My wonderful DW just updated my website and I finally got it working after some trouble with the link.
I appreciate it if some of you would visit and let me know how it’s working. It is heavy on pics so the load might be a little slow.
Thanks in advance.
Ott
Inspired by Larry Haun, this passionate framer is teaching a new generation of builders.
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Replies
Haha
Good one, dude
http://www.quittintime.com/ View Image
Says Authentication Required
A username and password are being requested by http://www.ottcarpentry.com. The site says: "idisk.mac.com"
Thanks, I thought I'd gotten rid of that problem. I'll see if I can fix it.
I just tried it and it worked fine for me. Please try again and see if the same thing happens.Thanks,Ott
No go
Something odd seems to be happening, please try typing ottcarpentry.com in directly instead of http://www.ottcarpentry.com and see if there's a difference.Thanks, it helps alot.Ott
OK I'm in!
My website is actually a sub site of my wifes domain in iweb and I link to the page via my ottcarpentry domain name.Thanks, this may be the key to one of the problems i've been having, I don't know why there would be a difference. It's been working fine until lately. Please let me know if the site is working fine for you.Thanks,OttEdited 5/5/2009 10:10 pm ET by ottcarpentry
Edited 5/5/2009 10:10 pm ET by ottcarpentry
Otto,
Opened right up for me.Pete
When I type in ottcarpentry.com I'm redirected to http://www.adahunter.com/Simon_Ott_Carpentry/Simon_Ott_Carpentry_Home.htmlhttp://www.ottcarpentry.com does not redirect and asks for a password.
That's a very nice website from what I've seen. Looking at the farmhouse now.
Okay, I just got off customer service @ godaddy and found out that there are two ways to redirect and I was using parts from both instead of one or the other. The http://www.ottcarpentry should work tomorrow after the update takes effect.Thanks for the help. BTW do you have a mac or a pc? I've heard there may be a difference in viewing the website. Either difficulty loading the pages or pics. The website is built on a mac. Are things loading at a reasonable speed?Thanks again.Ott
Edited 5/5/2009 10:35 pm ET by ottcarpentry
Everything seemed fine on my old win2k computer and firefox. I have a very fast connection, so speed is not usually an issue. See if you can get a dialupper to critique it.
It appears the changes have taken effect, would you be so kind as to try this link http://www.ottcarpentry.com one more time please.Thanks,Ott
Very nice site, very nice work.I have the cheapest DSL that AT&T offers, not blazing fast by any means but probably 10 times faster than dial-up and I found it somewhat slow to load. The first picture when you select the Queen Anne from the project page is over 500K which is slow to load and unnecessarily large to be viewed on a screen. Making file sizes of the very large files smaller will make it load faster.I also found that some of the pictures on the slide show on the farm house only showed the lower mirror image and not the real picture itself. They seemed to display correctly the second time around. This may be due to the pictures not getting loaded fast enough. In which case, the slide show is probably unwatchable on dial-up. I also thought that the slide show went a little to fast to both read the captions and absorb the picture. It is possible that I am just a little slow and others won't have this problem.I had no problems with the link which I clicked before I read down to find out that there might be problems.
Edited 5/6/2009 12:15 am ET by Kurt99
I noticed that the Queen Ann picture was a tad slow to load. I recommend that you use picture editing software such as irfanview to make the file size smaller. The image size is already fairly small. If you have a problem, there are quite a number of people that can help here.
Beautiful work, and the website's not bad, either<G> I'm on a mac and using Firefox, everything looks like it should.I'm on DSL and the Queen Anne does load slowly. Also when I clicked on some of the single pics to enlarge, I was sent to the QA start page, and when I clicked on that, I got the enlargement.I'm also having some trouble between godaddy and .mac and my address... sounds like a phone call might fix it.http://www.tvwsolar.com
Now I wish I could give Brother Bill his great thrill
I would set him in chains at the top of the hill
Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille
He could die happily ever after"
Very nice looking website and VERY nice looking work.
I'm on a pc, low level dsl. The link worked fine. Navigating the site was a little slow, but so what? Great looking portfolio.
