Sneak preview
To some extent, you can blame this blog on my Web Portfolio students eighteen months ago. You see, one night we were scheduled to start critiquing the site designs they had come up with, but nobody wanted to go first. To get things going, I offered to let them warm up by critiqueing my site. And warm up they did.
I was proud, really, that they had learned enough in the first five weeks of the class to lay a really solid and well-argued critique on me. But it did make me confront several problems that I had been trying to ignore for a long time.
The short version of the thrust of their critique is that my site had become this sprawling monstrosity of a site, very chatty and expansive. The problem was that it didn't do anything very well: it wasn't really a good day-to-day site, because that stuff was hidden away, but it wasn't a good portfolio site, either, because there was just way too much content.
All of this being a long-winded way of saying that I started this blog as the first part of that equation: separating out the chatty daily updates from the main portfolio site. And it's worked well at that task.
Unfortunately, I didn't follow through with the second part of the task: Making the other site more like a good portfolio site: A few galleries, 15-20 carefully selected images in each one, nothing extraneous. In fact, after starting this blog, I haven't updated the other site at all. The shoemakers kids etc. etc.
It's still getting tons of hits a day, but I'm always a little embarassed to send a potential client there because it's the virtual equivalent of a shoebox full of photos: "Here are some snapshots I took. Do ya like 'em? I'm real proffsh -- proshfes -- profsession -- uh, I'm good."
So this weekend I'm finally making steps towards building me a portfolio site. And there's a preview version online, if you want to check it out. (And for those of you reading this after the new site's gone live, I've maintained an archived version of the old site)
So now it's your turn. Granted there's only one gallery, so you can't really see how the site will feel more filled out, but take a look and let me know what you think. Becky was having trouble reading the intro text in the Naked Proof gallery, so I made it a bit thicker and less contrasty. The site's built entirely with CSS, so if you're looking at it on an older browser it may look a little weird. I'd like to know that, too -- how many of you are using those older browsers?
And hopefully this won't sit for another 18 months before I finish the job.
David Adam Edelstein, on Sunday, February 29, 2004 at 7:28 PM:
Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention: My bio on the new site marks the 10,000th time I've copped my Dad's line about "partially in China and partially in Hawai'i, which may account for its strangeness." Whoohoo! A significant date!
Sean Harding, on Sunday, February 29, 2004 at 7:55 PM:
I like it. I do notice that the Naked Proof intro text is kind of small and hard to read in my browser (Safari running on Mac OS X). I can send you a screenshot if you want to see what it looks like.
BlueNiner, on Sunday, February 29, 2004 at 8:21 PM:
We'll I like the look and feel of the new site. It's very slick and professional. Didn't have any trouble reading any of it. (running IE with latest patches on XP. you expected? ;-) )
For the record I like the look and feel of the old site, but alas I understand the necessity to 'profesionalize' it. Especally if you are pushing potentail clients there. I'd say that the old site is geared more towards your friends and family and the occasional 'drop in' rather than people you want to convince to hire you. I'd keep the style around somewhere, but hey.. they say a bold fresh new look never hurt anyone. Very nice work Mr. Proudstone... gotta blaze....
Robert Jahrling, on Sunday, February 29, 2004 at 9:53 PM:
I second what Sean says--same browser, same OS. The gallery text is really tiny, legible but I almost wanted my glasses. On IE for the Mac, it's fine. I had the same problem with text sizes when I was setting up Strange Brouhaha--what looks fine on Safari ends up being pretty big in a Windows browser. The rest of the text is fine, though; if the gallery into text could be about the same size as the "about" text, that would work.
(Oh, I don't know about Sean, but I'm looking at it at 1024x768 on a 14" iBook, in case you're wondering if resolution is affecting it any.)
The "next" and "previous" navigation elements didn't immediately jump out; I spent a few seconds wondering how to get the next picture before I finally noticed them. On the old site, "next" and "previous" were in an immediately obvious place, and were also obviously links. Then again, I'm with Nielsen on the whole "links should be a different color" thing (although I don't accept the orthodox "and that color should be BLUE"), so take it as you will.
Looks good otherwise, FWIW.
Joshua Edelstein, on Monday, March 1, 2004 at 6:47 AM:
I like it over all, although I'm not sure about the orange/black thing . . . a little too Halloweeny. And the fact that your a:hover text is bold while your a:link is not makes my eyes hurt. Well, not really *hurt* as such, but it's freakin' me out.
I especially like the homage to Andy Bumatai in the blog entry, though, shout out for that. "Cookie, plate, push 'em . . ."
timoth, on Monday, March 1, 2004 at 4:45 PM:
Looks great, loads nicely and I think it will flow nicely when you have more galleries.
I like it