Well it’s not really up and out there, but I’ve been messing with one. I’ve read a lot of advice here, but not sure if any of it sank in. This is a tough crowd, so let me know what’s wrong, or right with it, for that matter.
http://web.me.com/jhesh1/Site/Welcome.html
Now you see this one-eyed midget Shouting the word “NOW” And you say, “For what reason?” And he says, “How?” And you say, “What does this mean?” And he screams back, “You’re a cow Give me some milk Or else go home”
Replies
Hey Holly.
I like it. The only thing that bothered me is "The Village Woodworks, Inc" at the top of some of the pages is too large of a font and gets chopped off. Otherwise, it looks good to my eye. You might want to put your contact info on the homepage. It took me a minute to find it.
http://www.quittintime.com/ View Image
Hey Grant, Is the chopped off heading browser related? What do you use? I'll try it a little smaller.Is the bar site navigation thing at the top of the welcome page chopped off too?You know, your site discussion was what got me started... I need to find a way to work some little tar heels in there. Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
I tried it in firefox and IE. Does the same thing in both. The problem is on the contacts, gallery, and about tvw pages.
When the pages load, the "Inc" starts loading one line down over the smaller text. When it finishes loading, the "Inc" jumps back up to the top line, but the C is half off the screen.
I found a site somewhere that shows you how your site looks in about all the browsers there are. I can't find the link right now, but when I run across it, I'll get it to you.http://www.quittintime.com/ View Image
That would be helpful... it works in all of mine... but then, I am a low browser. Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Ok, Smallened up and re-registered, any difference? Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Yeah - more better.http://www.quittintime.com/ View Image
I imagine this is what Grant was talking about http://browsershots.orgIt takes awhile to upload all the screenshots though. First of all, you've got some great photos on there. They give me, as the viewer, a fine sense at what I could expect from your craftsmanship. And I think your ideas for the site have a lot of promise if you polish up a few things.The slideshow is a little balky at times. Might be because there are so many photos per gallery, or because the photo file sizes are too big. You might check to make sure there aren't any rogue, giant sized photos in there.I've got the opposite problem from Grant. Your typeface for the logo is all squished together on my screen, no matter the browser or the screen size.The menu items are too small to be readable. You'd be better served bumping up the font size, or at least using bold text. The black "Welcome" option just melts into all the grey and black around it. I'd recommend changing that to something that picks up your eye so you know what page you are on. The red color on the mouseover might work if the font was larger/bolder, but for now it turns the fine font lines into mush.You've got a typo on this page in the second paragraph:
"we are glad the we"
http://web.me.com/jhesh1/Site/About_TVW.htmlI'd favor adding an extra photo on the front page to the three that are on the right now to give it some balance. You might think about making those, and the main photo, link to their respective galleries, too. I cropped your email out of your logo (see the attachment). The email address was too small/fuzzy to read, so it's not serving any purpose.Last suggestion would be to take the logo and email address and stick them on the same plane as the current "The Village Woodworks Inc" area and/or over the current three thumbnail photos.Hope that's helpful.Best,
Steve'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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Steve, I was hoping you'd drop in. Good ideas, thanks. I wouldn't mind losing the slideshows all together... I don't use them on sites I visit... it's a good thing work is slow right now... this is gonna be a job, dang! Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Holly,Don't lose the slideshows. I think they are important to convey what you can do for your clients. The picture that's worth a thousand words and all that.What I would encourage you to do is provide some more descriptions to the photo captions, or at least to the main gallery description areas, that talk more about the project. And here you want to try to use as many terms that your clients would be searching for. You might know all about the Bosch super charged x-3000 steam generating wood bender, but if your client is searching for "curved deck railings" what you had put down isn't going to help them find you. Was it Elmer Fudd that said you had to think like the wabbit? Put yourself in your client's position and consider how they would go about finding you on a general search. At the same time, there's no harm in talking about why the methods/materials you use perform so well. "Our post caps are made from concrete that has a superior ability to withstand bad weather as opposed to wood which requires annual painting, and because it will last for 70 years it's far more green than something that needs to be replaced every 15 years..." No harm in selling the fantasy while the clients are reading through the site.The Rosswood one is running pretty well this morning. You are missing an 'O' on this one: "Other Owner’s Clset"I imagine the slideshows are some Mac software. You might make sure that they are preloading the images as much as possible. That way when you click from one to another, most of the downloading is already done.If you've got questions, please ask. Best,