Thank you everyone for the responses, I think the next step is working on resizing the pics.I found out after trying several support suggestions, "chatting" w/ mobile me, and finally w/ godaddy, that there are infact two ways to forward your .com domain name to a "hosted domain". Mobile me support says to change the CNAME (at godaddy) for the www portion of the forward to web.me.com and then to forward the link to www.(domain name).com/(your .me account name).This works if you set you .me account with your domain. If, you want to pay for a second domain through .me then you use the same method for that one as well. If you do what I do, and use one domain w/ mutliple "pages" as your sites that are not linked together but have sub pages, you can forward your .com domain name to any of those pages and have multiple "websites". For this process you don't mess w/ the CNAME for any but the first domain, but forward to the page url that comes up when you "visit" the site from iWeb. Then you can forward as many .com web addresses to as many of your "sites" or pages as you want. I have about 5 or 6 websites set up this way. Techincally, it's really only one hosted domain website, I just have the parts of it seperated and accessable only through different links. That's why when you visit my site @ ottcarpentry.com the Url shows adahunter.com.Hope this helps, it took me a while to fiqure it out. I was using parts from both methods and didn't realize it.Ottp.s. some of the links in the website will be fixed tonight.Edited 5/6/2009 9:23 am ET by ottcarpentry
Edited 5/6/2009 9:25 am ET by ottcarpentry
nice site. very clean design, good linkage. Not too many buttons and shows off your work well. Pictures load at medium high speed on a HP laptop running windoze and using Firefox. I am 3000 miles from my mac, so i can't comment on how it would look on a more friendly computer than this piece of c**p.jose c.
--
"Though I don't think" added Deep Thought "that you're going to like it."
Says i need a password.
Family.....They're always there when they need you.
Nice work. I hope it does you well.
Scott.
I would try to get away from the vertical orientation you are using on the main pages--it makes the user scroll up and down to see your page. IMO fitting everything on one screen with no scroll bar is the way to go. Some of the pages seemed to load slowly and wouldn't actually give me control of the scroll bar until they had loaded almost completely. I would also do whatever you can to get cleaner photos--some are good, others look like snapshots. 99% of contractors do not spend the time & money needed to get quality photos.
Nice looking work. I do have a fast internet connection, but I did find several of your pages a little slow on loading, and as others pointed out could not use the scroll bar until the page was finished. I am the intolerant type when it comes to viewing slower internet sites, so although it looked like you have some nice work to show off, I found the bottleneck in speed to be a bit of an issue. However, if I was specifically considering you to do some work for me, I would likely be willing to wait for the pages to load.
I cannot even imagine using a dial-up connection anymore... I would lose my mind. :)
Thanks to all of you who have checked out my website. The feedback has been very helpful. I have a more specific request, how does slide show work for you. I got one response that it cycled to quickly and I'm working on that. I was wondering if the pics loaded quickly enough during the slide show. It'll take time for me to resize all the pics on the website to streamline initial loading.
Thanks again.
Ott
Greetings from Dialupville....
You need to get the file size of your images down to under 50kb each, max, and you need to limit the number of images on any one page.
For me on a 35-40kbps connection, your 'welcome' page alone took over a minute to load. Worse, once it finally did load, I found that there was nothing on that page but a single link over a pic that watermarked itself into the background as loading completed. And I didn't even know the link was there until I scrolled down to the bottom of the page. I kept expecting a nav bar up top, and never got one.
Arrgghh....
I view this kind of homepage as the internet equivalent of those call-management phone systems that babble on for 60-75 seconds about how calls may be recorded for quality assurance purposes...and then finally ask you to press 9 to hear the main menu.
As with the home page, the rest of the pages take too long to load, too. You simply have too much bandwidth on each page. Too many photos, and each one is too big. When a dial-upper sees '58 items remaining' in the left corner of the status bar, and then notices that each photo is downloading at a quarter-inch every 15 seconds...his heart sinks and he is just outta there....
Dinosaur
How now, Mighty Sauron, that thou art not broughtlow by this? For thine evil pales before that whichfoolish men call Justice....
The slide show loads quickly enough, but they do cycle too quickly to try and read a long caption and look at the pic. You have a lot of nice projects, though. A lot remind me of old world stuff.http://www.tvwsolar.com
Now I wish I could give Brother Bill his great thrill
I would set him in chains at the top of the hill
Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille
He could die happily ever after"
I am on a Satellite, so there is latency and it is quite a bit slower than dsl because every time a photo loads there is a couple of seconds delay. When you stack them up the way you are and have them that large... it is painful.
