Submiting my Website to be Featured as a Sample

[Barclay Horner]

Hello,

I just completed my website customization with smugmug. I am so happy with how it turned out that I would like to know how to submit it to be a featured site as an example of "tricked out" web pages. Let me know if this is possible. Thanks Barclay

www.barclayhorner.smugmug.com (http://barclayhorner.smugmug.com)

[darryl]

Hi Barclay:

I don't normally critique customizations, but I'm bored:

First off, you've got some wonderful photos on the front page and in your portfolio. And overall, I really do like the design of the site. So please take my criticisms as an encouragement to make it even better.

One annoyance is that I'm on a 1024x768 screen, so I had to scroll around a bit to get the simpleviewer slideshow to be centered just so. According to these stats (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp), only 25% of users will be able to see your main pages without scrolling around.

Also mildly irritating is that there are no controls on your main page slideshow. So as I was futzing about with my browser window size, I missed the photo of the ringbearer looking up, and couldn't go "back". I just had to reload and wait around for the photo to cycle back. :-P

Speaking of "back" -- you absolutely have to link your header "barclay header photography" (great font, btw) back to the home page. I must've clicked on that on three different times trying to get back to your home page.

Lastly, that Galleries page seems awfully sparse. Maybe you should do a custom HTML page (I'm sure Allen or somebody else around here could help you with that) that uses larger images to link to those category pages. The page just ends up looking a bit like you plopped a bit of SmugMug into your very otherwise slick site.

Oh, one last thing. Something in your CSS has changed the > symbols in your breadcrumbs to a color that blends in too well with the background, so that instead of seeing:

barclayhorner > galleries > weddings

I see:

barclayhorner galleries weddings

Not good.

Oh, BTW, I think there's a trick for still having a featured photo on locked albums. Some generic wedding image (guest book, bouquet, etc) will look better than that Protected Gallery image, which is very jarring to the layout. Again, I'm sure somebody else here can direct you to the hack.

Ok, that's enough. I've gotta get to sleep now.

[sellis]

Hello,

I just completed my website customization with smugmug. I am so happy with how it turned out that I would like to know how to submit it to be a featured site as an example of "tricked out" web pages. Let me know if this is possible. Thanks Barclay

www.barclayhorner.smugmug.com (http://www.barclayhorner.smugmug.com)

Hi Barclay,
We both had the same idea of posting here and on Photo.net at the same time.

I think your customization looks great, very clean. I'll say the same thing I said on PN, you should use the Shazam flash slideshow rather than the Simpleview. It will look much more seamless without the need for scrolling. I used to use Simpleviewer on my site hosted on Yahoo, but now I've switched everything to SM. Smugmug's is also incredibly easy to use and update. All you have to do is point it to a new gallery and those photos come up. My goal is to have my slideshow show the most current wedding. I always do a preview of 10-20 photos within 2-3 days, so I can just point the flash to that gallery. Takes about five seconds to change things up.

One other minor thing you may want to consider, feature a photo of the couple in their galleries so they show up in the thumbnail. This way it's not random photos of guests on the weddings page.

[glasbergen]

Hi Barclay,

I like the look and feel of your website and having the navbar on the bottom of the page is refreshing. I also like your subtle use of purple.

I think the picture below the navbar is supposed to be transparent? Well, it isn't in IE6 on my work pc... You probable still need to add the IE code to make transparency work in internet explorer.

[denisegoldberg]

This may have been done deliberately - perhaps it's just a font that I've never seen before - but I it very disconcerting that words in the navbar and banner with letters that extend below the horizontal (letters p, g, and y) have the bottoms of the letters cut off.


--- Denise

[jenweavernj]

Question of the topic to the original poster

Was it easy to make a slideshow that looks like yours on the homepage of your smugmug site or does it require advanced knowledge?

I like the look of this one rather than the one I created from smugmug and I'm not an expert web designer...

My url is having issues so you can try either:

www.jenweaverphotography.com (http://www.jenweaverphotography.com)
www.jenweaverphotography.smugmug.com (http://www.jenweaverphotography.smugmug.com)

Awesome work on your site!

[denisegoldberg]

Question of the topic to the original poster
Jen -
Was it easy to make a slideshow that looks like yours on the homepage of your smugmug site or does it require advanced knowledge?
I just looked at the source for the home page - that's Shizam's flash slideshow in use. It looks like you may be using the old slideshow hack on your site.

In case you need it, thread at http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=73247, doc at http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/Flash+Slideshow

--- Denise

[twincitiesphoto]

looks good to me - one thing I'm curoius about though - why all the work put into the site and yet no vanity URL???

[jenweavernj]

I just looked at the source for the home page - that's Shizam's flash slideshow in use. It looks like you may be using the old slideshow hack on your site.

In case you need it, thread at http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=73247, doc at http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/Flash+Slideshow

--- Denise Tanks Debbie. I will take a look. I'm not good with the coding piece so I will read through this. :)

[Barclay Horner]

I don't have a vanity url because I am not sure how to change it. My domain name is hosted with another website, which is where the simple viewer slideshow is too. I get the hosting for free. Unfortunately I do not have the ability to set a cname or other wise with them so I just set up a html redirect. i did not want to pay 8 dollars a month just to host a domain name and hold less then a gig of space. If someone can tell me how to get the url to "lie" to the users when they enter barclayhorner.smugmug.com that would be great.

The webmaster who helped me implement my design originally used the Shizam slideshow. I did not like it how it looked. I like the slideshow look now. If a person is unable to personally navigate the images on the home page that is fine. I also prefer teh way simple viewer looks to what smumug offers for slide shows. Infact, I have a lot more options on my end to modify the look and feel of the slideshow by hosting it elsewhere.

The font looks that way and I love it.

I was aware that 25% of the people out there will be able to view my site at full rez. But I figured my potential clients will more often fall into the 25% then not. I knew the trade off and I felt it a good one because I am competing with scalable sites on more and more larger screens.

My Site is compatible with the latest browsers with flash installed. Most of my potential brides surf for wedding stuff at home on their laptops, not on work machines.

[davidzvi]

Love the site. Actually I wish mine looked at good. I also like the simpleviewer slide show. I find I usually want to go faster or slower than most sites seen to go. And the fact that the images are loaded the transitions are faster.

[Andy]

I don't have a vanity url because I am not sure how to change it. My domain name is hosted with another website, which is where the simple viewer slideshow is too. I get the hosting for free. Unfortunately I do not have the ability to set a cname or other wise with them so I just set up a html redirect. i did not want to pay 8 dollars a month just to host a domain name and hold less then a gig of space. If someone can tell me how to get the url to "lie" to the users when they enter barclayhorner.smugmug.com that would be great.
$8 a month??? Robbery! Your domain host won't / can't do a CNAME? Wow that's horrible. Godaddy is like $8 a year for a domain name in certain cases.

[Andy]

Hi, You may not hide our name and copyright in the footer, please fix that, thank you.