March 9, 201412 yr Hi All, My website is now in its nth revision, its purpose is to promote my photography services and ultimately get people to contact me. The theme aims to tackle the typical photography portfolio website issues: It is fully responsive and works on mobile, laptops and desktops It doesn't have too much colour which may distract the users from the photographs or CTA The slider doesn't overflow on any seem size. The photographs aren't so large that they distract from the CTA I am looking for it to come across as understated elegance, but something just doesn't feel right; it is missing the finishing touch or that sparkle. The CMS is wordpress, and everything is homebrew except for the slider and contact form. www.bakaraphoto.co.uk Copy on portrait photographer is outstanding Many Thanks, BK Edited March 9, 201412 yr by TheFlyingSquirrel
March 9, 201412 yr Your photos are taking a very long time to load - but it could be my internet connection - we have 3 of us online at home today. On an unrelated, photography trivia note - did you see Zack Arias just launched http://dedpxl.com/ ?
March 9, 201412 yr Author Your photos are taking a very long time to load - but it could be my internet connection - we have 3 of us online at home today. On an unrelated, photography trivia note - did you see Zack Arias just launched http://dedpxl.com/ ? Maybe, I have tested my site of my mobile internet with few delays. Yes I saw, I look forward to reading his posts on the site
March 9, 201412 yr Author blank screen for me! latest firefox on win 7 Caching problem, thanks for catching it. Please try now.
March 9, 201412 yr The site is pretty basic. Not sure if I am a fan of the blocks to get into your portfolio sections. Seems like something more creative can be done there. The loading times for the images are a concern. Desktop users need to wait a long long time. Mobile users might be showing up at your door with pitch forks and bills from their data carrier. Portfolio Get rid of the slideshow. Let people see everything at a glance. Don't really want to sit through a couple picture of the bathroom when I don't want to. Set up thumbnails or something and let it expand to something larger if they wish Optimize your images and toss out anything that doesn't make you look like a king in your area. Im sorry but that image with the toliet does nothing towards making me want to hire you. Make sure your images are now skewed in anyway. The tile for portraits seems very squished. Not good when you want to showcase your images. You are giving details about how you work on portfolio pages. I would say you make a seperate page for that, and leave your portfolio for your actual portfolio. Change the "Get in Touch" to something more proactive like "Hire Me" About This page is actually looking pretty good already. If I had any complaints it would be to give your image a little more room, possibly having it on it's own column with all the content on the right (even when the content goes below your image). Perhaps even stylize the quote a little more for dramatic effect. Contact To to have this visually intersting as well. The text is not well formatted english. You have: "Looking forward to working with you already, the form on the page is a direct link to me as is the phone number and email address below. Speak Soon."instead try to have it say something like: "You will be contacting me directly when you call or contact me through this page's form. I am looking forward to working with you. Cheers" Blog Loog at paginating your articles. You are loading tons of them at once. Also considering having a article image for each one. Makes the blog a much more visually intersting place to view. Being on a photography site and seeing a blog filled with 95% words would bore me. Hope this helps
March 9, 201412 yr Author The site is pretty basic. Not sure if I am a fan of the blocks to get into your portfolio sections. Seems like something more creative can be done there. The loading times for the images are a concern. Desktop users need to wait a long long time. Mobile users might be showing up at your door with pitch forks and bills from their data carrier. Portfolio Get rid of the slideshow. Let people see everything at a glance. Don't really want to sit through a couple picture of the bathroom when I don't want to. Set up thumbnails or something and let it expand to something larger if they wish Optimize your images and toss out anything that doesn't make you look like a king in your area. Im sorry but that image with the toliet does nothing towards making me want to hire you. Make sure your images are now skewed in anyway. The tile for portraits seems very squished. Not good when you want to showcase your images. You are giving details about how you work on portfolio pages. I would say you make a seperate page for that, and leave your portfolio for your actual portfolio. Change the "Get in Touch" to something more proactive like "Hire Me" About This page is actually looking pretty good already. If I had any complaints it would be to give your image a little more room, possibly having it on it's own column with all the content on the right (even when the content goes below your image). Perhaps even stylize the quote a little more for dramatic effect. Contact To to have this visually intersting as well. The text is not well formatted english. You have: "Looking forward to working with you already, the form on the page is a direct link to me as is the phone number and email address below. Speak Soon." instead try to have it say something like: "You will be contacting me directly when you call or contact me through this page's form. I am looking forward to working with you. Cheers" Blog Loog at paginating your articles. You are loading tons of them at once. Also considering having a article image for each one. Makes the blog a much more visually intersting place to view. Being on a photography site and seeing a blog filled with 95% words would bore me. Hope this helps Thanks for the feedback, this is just what I needed. Unfortunately my host is dire at serving webpages outside of the UK. I have thought about a mosiac gallery (www.zackarias.com being a great example), problem is don't you think combining property, event and portrait photographs on one page looks odd? You are giving details about how you work on portfolio pages. I would say you make a seperate page for that, and leave your portfolio for youractual portfolio. What do you mean by this? Do you mean the supporting copy for the slider?
