First time posting ~ please be gentle

[amandadaledesigns35]

Hello, my name is Amanda. I have been a Graphic Artist for many years (freelance and corporate, mostly in print) and have recently joined the x10 Community. I have been using x10 to host my site for several months but am just now able to post in the forums.

I would love it if I could get a critique of my site please:

amandadaledesigns.elementfx.com

The purpose of this site is to have an online portfolio that I can refer people to when I'm applying for corporate positions as well as when I'm bidding on freelance jobs. Any thoughts on ways that I might improve the site would be wonderful as well as just general comments on the appearance and functionality of the site itself. Please keep in mind though that I'm a TOTAL newb when it comes to coding so you might have to dumb the "tech speak" down a bit at first :tongue:

It appears that x10 is having some difficulties right now as I get the following message when I attempt to access my site:

[h=2]HTTP ERROR: 504[/h]
Gateway TimeoutRequestURI=http://amandadaledesigns.elementfx.com/


I assure you that the site does actually work so please be sure to check back. I've noticed x10 has had quite a lot of downtime over the past month or two with all the upgrades and whatnot but hopefully this is only a minor issue today.

---------- Post added at 06:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:18 PM ----------

YAY!!!! Boru is up and running again now so please check out my site when you have a chance and let me know what you think :wink:

amandadaledesigns.elementfx.com

 

[essellar]

Oh, Lord. I can hear phrases like "it's for your own good, you know" and "this will hurt me more than it will hurt you" running through my head, and as much as I hate hearing myself sounding like my parents in the days of yore, I understand them. I'd love to be gentle, Amanda, I really would... but I can't, in good conscience, let you walk the high school hallways in a threadbare flannel nightie dragging a much-loved (and much-patched) teddy bear and with a big "KICK ME" sign taped to your back, and that's what this site would be if you used it professionally. It could actually lose you jobs you might otherwise have had, and I have reason to believe that isn't the direction you want to go with this.

It's obvious that you're working in a medium that isn't familiar to you. That's no sin; we've all been n00bz. Unfortunately, you're a web n00b in an area that doesn't distinguish much between your ability on the web and your ability in print or on the closed stages of a Flash animation or a Director* movie. In this milieu, your actual portfolio is just the sprinkles on top of the sundae, and if the ice cream is Chunky Squid Chicken Ripple, it doesn't matter if the sprinkles are the finest Belgian chocolate—they've been on Chunky Squid Chicken Ripple ice cream, and they won't taste like fine chocolate to anybody. You may be trying to sell to chocaholics who would normally ignore the ice cream, but, c'mon, we're talking Chunky Squid Chicken Ripple here. Nobody can ignore that.† We've got to change the ice cream in the recipe before we open the shop doors.

At this point in the proceedings, it's not even about the quality of your code.‡ It's about the basics of the medium: its constraints, idioms and expectations. I'm seeing the influence of print everywhere I look, particularly high-dot-gain newsprint. You'll have to let go of a lot of your knowledge in order to adapt effectively to the web. It's more like a twelve-color 200-line screen, badly-cut letterpress text in spot color, and a hit of varnish on a sheet of 150lb coated cover stock of unknown size, with no trim except at the top. There is both too much freedom and not enough, and you have to know where to fight for your rights and where to put the safety railings.

There are two basic approaches to web design. One, the generic "pure designer" approach, is to forget about the web aspect, open Photoshop, Fireworks or Illustrator (or something similar) and engage in a bit of wishful thinking. Create the design you want on-screen, and just assume that it can be translated to HTML and CSS. The second approach, the "pure coder" approach, is to start with a clean statement of the structure of the information in HTML, and hope that an effective visual presentation can emerge from that once some styling has been applied. You're better-equipped to use the "pure designer" approach; the obvious flaw in that otherwise cunning plan is that you're not equipped to go from a picture of a web site to an actual web site. Yet.

I'm dropping you a line to go into more detail. There is much to talk about that won't fit well into this forum. And if you can pardon my intrusion, I can forgive the inexplicable (and unfortunate) roller derby thing.

_________________________________________
* Director? I remember Lingo and making CD-ROMs. Seems like a lifetime ago.

† Okay, I'm stretching an analogy to the breaking point. The point is that even though you may be after print customers, the web experience is going to affect how they view your print portfolio.