Steve'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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Steve, I know I'm old, but I could swear I re-sized the pics and changed that owner's other closet thing last night, then re-published? Christmas party tonight, and Mrs. Snort's making me clean up my office... I'll be back when she's not looking... Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Get the mistletoe up, mention to her it was my suggestion.A Great Place for Information, Comraderie, and a Sucker Punch.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
Back amongst the vertical, are we?Was worried that you hadn't escaped the clutches of Danielle.'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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Yeah, back among the semi veritcals. My amorosity knows no boundaries. Tho Danielle wasn't in my area............damn..........she did stop by for a brief visit. Monica was of course a slave driver-with warm hands.
Good to be back on the couch. Damn chilly outside. So, another slow ####'d couple weeks of R&R. Just hoping for no snow other than a few flakes to clean it up for Christmas Eve. We have a nice party here with a few longtime friends families on the Eve. Probably start in on the libation retraining that evening.
All in all, this whole medical thing bites. Socializing with you blokes and blokettes does a world of good taking the sting outta it.A Great Place for Information, Comraderie, and a Sucker Punch.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
Hey man, did it go okay? I gotta find the shotgun shells, then I'm off a misletoe huntin'... and I will mention your name. Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
I heard tell that's how they bag mistletoe in Texas. Make sure you're not in the front yard.A Great Place for Information, Comraderie, and a Sucker Punch.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
I wasn't kidding, it's a wiley beast, but there's not might fight left after a blast from a 20g. Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Holly,Could be that the file just didn't overwrite. Stranger things have happened.Have fun at the party!Best,
Steve'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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I'm overwriting the overwrite... could've been overwrong, though. Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
HollyI think this is a great site! Now you just need to drive some traffic to it. Get cross-linkin' I'd definately get linked ay NCSEA and Not-So-Big and the HBA you may also want to look into some of the Chatham chat groups and add links to your e-mail signature. I've also had good luck with photo postcards with the website tucked into post card racks at local stores and used as note cards (when I do a service call to a past client or even a social drop by where I need to leave a note on a door)Looks like you're working with Hartley as well as Hartford so I assume both of them would give you links on their sites. Bob and I are playing at Chatham Market this afternoon 4:00 to 5:30 entertaining the Christmas shoppers if Mrs Snort sends you out for eggnog stop by and say hi. I'll have my hip flask of low-carbon-footprint (green) bourbon in my back pocket. In case you need at little snort as it were. Merry Christmas M------------------
"You cannot work hard enough to make up for a sloppy estimate."
Thanks Michael, good idears... mention the linking thing to Bob in the middle of Inna Gadda Davida, watch him bristle, ha... Happy Qwanza Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Works well for me. I think it's good as-is, with one possible (major) change. the pages are "portrait" orientation, with wide blank margins left and right, but you have to wscroll down to see the whole page. i wonder if you did them in landscape orientation, could you see the whole page at once?
"Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
hmmm, Eddie... how big is your monitor? I'll check and see if I have page orientation options. I was trying to get everything on the screen without scrolling... what's a normal monitor, anyway? Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
I think it's a 14" lcd dell that came with the desktop computer. Don't change it on my account, it's a nice looking site."Put your creed in your deed." Emerson
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
Hey - that's my template! Seriously though, I made a test site myself using that template with iWeb. Best template I've seen yet and the program's easy to maneuver.