March 9, 201412 yr I have to agree with 'cibgraphics', load times are a serious issue. A mosaic on your portfolio pages would be more interesting, rollover captions about the image would explain what you see in them and help potential customers understand your chosen art form. Squashing images is a bad idea on any site, but on one that is all about creating those images? That is one way to shoot yourself in the foot. Are the portfolio images from actual customer sessions? Making a statement of who, what, and where, enables those with 'less imagination' to get more involved with the 'story board'. The CTA is always an important aspect, after all there is no point in having a shop window and no door for customers to walk through; However, you seem to be saying 'lets have a chat' with the 'Get in Touch' button. Try something more individual like 'Let me create your memories' or 'Hire me to create your memories'. Then move the button out of the middle of the page where you are currently 'shoving it at the reader' and keep it obvious but out of the way a little. On pages like your portfolio sections the CTA text can be adapted for that type of work, ie. On your Events page 'Record your special day'. Take a look at some marketing blogs and you will see how other industries adapt the same message to suit different markets, models want a professional experience with somebody they can trust, mothers want their child to be safe and at ease so they can have natural smiles, etc etc. You say "My host is dire at serving webpages outside of the UK" I am in the UK and load times are awful! Your host and registration details - Registrar: Webhosting UK COM Ltd [Tag = WEBHOSTINGUK] URL: http://www.webhosting.uk.com Relevant dates: Registered on: 04-Sep-2012 Expiry date: 04-Sep-2014 Last updated: 09-May-2013 Not long before you can move to another host if their service is bad. Unfortunately I think that you need to make some big changes to your content rather than blame your host, files sizes are very large, there are many other aspects of your site that are slowing down it's load times including loading js files that are not needed for the site to be able to load before any content is loaded. Google analytic's is being loaded twice on most pages. Something else I have just seen, your sites language is set to 'en' not 'en-gb'. Most browsers will automatically depict your site as being English US not English Great Britain. Searches may also see this as well! On your blog articles you are loading, among other things, 'button_back' but there is no back button? 28 Requests to load 1 blog post is high!
March 9, 201412 yr Author I have to agree with 'cibgraphics', load times are a serious issue. A mosaic on your portfolio pages would be more interesting, rollover captions about the image would explain what you see in them and help potential customers understand your chosen art form. Squashing images is a bad idea on any site, but on one that is all about creating those images? That is one way to shoot yourself in the foot. Are the portfolio images from actual customer sessions? Making a statement of who, what, and where, enables those with 'less imagination' to get more involved with the 'story board'. The CTA is always an important aspect, after all there is no point in having a shop window and no door for customers to walk through; However, you seem to be saying 'lets have a chat' with the 'Get in Touch' button. Try something more individual like 'Let me create your memories' or 'Hire me to create your memories'. Then move the button out of the middle of the page where you are currently 'shoving it at the reader' and keep it obvious but out of the way a little. On pages like your portfolio sections the CTA text can be adapted for that type of work, ie. On your Events page 'Record your special day'. Take a look at some marketing blogs and you will see how other industries adapt the same message to suit different markets, models want a professional experience with somebody they can trust, mothers want their child to be safe and at ease so they can have natural smiles, etc etc. You say "My host is dire at serving webpages outside of the UK" I am in the UK and load times are awful! Your host and registration details - Not long before you can move to another host if their service is bad. Unfortunately I think that you need to make some big changes to your content rather than blame your host, files sizes are very large, there are many other aspects of your site that are slowing down it's load times including loading js files that are not needed for the site to be able to load before any content is loaded. Google analytic's is being loaded twice on most pages. Something else I have just seen, your sites language is set to 'en' not 'en-gb'. Most browsers will automatically depict your site as being English US not English Great Britain. Searches may also see this as well! On your blog articles you are loading, among other things, 'button_back' but there is no back button? 28 Requests to load 1 blog post is high! You raise some interesting points that I will take into consideration or address, Just ran the website through GTMetrics I can see where the problem is; since I want this to be a site for everyone, what size would you recommend for a portfolio image? I went with 150KB per image. The loading of the js is required for the slider. The 'en' I have not seen though I did wonder where 'en-US' came from on Google analytics, in my header I put en-GB which may have caused the problem, changed it to en-gb hopefully that will solve the issue. Google analytic's is being loaded twice on most pages - interesting I will look into this, may be a stray plugin, can't see it in the code. Edited March 9, 201412 yr by TheFlyingSquirrel
March 10, 201412 yr logo looks rough - not antialiased properly - is it a scan of your handwriting or .. ? did we say about the images already? also resize them in a graphics editor first to match the size on screen. i would say around 70-150 kb per image e.g. on the events page in the slideshow. would prefer thumbnails to a slideshow any day try something like this too https://kraken.io/web-interface
March 10, 201412 yr Author logo looks rough - not antialiased properly - is it a scan of your handwriting or .. ? did we say about the images already? also resize them in a graphics editor first to match the size on screen. i would say around 70-150 kb per image e.g. on the events page in the slideshow. would prefer thumbnails to a slideshow any day try something like this too https://kraken.io/web-interface It is handwriting, the logo will change in the next revision. I am using lightroom so it is an easy export to 150kb max per image, The Portrait slider has been updated with 150Kbmax photos. I would be looking for something like this http://beam.zackarias.com/#!/index , do you know any tutorials so I can create this?
