My new website... looking for feedback!

ScottRoush

ScottRoush

Joined
Jan 10, 2010
Messages
1,818
I've been working overtime over the last couple of months trying to re-do my website and I finally have the new version online. There are still lots of little issues... but it is now at least in a presentable state. I would love for any input people have on it.. any aspect of it! I've been trying to improve it's speed.. so I'd like to hear about that as well. The idea of the website is to make it more interactive with my blog and to make it more dynamic overall and easier to update. As well as give customers a better idea of my artistic vision, methods, etc.

The URL hasn't changed: http://bigrockforge.com and the blog: http://www.bigrockforge.com/blog
 
You may want to tweak your font in the menu to have a slightly higher contrast but I am nitpicking and it works fine how it is. Better than moosestuff.net! haha

Good looking site and good content!

Working well!
 
Thanks a lot... That is the second time somebody mentioned that. I need to look at it on a different computer because it looks nice on mine...
 
I had a bit of difficulty reading it too. Can read it, but it's a strain. Even though it works, a visitors first thoughts shouldn't be "damn, that's kind of fuzzy and hard to read." In fact, I wouldn't think you'd want the reader to give one thought whatsoever about the font. They need to being thinking and seeing and wowing the content, not the medium. Haven't looked through the rest of the site yet. Looks like you've been busy in more ways than one!
 
Looks good Scott.
There are a couple of items doubled in the "category" pull down menu.
Speed is not the best even with my high speed connection but probably has to do with the Wordpress thing.
The shading of the font is what makes it harder to read I think.
Your pictures are a little large (300kb) for their size. You should be able to get down to half that at least without loosing definition for web pics. How are you compressing them?
 
okay... I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to change that font!

Patrice... I use the 'save for web' function in Photoshop. But I always leave it at the higher qualities. But... I installed a plugin that was supposed to reduce the image kb... I will have to try that again. And yes.. Wordpress seems to be slower than other methods.. but it might be my server. I may have to upgrade to a higher performance server. I'm using Godaddy now....

Thanks a lot folks!
 
So looking at the fonts you have defined(took a peek at the code) they all look good but something strange is going on with them. It may have to do with the browser showing the font twice at a pixel or two off but I'm not sure.

Lb7FZj6.png

if you look closely you will see black lines gong through the text which is causing the contrast issue as far as I can tell.

I don't know if you are doing your own HTML but I found a solution in the CSS of the page. If I disable or change the text-shadow CSS element and change the text-color to the color you are looking for the problem should be resolved.

So something like this...

ul.nav a {
font-size: 16px;
color: #ffffff;
text-decoration: none;
padding-bottom: 13px;
}

or make text-shadow a darker color than #535353
 
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thanks for doing this man... I've been online for the last half hour trying to figure out this. I've installed a plugin but it only allows me to change the font in my posts.

But I'm having a hard time finding the CSS style for the homepage. If I go to Appearance and then Editor.. the Style CSS that is there doesn't seem to have any code for fonts???
 
From what I can tell by using some debug tools the CSS for ul.nav a is on line 214 of style.css. I am not sure how the editor works so I am not sure if that helps much. All you need to do is find ul.nav a and replace it with the CSS I posted earlier.
 
I really like how the galleries open up to where you can see all the blades. A couple of nit-picks. The sub-page selections (about me, gallery, etc) font is dim, would look better with lighter color for more contrast? And, how about placing OAL, BL, other specs on the individual blade pages?
 
ScottRoush said:
...Patrice... I use the 'save for web' function in Photoshop. But I always leave it at the higher qualities. But... I installed a plugin that was supposed to reduce the image kb... I will have to try that again.
Click to expand...

Scott, I use Gimp so not sure how to do this with Photoshop but save at 70% quality and also delete EXIF data as well as XMP. A 800X600 pic will come out between 60kB and 100kB. Deleting the thumbnail (thumbnail preview while the pic loads for slow connection) will shave another 10kB or so from that.
 
Thanks Patrice.... I will try that! It's gonna be a lot of work with all the images though. :-( edit: I just checked to see what the Smushit plugin does (which I have installed)... and it removes all the metadata as you suggest (among other things). Looking at the settings.. it's reduced all my files between 3-4% But I did that before you looked at it. So it must not be reducing the quality. I set the quality at 90% for my 900x700 files....

James... no I haven't. I wonder why a different browser would handle it differently? I always use either Firefox or Safari and it looks the same in both. Another thing to look into... egads.

Pullrich... Yeah that is all coming. I still have a lot of text to add to the knives. I lost all of that when I did the switch over.

Moosestuff.... I found the style sheet and made the change. Here is what it looks like ... lines 214 and 215 ul.nav a { font-size: 16px; color: #ffffff; text-decoration: none; padding-bottom: 13px; }
ul.nav a:hover { color: #000000; text-shadow: 1px 1px 0px #fff; }

Can you see a difference on your browser? I don't on mine.. but it looks good already on mine??
 
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Scott, you should be able to set it to 70-75% without any noticeable change, on a computer monitor that is.

Fonts still looks the same on my browser.
 
Menu font is impossibly faint.

Hi Scott,

I've been watching this thread develop. I hate to offer negative advice when you are so excited about your work and have done an overall great job.

Browser compatiblity issues. Here is what I see using my regular - Safari and it looks like this on my laptop in IE8:

orig.png


Here is what I see using Firefox: (Maybe Chrome? I dunno.)

orig.png


The first time I opened the page was on my laptop. I was searching for your menu's, because I simply missed them in the bar. Upstairs on Safari was like moosestuff's example, before you changed it.

The change implemented by moosestuff actually made it 'worse' (I hated the above version he showed because it is like two fonts superimposed. Now it's one. One faint font.) Ghosting text is stylish, but not practical.

I don't know why Safari and MSIE8 show differently than Firefox. Some expert needs to help.

Only other tip I might add is that I found long ago ANY IMPROVEMENT over 60% on Save for Web is unseeable, yet adds filesize. Save from 60%-100% and it all looks the same. It's around 50% you start seeing degradation.

I save all my webfiles at 60%.

Keep at it. Good for you. (I spent a WEEK working on my website when I first built it, and I just spent another week exploring new galleries and upgrading pages. It's a steady intricate process to get it 'right'.)

Coop
 
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In Chrome it's like Safari but with a darker text, which isn't terrible. I personally would tweak until you get something more like the font in Firefox, because I find the heavier font more reader friendly. Take all of this with a grain of salt, though, because I avoid building websites.
 
Thanks Jim.... as usual I'm in over my head. I just returned from fencing practice and before I left my browsers were still showing the drop shade or the faint grey... even after refreshing... but it looks like it was a cache issue. I'm looking at Safari and Chrome right now and they are showing exactly the same as Firefox... a nice solid white. So... I'm wondering if other folks are looking at cache issues too??? Unless someone hacked me and fixed it?? :-) If so.. Thanks!

As to image quality in Save for Web... I just checked to see what my settings are and I actually have it set at 60%. I know that I've changed that setting a few times for things other than using for my website so I wonder if Patrice saw some exceptions??? Also.. some images must just have more information in them in terms of colors or.. something.. because I've noticed that some save at higher kbs using the same method.

Jeez. I'm going to go make knife.
 
^^^ Scott, I refreshed and it's OK. Something was odd.

Menu font now showing clearly on MY Safari.

Go make a knife. I understand. LOL! :D

Coop
 
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