I put mine together in a rough fashion a few months back and haven't looked at it since. My goal is to use some of this holiday down time to get it up and running and send out a Happy New Years card as a way to present it to my clients with some new Bcards with the website on em.
Julian
Sorry man, it was the only template that I even halfway liked... and now I'm not sure about that! Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Looks fine on my screen and everything Steve said is exactly what I was thinking...and then some.
Photos were too hard to load in a lot of cases but i think steve explained why.
And the grey on black isn't too inviting.
Bottom of the logo looks kinda squished. Wasn't even sure what it said.
Nice job for a first try : )
Oh yeh...not to mention...NICE WORK BRO!
edit: Two tries at the slideshow and it froze my screen up. Took awhile to get it to X off. Not sure if it's the reasons Steve suggested or just my pc??
http://www.cliffordrenovations.com
http://www.ramdass.org
Edited 12/19/2008 8:59 pm ET by andybuildz
"what's a normal monitor, anyway?"
It's also called screen resolution...basically what a page looks like at different settings. I bought a real large monitor last year and it was set at 1024 x 768. I think many are being set larger today.
Depends on the audience or those that will visit your site. Considering your site is construction related I would guess the numbers would proably be close to mine. Large screens are on the rise and have been for a number of years.
Rank Screen resolution Percent 1 1024x768 (medium size) 32.6% 2 1280x800 17.3% 3 1280x1024 (large size) 13.9% 4 1440x900 8.2% 5 1680x1050 6.4% 6 unknown 4.4% 7 800x600 (small size) 3.1% 8 1152x864 2.8% 9 1920x1200 2.6% 10 1280x768 1.9%
Compare to 2006
1 1024x768 (medium size) 48.6% 2 1280x1024 (large size) 13.9% 3 800x600 (small size) 9.0% 4 1280x800 7.7% 5 unknown 4.0% 6 1152x864 3.5% 7 1440x900 2.9% 8 1680x1050 1.9% 9 1280x768 1.7% 10 1400x1050 1.5%
Thanks little brotherman...edit: Two tries at the slideshow and it froze my screen up. Took awhile to get it to X off. Not sure if it's the reasons Steve suggested or just my pc??macs are gonna get you... Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
I like it! Nice job.
A couple of very minor writing points. Probably not even worth mentioning.
When I'm writing something where there's several points to be made and I'm highly interested in reader comprehension, I like to break the verbage up as much as possible. Sometimes it's been almost in outline form.
In your opening statement (and you only get on shot at a preamble), I'd break it up into at least two paragraphs with the second paragraph starting with "Preserved biomass...". Maybe even have three pararaphs with the middle paragraph starting with "Long into material salvage...".
All your strong suits are then highlighted individually instead of bundled into one paragraph.
Under "About TVW", I'd drop the phrase "Due to the recent economic downturn". I see no point in stating what everyone knows and it may imply you're starving. But maybe that's just me. I'd go with "the no job too small" angle.
In Bingham Ridge, any shots with furniture?
Again, very minor points. Great job overall!!
Runnerguy
Ah yes, the old 3 paragraph thing from Mrs. Ryder's English class!Thanks for the memories. Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
One thing that irks me, and I don't know whether iWeb has a toolset that lets you tweak the CSS styles, but I would definitly assign the body tag a color (black or dark dark gray) so the pages don't flash white each time you go to a new page.
If iWeb doesn't enable you to do that maybe you can open the pages in Text Edit and add this tag somewhere within the head tags of each page before you FTP them.