March 10, 201412 yr This is a page I bookmarked a while ago - not sure if there's anything in there, and of course, I can't personally recommend any of these because I haven't tried them. http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2013/03/wordpress-gallery-plugin.html
March 10, 201412 yr Author This is a page I bookmarked a while ago - not sure if there's anything in there, and of course, I can't personally recommend any of these because I haven't tried them. http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2013/03/wordpress-gallery-plugin.html Thanks for the link, I have tested most of these plugins already and none were up to the task; I will hunt around and see what I find. Edited March 10, 201412 yr by TheFlyingSquirrel
March 10, 201412 yr could be a case of trying a differenet theme maybe - maybe something based on masonary??
March 10, 201412 yr Author could be a case of trying a differenet theme maybe - maybe something based on masonary?? I made this current theme from scratch, and am in the midst of creating a new one in my UAT environment, I have no interest in using someone else's.
March 11, 201412 yr I made this current theme from scratch, and am in the midst of creating a new one in my UAT environment, I have no interest in using someone else's. good then you'll be able to make it display how you want then
March 11, 201412 yr If your looking to decrease load times then I recommend gtmetrix.com it's quite handy at giving you a nudge in the right direction.If you score high on gtmetrix and the load times are still slow, I would look at changing hosts.
March 11, 201412 yr Author If your looking to decrease load times then I recommend gtmetrix.com it's quite handy at giving you a nudge in the right direction. If you score high on gtmetrix and the load times are still slow, I would look at changing hosts. I have been using GTMetrics to optimse the site, I have got the page to 85% Pagespeed, and 90% Yslow on my heaviest page now at Page load time: 12.98s Total page size: 316KB Total number of requests: 41 Are those statistics okay? GTMetric calls from Canada so am not sure what allowances should be made. The number of requests will reduce once I implement isotope. Edited March 11, 201412 yr by TheFlyingSquirrel
March 11, 201412 yr Author could be a case of trying a differenet theme maybe - maybe something based on masonary?? I will be implementing Isotope instead of masonry.
March 12, 201412 yr Your scores on gtmetrix are fine, but your load times are way off, I would seriously recommend a different host.I have one client who has a host in the US and I see load times of 2-3 seconds with similar scores on gtmetrix as yourself.I would guess that any user waiting 12.98s for your site to load would of forgot they opened it in the first place.
March 12, 201412 yr Author Your scores on gtmetrix are fine, but your load times are way off, I would seriously recommend a different host. I have one client who has a host in the US and I see load times of 2-3 seconds with similar scores on gtmetrix as yourself. I would guess that any user waiting 12.98s for your site to load would of forgot they opened it in the first place. Okay well that I didnt expect, then again 12.98s for 316kbs is ridiculous, my host was chosen for speed, shame it has slowed down so much since I got it. Time to create a thread for a new vps solution.
March 12, 201412 yr Okay well that I didnt expect, then again 12.98s for 316kbs is ridiculous, my host was chosen for speed, shame it has slowed down so much since I got it. Time to create a thread for a new vps solution. Just may be down to those 2 sets of analytic's from Google; It is quite possible that your host is also using Google's services to track their clients site performances which would cause a lot of extra traffic on the server for page load. Try putting in a support request with your host, and if they are using Google you can try disabling your analytic's and running the test's. This will not solve the problem but may correctly identify the cause. If there is a clash Google has loads of info in their help pages on the subject. It may just mean you have to use their 'Tag manager' tracking code instead like I have to on one of my sites.