The doorway page loaded quickly enough--however the portfolio main page took about 3 minutes...and until it all loaded the page was locked.
Nice work... great work...
Anyhow, you need to get those images brought down to size... max 70k. In the days of Photoshop... it's easy.
L
GardenStructure.com~Build for the Art of it! Decks Blog
Many of you were kind enough to check my website for me and it helped me greatly in ironing out some difficulties. I finally have downsized the main pics and would appreciate if someone could visit again and see if the download speed is better. Also, since I have heard of some difficulties between Mac vs. PC viewing it would be helpful to know what you are viewing the website on. The site is built on a Mac. I still have one other issue I'm working on, the slide show is too quick. I will hopefully have that solved soon.Thanks in advance,Otthttp://www.ottcarpentry.com
Bump
A simple suggestion that may make the navigation easier while scrolling through the portfolio of projects. From each project page have a link to the next project without making the user go back to the main projects page and clicking on the next project. That would allow individuals on the site to easily browse to the next in the list. Often it's convenient to have the navigation to the next/previous at both the top and bottom of the page. - Diane
Looks like it ott!"...craftsmanship is first & foremost an expression of the human spirit." - P. Korn
bakersfieldremodel.com
Nicely done web site.
Being in Shawnee, what is your customer market? Money spent on the web site might be better spent on open house & print brochures.
Money spent on the web site might be better spent on open house & print brochures.
yeah, or skywriting, or promotional ash trays!"...craftsmanship is first & foremost an expression of the human spirit." - P. Korn
bakersfieldremodel.com
Hey Jim,So far we have all the equipment and software for the website, so the only outlay is me and my DW's time. The customer base in shawnee is not large but has sustained me over the years, and I am willing to working in Norman or OKC if the job is right. (We just recently moved back after living in Oregon for 5 years.) So, in the tradition of the bible belt I've recently embarked on the most sure fire way of drumming up customers... We finally decided on a church to join. ;-) As you probably know, church networking around here is probably the most effective way of getting people to know you and what you do. I even joined the church softball league. Thankfully, we were looking for a community anyway, the networking is just a bonus.We are planning an open house in about a month or so. I have to finish our kitchen remodel and some other trim before we're ready. The landscaping is almost finished as well.I'll see if I can get some pics posted before long.Thanks for the replyOtt
About 12 years ago I spent big bucks on a web site for a jam business we operated in Iowa, some mail order, some walk in. We got very few new customers from the web site. Old customers used it to check prices and current availability.
Several years later a well known Iowa newspaper feature writer wrote several rave reviews of the product on his web site. That generated many times more new business. Says something about how people use the internet.
Jim
We got very few new customers from the web site.
I'm in the middle of a 26k remodel for a customer who found me on the internet. Tomorrow I bid another remodel for a different customer - who found me on the internet. Next week I meet with a potential client who filled out my internet form. This, at a time when jobs to bid are few and far between.
I suspect a lot has to do with a site's ranking on the search engines. Type in "Bakersfield remodeling contractor", or "Bakersfield ADA contractor", and we're usually on page one, if not at the very top of the list.
You can't just have a website, but you can't get a ranking site if you don't have one!
The internet is here to stay. Get onboard!"...craftsmanship is first & foremost an expression of the human spirit." - P. Korn
bakersfieldremodel.com
You also have to be in a market area where everyone doesn't allready know everyone else.
and there's that!"...craftsmanship is first & foremost an expression of the human spirit." - P. Korn
bakersfieldremodel.com
Looks nice, and gives the impression I'm too poor to hire you. :)
You do really nice work.
My own opinion, others may differ, is that those of us who are into renovating enjoy the 'in progress' pictures, but the end user who is most likely to hire a renovator in a higher end budget bracket is interested almost exclusively in the final result.
With that in mind, cut down on text, 'before' shots, eliminate all but the most dramatic progress shots, and make the big splash with your final result shots.
Don't be checking my website for a 'do as you say' example since I haven't persuaded DW or hired anybody else yet to finish my website renovation.
j