alchemist

Hi guys, My website has been running well for months with my host Vexxhost. Last night I couldn't access my website www.tony-hart.com and this problem continues at present. According to some friends on twitter the website is not available, but my girlfriend and http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ have no problems accessing the site. The same problem is apparent for my other sites hosted with Vexxhost such as www.prideoflions.co.uk. It's bizarre. I tend to have my domains with 123-Reg.co.uk and my hosting with Vexxhost, but I don't know where to begin with diagnosing this problem. Is it Vexxhost, 123-Reg or my ISP? Any help on this would be hugely appreciated. Thanks for the insight guys, Tony

Hi guys, Wasn't sure where to put this, but can't find a good Facebook/social networking specific place to put this: I have just moved my blog to a new template and have decided to integrate some social media buttons. They all work fine with the exception of the facebook button. Basically, it works, but not on the blog homepage. On any other page, it does what I'd expect it to do and load a Facebook Share page dialog, but on the blog homepage, it simply loads a blank browser window. I can't for the life of me figure out what the issue is here. To see what I mean, first visit this page and try clicking on the Facebook icon in the top right: http://www.tony-hart.com/files/westend_heathfire.php In contrast, visiting this page and clicking the same Facebook icon has a different result: http://www.tony-hart.com/blog.php Any ideas as to what might be the problem here? Many thanks in advance! Tony

Thanks Wickham, that's really useful info. I might have to give that a whirl. I've spent so long getting everything to fit just so, so I might have to spend some time testing such a solution, but it would certainly work. What effect does a Frameset have on SEO and search performance? Cheers, Tony

Hi chaps, I redeveloped my site back in the summer. I'm now toying with the idea of using some quiet, low key, mutable music on my website. Thing is, the site is structured in HTML. That is to say that each new page is just that, a new page. Can anyone suggest a method - if one even exists - of adding a sitewide MP3 track that would play even when the user changes page? I really am not up for redesigning the site from the ground up again (it nearly killed me last time!), and I'm merely investigating the possibility. I know music is very controversial on websites, but if there's a method that might work, I'd be interested to hear about it. Many thanks all, Regards Tony

Hi, In the end I changed the first image on the page (which happened to be my Logo) to have the same Alt text as the Meta Description. I don't know where exactly Google is picking up the description it's using in the SERP's from, but this looks to be the description I was aiming for, so either way it's working. I know sticking this sort of info in an Alt tag isn't best practice, but I'd like my site to look like something other than spam in the SERP's!

Ah. Well that's very annoying. Can you suggest a non-dodgy, non-penalised way of getting round this? Text is simply not appropriate for the homepage of my site. I used to get ripped to shreds by other photographers for having way too much text and not enough imagery on my site. Now Google is screwing me over!

Hi guys, I've recently redeveloped my website and after testing it, I tried to be conscientious and added independent meta descriptions to each of my pages. I added a new sitemap.xml and verified the site using Google Webmaster Tools. My website is appearing in the SERP's, but annoyingly, my well written description is not. Instead, the description is a string of image alt text rather than the meta description. It goes without saying that this isn't the most informative and will more than likely cause some potential customers to skip the site over. Any ideas how to correct this? I've changed the title of my page ever so slightly to try and get Google to reindex the page and have redone everything in Google Webmaster Tools, all to know avail. It's pretty annoying, given the improvement to the website, that the SERP listings are all screwy! If you're interested, google "Tony Hart Photo", it's that top one. Cheers all.

1024x768 is pretty much the smallest screen the site is designed for. I know that breaks a whole load of UI guidelines, but I have to target the market and based on these figures: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp I'm not alienating too many people. For me, it's all about making the images sell me as a photog. I will have to have a look at adding a bit more space for 1024x768 screens and similar though!

Thanks chaps, Useful feedback. Can I ask what monitor resolution you are both running? I think the content might be quite tight on a 1024x768 screen (but should fit) but it won't scale smaller than that. Cheers and yep, agreed on the white background. Have used black in the past and it looks fab too. It's an either or thing for me.