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That is irritating. Hadn't noticed... and after going through the pages once it stops. Can't find a CSS control, but I'll try the text edit trick. Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Okaaay, I've gotten my domaine name over from godaddy to mobileme (what a fruity name), site seems to load very slowly, and the white thing Jerrald mentioned seems worse. Is it the mac hosting?Steve, I can't figure how to mess with navigation bar in regards to font size or color... nor the red for links... guess that's what I get for free?I did get the welcome pages linked to other pages, and fiddled with the picture sizes, but the site appears to be 26.3Mb, is that large?As far as hosting, I'm thinking that the mac hosting doesn't work with search engines like google, anyone know... should I go with a small orange tiny account instead?Thanks again to all for your help, great input!http://www.tvwsolar.com
Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
When I click on TVW ALBUMS...it does load but takes forrrrrrrrevvvveeerrrrrrr.
I'm guessing there's too many photos in that one folder?
I dunno...I'm dummmer'n any1 when it comes to puters...
gimmie a house to work on and I'm jus' fine : ) although i am gettin' old....geeezzz...it's always sumpin'
http://www.cliffordrenovations.com
http://www.ramdass.org
yah, geezers on computers, oy!http://www.tvwsolar.com
Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
While iWeb gives you great integration with the Macintosh environment and the site templates all have good looking designs (it figures coming from Apple) one of the problems with iWeb is it creates image heavy web sites that take a while to load and each particular type of page has it own style sheet so every time you move to a different type of page your browser reloads every thing all over again so that slows things down. However I am sure your site can be optimized. I don't have the time to look at it and do it right now, I need to shovel snow and put light on the XMas tree etc. but maybe Fat Roman or some other web geek here can look at it for you. If not I'll take a look at it later this week and trim some of the 'fat'. (Just don't let andybuildz see this post though, he's still waiting for me to get his blog integrated into the web site I did for him.....)
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I saw that....lol
http://www.cliffordrenovations.com
http://www.ramdass.org
Whoops
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and the tree should have been trimmed yesterday!http://www.tvwsolar.com
Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
I thought trimmed meant "cut" and I did cut it yesterday.
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well then, you're right on schedule, unless you trimmed it from the neighbor's yard, ya shoulda done it last night>http://www.tvwsolar.com
Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Hey Holly,
The file you want to change for the menu is:
http://www.tvwsolar.com/The_Village_Woodworks,_Inc./Welcome_files/Welcome.css
Not sure if your Mac setup allows you access to that, but it should.
fiddled with the picture sizes, but the site appears to be 26.3Mb, is that large?
The site size isn't a problem at all, that won't have anything to do with how fast it loads. The loading speed winds up being compromised when one or more individual image file sizes are too big, but yours are fine, at least for the front page that I just checked.
Don't know about the Mac hosting, but there shouldn't be any reason why search engines can't spider the site there.
Best,
Steve'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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Hey Steve, sorry to be so dense, but when I click that link, I go to a page of html stuff, I guess, what do I do with it?On the search thing, if I google the village woodworks, and it's not for my site, but another that our name is on... more studying.Thanks for all your help, and happy holly daze...Hollyhttp://www.tvwsolar.com
Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"
Hey Holly,No worries at all.It's actually a .css page (cascading style sheet), not HTML. It controls most of the text information (color, size, font, etc.) on your site.You'd want to use an HTML editor or even open it up in something like Notepad on a Windows machine. You might have BBEdit or Text Mate on the Mac. Then you want to find the corresponding spot that's controlling the text elements and change the color hex code, or font size accordingly. Your Mac account might provide you with an HTML editor in the hosting package, since that looks like a templated scheme. You can do it in a basic text editor, but that's flying blind when you are just starting out.On the Google search, do you mean you are coming up with http://www.thevillagewoodworks.com? Lots and lots and lots of approaches you can take for search engine optimization (SEO). But it starts with the actual domain name. If you want to be found by someone searching for "the village woodworks" you'd want to spell that out in the domain name somehow.Best,
Steve'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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Gotcha... and yes, it's a template, I could never get that close on my own! You guys amaze me.http://www.tvwsolar.com
Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word "NOW"
And you say, "For what reason?"
And he says, "How?"
And you say, "What does this mean?"
And he screams back, "You're a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home"