Paul Maguire

Hi there, I'm a keen photographer who built my own website and I've been playing around with my CSS design for, far, far too long now. The problem is that although technically I think I've got CSS figured out, I just don't have the web design skills to make it look cool. Here's my site: www.paulmaguirephoto.com. The css is here: www.paulmaguirephoto.com/css/style10.css. Please, please, please can someone have a go at tweaking the colours, the layout, the font, anything to make it look more professional. If you copy and edit my css and upload it somewhere, then you can test it out using the following format: www.paulmaguirephoto.com/index.html?css=http://www.paulmaguirephoto.com/css/style10.css Just substitute the ?css= bit with a url to your own css. Don't worry too much about the gallery pages: they are a hangover to an older version that I plan to redo with javascript... one day! If you're not up to editing css then any comments or critique would be just as welcome. Many thanks, Paul

Three votes for the old design! What was I thinking?! Clearly I've gone off on a tangent! Thanks guys, and in hindsight I think you're right. Maybe my current design just needs some tweaking to make it more slick and consistent. I will work on it.

Hi, I'm a photographer and I've been trying to come up with my own web design. Since my previous post on this forum, I've come up with a new design to make it look more professional and more like a photographer's site. My question is: have I made it better or worse? The original design still applies to my site: paulmaguirephoto.com To see a mock-up of my new design, visit: http://www.paulmaguirephoto.com/test-index-red.html for a test homepage http://www.paulmaguirephoto.com/test-op-red.html for an example article page Have I achieved my goal of producing a professional looking photographer's website? Or just made things worse? Your feedback would be hugely appreciated. Please note these are just test pages so don't expect all the links to work! Regards, Paul

Thanks Mesa. Any ideas what's triggering the horizontal scroll? Maybe the css for my banner? I agree the design is all a bit plain. I wanted a "minimalist" look but I'm not a designer and not sure how to improve it. Every attempt I make to improve it ends up looking like I've done it in powerpoint. Any suggestions, or example websites you can point me to ? Regards, Paul

Thanks for your feedback guys. I thought it would be mostly negative so I'm really pleased Comments, anyone, on the styling/css, especially choice of colours, fonts, use of white space, borders, etc? Regards, Paul

Hi, I'm a semi-professional photographer and NOT a web designer, but designing a search-engine-optimised website has become something of a hobby. Please give me your impressions, and any hints and tips, for my website design at: www.paulmaguirephoto.com I'm specifically looking for some feedback on the css design, because the actual content is evolving. I didn't want to develop it too much further in case I need to make some fundamental changes based on your feedback. I want most content to be readily visible rather than have a stylish "splash page". The purpose of the website is as follows: Showcase my best photos ("Gallery") These pages are currently a hangover form an old design and I plan to create some better galleries with new content (my photography has improved!!) probably using a free java gallery Offer a collection of photos for sale as fine art prints or for commercial licence ("Photos"). Each photo has a unique page in order to be SEO. Offer photography advice so that my site attracts traffic and ultimately better search engine ranking Publish photo essays in a "blog" style. (Currently part of "News" but I plan to split these out) I have a consistent css design for all pages, but the feedback I've had from friends is that it doesn't "look" like a photographer's site. Any tips you can give on the css design in particular (because the content will evolve) would be most welcome. If anyone really wants to go to town, then I've set up some php so that you can, if you wish, copy my css file, edit it, and upload it somewhere, then test it with something like: www.paulmaguirephoto.com/index.html?css=http://www.your-website.com/try-this-style.css The default css file is: style2.css Regards, Paul