Hi Scifunk, Thanks for your feedback. What browser/platform combo are you trying? I've run this in Safari and Firefox on Mac, IE7 and Firefox on PC all without problems? As far as the black and white shots go, that's a style thing. I place an emphasis on black and white imagery. Fair play if it's not your thing, but I'm not going to be changing that I'm afraid! Cheers mate, Tony

Hi all, After receiving some help on this forum, my new website is now finished. I used to be a web designer/graphics designer/photographer when I first left my 'proper' job a couple of years back. Now I've narrowed that down to photography, with a speciality in wedding photography and as such have tried to build a website to reflect that! Before I was coming across as far too much a jack-of-all-trades and IMHO wasn't presenting the images as well as I should. I've now got a new system with a backend that allows me to pump whatever images I like to the slideshows, though I've still got to trim the slideshows so they show only my best work. Anyways... I'd love your feedback/reviews on the new website: Tony Hart Photo - My New Website For those of you who might be interested for comparison's sake, the old website can be found here: Photography Site Design Site You'll need access details as this is now archived: User: archived Pass: site All the best, Tony

Hi Mr P. Thanks for your reply. I've now decided to stick the menubar up the top as haven't been able to achieve what I want with the menu flush to the top of the gallery. Take a look here: http://www.tony-hart.com/z_sandbox4/test.html I've got it mostly as I want it now, but if I scale the window, I can make the Flash gallery extend beyond the bottom of the window. Is there a way to create a container (presumably a DIV) that will: 1. Hold the gallery 2. Make sure the DIV scales to be as big, but no larger than the viewport minus the menu bar 3. Is padded on all sides. At the moment, the solution I have works great on my big 1920x1200 screen, but the gallery ends up flush with the bottom of the viewport on my laptop (1280x800). I presume this is because the DIV holding the gallery ends up being slightly taller than the viewport. I'm using this CSS code: html { overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; height: 100%; } body { height: 100%; overflow:hidden; } #menubar { margin-top: 5px; margin-left: 5px; } #content { margin-top: 40px; height: 90%; padding: 5px; } I feel like I'm nearly there, but I can't quite crack how to simply get the flash gallery to sit in a DIV surrounded by a white background on all sides, all the way down to 1024x768 screens. Apologies if I've not explained that well, please feel free to ask for clarification! One thing I've tried is giving the menubar a percentage height of 10%. My understanding is that if you have a parent DIV that's 100% of viewport height, if you then have two child DIV's that are 90% and 10% high, they will together fill the viewport entirely. Is this wrong?

Anyone? It's really frustrating because CSS is meant to be a much better for layout, but I could achieve this with tables! I'm now trying locking the menu bar/logo to the top of the screen and having some more luck. Still can't achieve a simple scaling content box though!!! ARGH! If you have a look here... I'm getting somewhere: http://www.tony-hart.com/z_sandbox3/test.html This renders close to what I'm looking for in Safari, but in Firefox the actually gallery is tiny. Like 300x200 or something like that. Would really appreciate any thoughts.

Hi guys, I've got some distance towards a solution, but I'm confusing myself because of my ropey coding skills! You can see what I've acheived here: http://www.tony-hart.com/z_sandbox2/ I've wrapped lots of things in borders so I can see what is where. The first problem I'm having is that the gallery is center aligned in it's div which causes a white gap between it and the menubar. I want everything to be top aligned. As you shrink the window, the gallery shrinks as I want it to, but the menubar becomes dissassociated from the gallery. I want it to remain flush with the top of the gallery, instead the white gap grows and it looks ridiculous. I'm trying to do this without using tables, but my CSS skills aren't brill. Here is what I am using so far: html { overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; } body { overflow:hidden; } #reference { display: block; position: absolute; top: 50%; width: 100%; height: 0px; } #wrapper { position: relative; top: -418px; left: 20%; width: 60%; height: 836px; background-color:green; padding: 0%; } #menubar { width: auto; border: 1px; vertical-align:top; margin: 0px; border: dashed; padding: 0px; overflow: hidden; } #content { position: relative; vertical-align: top; margin: 0px; border: dashed; } Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Hello chums, I'm currently looking into redesigning my website to make it less of a compromise. I'm a wedding photographer and after many moons, have finally settled on Slideshow Pro as my image viewer of choice. I now need to build a site around my galleries. I have a number of requirements which makes the layout code for my vision something of a headache. They are as follows: Vertically & Horizontally centered content area. A Content area which will compliment the dynamic resizing of the image viewer (getting smaller as the browser window shrinks) A menu bar and header (my logo) that will sit just above the content area, and remain 'locked' in this position. I've yet to find a solution that adequately even centers the content vertically and horizontally yet. I used to have ways of doing all this stuff with tables, but I'm set on developing a genuinely modern website without all the compromises of things I've done in the past. Up until now, I've used Lightroom to produce my galleries using Slideshow Pro, but I am looking into the flash component as this allows for dynamic resizing (this isn't possible currently in Lightroom). The Lightroom version of SSP does center the content in the page, but as far as I can see it does it with javascript somehow. Here is an example of the gallery to give you an rough idea of what I'm trying to achieve. URL - http://www.tony-hart.com/galleries/fran&joby_large/ USER - thomas PASS - burford I'm trying to take this layout, add a menubar between the site logo and the gallery and finally have the gallery set to a native size of 1200x800px which will then shrink if the content area is smaller than this. Ideally, I want to build the website from scratch rather than editing the code Lightroom spits out. I've got to the point where I can create the galleries I want in Flash, and now I want to create the site around these. I know that what I'm asking for is pretty complex, but any ideas about how to achieve all or parts of this initial layout conundrum would be much appreciated! Cheers, Tony EDIT - OOOhh... I may have found a way to do some of what I'm looking for using this code here but I could still do with any advice you wise chaps can offer!

