pedant >

Hi

Nice and uncluttered.

Portraits look fine without borders.

No probs for me loading pet portrait page images.

Vistor counter - do you really need it ?.

Looks odd where it is (just hanging - different font to page). Move it to bottom of page.

Rubric says
Heidi uses a variety of different materials

Maybe you could add a side tab with
"About Me" or "About my work"

which would expand on of the methods and materials you use.

It's now development - don't worry about being pedantic - this is the sort of advice I really need

I can't move the visitor counter, it just sort of appears where Mr Site has decided!
I quite liked the idea of having my own visitor counter (even though 95% of the visitors have been me ) but I'll remove it and see if it looks better!

DH and I have looked at the home page and think that the main body of text (eg this bit: Heidi uses a variety of different ...
She takes her inspiration from ...) should be left justified, ie not centred on the page.

Think this will make the navigation menu easier to identify and the text easier to read as this is how people are used to reading text.

I also would try putting the contact details a bit over on the left, under the 'HOME'. Then there would be nothing above the 'Welcome to Heidi Tattersall's Art website' bit and it would then look like more of a title.

Think someone else mentioned it but if you are selling via this page you must include a postal address. You can call consumer direct or trading standards and they will advise you of what you need to include to make the site compliant with consumer regulations.

Goodluck with your new venture!

Changed those - thankyou, it looks much better!

I quite like the way that the email address has been encoded in the mailto tag to hide it from spammers

I'd still worry about the address being included in the page though after the mailto tag. I'm very paranoid about such things but I tend to encode all appearances of my email address that that automated web crawlers don't have too easy a time to find it.

Other than that my only other thoughts are technical.

I'm not sure what you used to write the HTML with but some of it's not well formed.

For example:

Should be:

There's a web validator here that you can use to check the pages for how compliant they are with the rules of HTML.
validator.w3.org/

Some of what it will pick up will be very very nit picky but it does offer some good advice and good well formed HTML is the key to having a site that works well on all sorts of platforms.

badgerspaws - the whole dea of a Mr Site um..site is that you don't write any HTML. They do it all for you - you just click on various options

If all of that HTML is automatically generated by something then whoever wrote the generator should be condemned to use Internet Explorer 6 for a month.

Seriously that's just not professional looking HTML.

As a freebie perhaps you can understand it but those people seem to be charging for those sites.

As it turns out I used to run a web service that does pretty much what Mr Site does so I know exactly the sort of challenges that they're up against and I am really not impressed with them...

Can you change the page titles in Mr Site? The file names... page3.htm, page2.htm really should be far more descriptive in my view.
Looks like it is something MrSite is working on see Forum.MrSite though may be a Pro option only.

Instead of the Visitor Count, use Google Analytics instead... there is a widget to add it. You need to sign up with Google Analytics first. See Forum.MrSite: Google Analytics

Thanks for the comments
Badgerspaws - one of the reasons I went for the mr site package is that I don't know any technical computery stuff at all, I don't even know what an HTML is
It is quite amazing to me that I even managed to set it up in the first place

As far as I can see, I can't change the file names.

marking my space so that I remember to sort out email addy on site I've taken over - hadn't occured to me that web crawlers would harvest it.

so a quick hijack if I may - how do I encode an email address please? am doing stuff in html.

Use an online service, but beware, someone could use this as a front to collect email addresses!

This one looks ok and uses a technique that is going to fool most harvesters: www.mailtoencoder.com/

HTML = hyper text mark up language

Its the coding used to make your web browser see what you want it to see. It has been developed to standardise coding so different browsers 'see' the same thing. This does not always work.

You are using a WYSIWYG site (whizzywig) which stands for What You See Is What You Get. This will do the coding for you, but as pointed out by Badger, sometimes the coding looks like it was done by a drunk squirrel. There's nothing you can probably do about that except get people to look over the coding for you or learn to do it yourself. It really isn't hard, if you can follow a recipe you can code HTML!

You will want lots of people to look using lots of different browsers FireFox/Chrome/Mozilla etc. so you know what your seeing (I assume) in IE is the same as everyone else.

And you could always put a feedback form on the site so that you can improve your site that way!

Just one more comment, to keep your site fresh you really need to update content once a month so that people know there's something new on your site.

SeriouslyGoodLuckIMightAskYouToComeLookAtMySiteWhenIt'sFinishedTiggaxx

I've used this HTML to hide email addresses before....

You use the HTML ASCII representation for each character in turn.

You can get the codes here:
www.asciitable.com/

So if I've done it right that should end up as
[email protected]

Using that technique the right address appears when you hover over the link but it's not in the source code.

So far I've never had any spam email the actual address that I used in the page, but maybe I've just been lucky. It certainly takes more than a casual web crawler to get the address.

Tigga's done a good job of explaining HTML so I can just go now.

I'm not sure what good leaving feedback for Mr Site would be. I can't believe that anyone selling a service that actually cared about what they were doing would generate HTML like that so I'm not too sure that they would listen.

It shouldn't be up to a casual user of the site to say to them "ermmm, do you really know HTML?"