March 12, 201412 yr Author Just may be down to those 2 sets of analytic's from Google; It is quite possible that your host is also using Google's services to track their clients site performances which would cause a lot of extra traffic on the server for page load. Try putting in a support request with your host, and if they are using Google you can try disabling your analytic's and running the test's. This will not solve the problem but may correctly identify the cause. If there is a clash Google has loads of info in their help pages on the subject. It may just mean you have to use their 'Tag manager' tracking code instead like I have to on one of my sites. I removed the Google analytics from my theme and there has been no change in performance. I have raised a ticket with my host but I may just transfer; my friend gets 1.35s for 259KB withTSOHost on a shared server.
March 12, 201412 yr I removed the Google analytics from my theme and there has been no change in performance. I have raised a ticket with my host but I may just transfer; my friend gets 1.35s for 259KB withTSOHost on a shared server. While the analytic's code is out another thing you can try is the Google Webmaster tools - speed test report. Save the data from the speed test and compare it with what your host's say when they reply to your support ticket. Hopefully you won't have to move, but if you do need to move I am sure there will be plenty of help on here for that process.
March 14, 201412 yr Author While the analytic's code is out another thing you can try is the Google Webmaster tools - speed test report. Save the data from the speed test and compare it with what your host's say when they reply to your support ticket. Hopefully you won't have to move, but if you do need to move I am sure there will be plenty of help on here for that process. They are looking at pingdom and it is still pretty slow. 7s for 316KB so I am moving once I finish my latest design. Question: If you were on a blog page, would you prefer isotope plus infinite scrolling or pagination plus archive?
March 14, 201412 yr 'infinite scrolling Vs pagination' is a matter of quantity over personal preference. If you know your blog will not be a massive 5000 articles all with a short leader then infinite scrolling will probably be ok. However; most blogs have a long index so using at least a short list of the most recent on the home page and an archive or archive by category is better. If your blog is known to be heading for a much longer index the I'd go for pagination without a doubt. Personally when browsing blogs I like paginated content, it just makes it easier to get about if the navigation and search are well combined.
March 23, 201412 yr Author 'infinite scrolling Vs pagination' is a matter of quantity over personal preference. If you know your blog will not be a massive 5000 articles all with a short leader then infinite scrolling will probably be ok. However; most blogs have a long index so using at least a short list of the most recent on the home page and an archive or archive by category is better. If your blog is known to be heading for a much longer index the I'd go for pagination without a doubt. Personally when browsing blogs I like paginated content, it just makes it easier to get about if the navigation and search are well combined. Your scores on gtmetrix are fine, but your load times are way off, I would seriously recommend a different host. I have one client who has a host in the US and I see load times of 2-3 seconds with similar scores on gtmetrix as yourself. I would guess that any user waiting 12.98s for your site to load would of forgot they opened it in the first place. good then you'll be able to make it display how you want then This is a page I bookmarked a while ago - not sure if there's anything in there, and of course, I can't personally recommend any of these because I haven't tried them. http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2013/03/wordpress-gallery-plugin.html The site is pretty basic. Not sure if I am a fan of the blocks to get into your portfolio sections. Seems like something more creative can be done there. The loading times for the images are a concern. Desktop users need to wait a long long time. Mobile users might be showing up at your door with pitch forks and bills from their data carrier. Portfolio Get rid of the slideshow. Let people see everything at a glance. Don't really want to sit through a couple picture of the bathroom when I don't want to. Set up thumbnails or something and let it expand to something larger if they wish Optimize your images and toss out anything that doesn't make you look like a king in your area. Im sorry but that image with the toliet does nothing towards making me want to hire you. Make sure your images are now skewed in anyway. The tile for portraits seems very squished. Not good when you want to showcase your images. You are giving details about how you work on portfolio pages. I would say you make a seperate page for that, and leave your portfolio for your actual portfolio. Change the "Get in Touch" to something more proactive like "Hire Me" About This page is actually looking pretty good already. If I had any complaints it would be to give your image a little more room, possibly having it on it's own column with all the content on the right (even when the content goes below your image). Perhaps even stylize the quote a little more for dramatic effect. Contact To to have this visually intersting as well. The text is not well formatted english. You have: "Looking forward to working with you already, the form on the page is a direct link to me as is the phone number and email address below. Speak Soon." instead try to have it say something like: "You will be contacting me directly when you call or contact me through this page's form. I am looking forward to working with you. Cheers" Blog Loog at paginating your articles. You are loading tons of them at once. Also considering having a article image for each one. Makes the blog a much more visually intersting place to view. Being on a photography site and seeing a blog filled with 95% words would bore me. Hope this helps Thanks for your help thus far, the 2nd revision is up let me know what you think
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