This is useful information as I am currently looking into this. What is the best way to do it in everyone's eyes? 123-Reg offers framed or non-framed forwarding. With framed forwarding you can add seperate metadata and keywords, but I was under the impression Google might do you for duplication. Is it best to go for a straight redirect?? Your thoughts on this are much appreciated. All the best Tony

Hi guys, Bit of a weird one for you. I've come here as I need somewhere with a BIG knowledgebase! I have a client who I am doing some web design for and have changed the nameservers for one of his domain names (registered with premierhost.co.uk) so as to have it point at a hosting package that I have setup with VexxHost.com. The migration seems complete as the domain (imagewise.co.uk) now resolves in the browser and I can view documents via the site which I know only exist on the new host. I've just had a call from my client telling me that his home internet connection is now down and that he thinks it must have something to do with the changes I've made. I've checked his ISP's homepage and there does not seem to be any outage notifications in effect for his area. As far as I am aware, the two things are utterly unrelated and I cannot understand how changing the nameservers at premierhost.co.uk could have any bearing on his internet connection which as I understand it is supplied by Demon Internet UK. Is there something I am missing? I can't for the life of me think of a credible explanation for how changing the nameserver at a domain name registrant would impact a home broadband internet connection provided by an entirely different company. I would really appreciate some thoughts on this as I want to get it resolved whatever the problem may be and right now I can't call it anything other than coincidence. Many thanks Tony

I've tried it under Safari on PC, for me it displays the same flash. But like you say, it's not top of the agenda, I just thought it was something to look into. Photographers are primarily visual people and it's the sort of thing I know they'll question. Anyways, I'm off to slit my wrists!

Righto. Thanks for the input.

Thanks mate. You were right to the point, offered some actual help and advice and were polite in going about it. Thanks very much, it's genuinely appreciated. Will look into all of these ideas.

I'll clarify now. Colour and B/W is the split the customer requested. They are indicative of a difference in style rather than saturation of the image. The colour photographer is effectively a Hello/OK style shooter and we toyed with the terms glamour/glamourous/ and other ideas. None of these had the right ring to them. By contrast, Kieran, shoots in a primarily black and white, available light, reportage style. Reportage would have suited his images perfectly as a description, but Reportage and Glamour sounds like a Photojournalist crossed with a page 3 photographer. In the end, the clients decided that they liked the split colour/bw because though not exactly accurate, this summed up the differing approaches to their work. You'd not be happy as a client? Well, all I can say is, "I'm sorry". You're not the client here, and both clients are happy with where the website is going. I designed one of the clients personal website and have just had a meeting with the other about working on his. Look, if you don't like the design and think it's shoddy, I'm sorry, but my job is to please my clients, not you.