‡ That is a problem, but it's not the problem right now.

 

[amandadaledesigns35]

Thank you for your honesty :redface: I'm just about to send you an email response back...

Anybody else? Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

[ellescuba27]

Just looking at the home page code right now, and for the most part, it looks great. It would probably be better to split into a bunch of images than using an areamap - those only support pixels and screens that are bigger or smaller than yours won't work with them.
I always find this a bit strange - why do you have a link to the homepage.. on the homepage??
The sidebar is nice and always there, but I can't say that about the title. When clicking "Services Offered" the title still shows in the same place, but that's not the case with "Corporate Work".
If I were you (and this is completely optional, but if I were you) I would use, say, Open office to add your resume to a pdf and use http://thecodeabode.blogspot.ca/2011/01/detect-adobe-reader-plugin.html to detect if they have Acrobat or even use Google Viewer: google.com/viewer , because that image was a little huge and took about 10 seconds or so to load on my computer.
Best not put your Hotmail right there for spammers.
Wait... where did the blogs button go? Oh, I was reading from the top down.
Maybe put a border around your buttons. I had a hard time telling flash/director apart in the school projects.
Add a back button to the Photoshop page.
Maybe add a sitemap.
The rest looks good. You look like a very smart artistic person and I enjoyed reviewing your site.

 

[amandadaledesigns35]

Thanks for your comments and suggestions :smile:

Part of my issue is the fact that I'm using a very old version of Dreamweaver (Dreamweaver MX) and am pretty much "self taught". Also, the site was built at home on my MAC but since I don't have internet at home, I have to put the files onto a flash drive and then upload them at the library on a PC. I was originally having an issue with the buttons not showing up at all and not working which is why the area map was used (I was hoping that would be a workaround but it didn't work and I had to relink the images AND their links anyway once the files were uploaded here.)

essellar has very generously offered to help me learn how to make my site do the things that I want it to do and that my version of Dreamweaver won't allow me to do so I actually have an entirely different version of my site designed. I'll post again when it's up and running and hopefully you won't mind giving me another critique at that point :smile: It may take a little while though due to my internet restrictions, etc.

---------- Post added 05-17-2012 at 12:18 AM ---------- Previous post was 05-16-2012 at 04:58 PM ----------

Also, idk why I put a link to the homepage on the homepage, lol :tongue: that was pretty dumb on my part, haha!! It isn't like that in my redesign though But I wondered if you might have a suggestion for an alternate way for people to contact me. That email addy is only in use for this site (in other words, it isn't a "personal" email address) Is there a different way to put contact info to reduce spam but for people to still be able to get in touch with me easily? And again, I really appreciate your input :smile:

 

[ellescuba27]

Did you know x10hosting comes with a free email account? Just login to your portal at http://x10hosting.com/portal . Press "Access cPanel". Then, press "Email Accounts". From here you can manage your emails. You could, for example, have an email such as amanda@amandadaledesigns.elementfx.com . Or even better, before you press "Email Accounts", press "Addon Domains" and create an addon domain "daledesigns.elementfx.com" , then, go back, press "Email Accounts", and create an email like amanda@daledesigns.elementfx.com . The thing is... if you get junk mail there, it won't be filling your personal inbox, so who cares? Just one thing - x10 does not permit sending spam using this system.
P.S. To create an addon domain, in the first box that appears, add "daledesigns.elementfx.com" . Leave the second one. The third one should be set to "public_html" because that's where all your files should be, and you want your new site to link to the same place. Fianlly, add a password to keep it secure (you don't want others breaking into your site this way)! Press "Add Domain" and if it succeeds, you may now create that ending in your email address.

 

[disturbedart]

The website has its style but coding wise its VERY old school, i dont mean this harshly but it looks like its been coded in the 1900s, try to not to use Tables, instead use DIVS to create your layout.
also with CSS you could make the page even lighter with using float parameters, z-indexs for the images and text, basically you could allow the text to be easily changed by instead of putting the text in the images, just place the text on its on inside the div and use CSS to position it, so it can be easily changed.

Also good tip:

Tables are for table content: spreadsheet stuff.
Divs are for containing Web work