Actually, I think I'll post again on this subject. Firstly, lets back off with the rather rude tone. I do care, but I may not choose to agree with you on every front. Secondly, thanks for your replies. A screen reader, or images turned off? Yep, users visiting those sites under those circumstances would have a problem. However, the number of users visiting under those conditions is minimal, and secondly, I intend to add alt text to fix that problem. I have an iPhone but when I visit a Flash website, I can't view the site due to lack of Flash on the iPhone. By your reasoning, any website that is designed in Flash is an afront to correct web design due to it's non-text-based nature. Get real, sometimes you just have to accept that some people aren't going to get the correct browsing experience. In the same way that we don't design for 640-480 screens anymore, my chief priority on designing a website for two photographers is to show off their photographic work and create a website that supports that primary aim succinctly. Catering to a user with images turned off is pointless here, in my view. Just my view, not a reason to shoot me down. I appreciate many of your points, and am perfectly happy for you to decide that I am a disservice to web-design, but I do object to the frankly rude tone you guys are using here. I came across a guy called Rob a few months back, I think he runs Rawkes Web Design and he was very helpful and courteous. Gave me a good impression of this forum. You guys, by contrast have been rude and supercilious. Thanks all the same, but you've spent about 4 seconds addressing the question so I think I'll look elsewhere for the answer.

Thanks for your reply Eskymo. I certainly don't want to give 'Web Designers' a bad name. My main goal is to provide a site that meets my clients needs and wishes. They're what I hold myself accountable too. My apologies if I've insulted you or your business. I agree that functionality and accessibility come first, but for me, there's a compromise to be drawn. I take on board what you've said about legibility of fonts and contrast issues and I will be improving legibility based on your feedback. That said, I did choose the low contrast menu bar intentionally, rather than by mistake. The main thing thing this website has to convey is the quality of the photographers images. As such I've tried to make everything else subtle and unobtrusive. The photos have to stand above everything else. Clearly I've gone too far if you didn't spot the navbar and I ought to adjust the contrast. I've taken on much of what you said and agree with large potions of it. Thanks, I won't trouble you with my poor design again! Best Regards Tony

Hi guys, many thanks for your thoughts. I contest the issue about all image bio. It's about 25k, therefore takes sod all time to load and gives me control over the text rendering. Until there is a way to effectively embed fonts into a page without using Flash, I will use this technique in areas where I want to have control over the look of text. The SEO will be taken care of by correct meta tagging and page titling. You're right, I ought to add alt text, but come-on, how many people aren't going to be able to load a 25k image these days? It's a photographers portfolio after all. If they can't load images, then the site is going to be pretty redundant anyways! I've used frames for a few reasons. Firstly, it allows me to use some clever CSS I found to centralise the content both vertically and horizontally in a liquid layout while allowing the nav-bar to remain at the top of the page and preventing if from interfering with the centralised, liquid layout. Secondly, it allows me to drop the flash based galleries into the content frame without editing them. I'm not much of a flash user, so this solution works. Look, I know it isn't the most cutting edge web-design, but the layout works across all browsers I've tested it on, and provides the customer with the layout he's looking for. I've yet to find a better way of centralising content both horizontally and vertically than the CSS hack I am using, and this for one is something I don't want to do away with. I believe CSS 3 is going to introduce a proper vertical-align property, but until that occurs, this is the best way I know to acheive the result. Valid point on the menu bar contrast. Thanks for that. I have so far only tested on a bright, Mac Gamma screen, so will go try this on something darker. Might well be worth changing that. Thanks muchly Tony EDIT - Additionally, I don't want the bio text lifted and used elsewhere. The client has specifically requested that I try and prevent this. Using an image makes this much harder to do.

Hi all, Was hoping for some advice. I've got a webpage that I've developed for a wedding photography duo. I've created the galleries using Adobe Lightroom and so am using a frameset to separate the gallery pages from the navigation. It's probably not the best way to do this, but that's what I've done and it works effectively. The one problem I have is that when the user clicks on a new page, just before the page loads, the main area of the frame flashes white for a moment. It wouldn't normally be an issue, but the page is a dark charcoal/grey colour and it is pretty obvious. Can anyone suggest anyway to prevent this from happening? I'm not exactly sure what the root of the problem is, but I'd be in debt to anyone who could help me out! You can see the site here: Holt|Doherty Many thanks guys, Tony EDIT - I've just noticed that this only seems to happen in Safari on the Mac and IE on the PC. Firefox doesn't seem to have this problem.