So it's done. (My new portfolio)

[Dalkarls]

Hi guys! I've have bot been so active the last couple of weeks, barely any internet and to good weather to stay in doors. But I've been working on my new portfolio and I think I'm done with it.
Havent published it yet and it would be fun to hear what you guys think before I do that.

It's rather simple and focused on the images. If you have any good ideas what could be in any other way, please let me know!

http://dalkarls.com/

and while you at it, have a look at my FB page if you like
https://www.facebook.com/ChristofferDalkarls.Photography

Have a good day all!

Regards, Christoffer

 

[ibclare]

I visited both sites Dalkaris. I don't have any suggestions. I suppose you could use a slideshow or clickable thumbnails that are smaller so it's more likely to be seen all at once on the monitor. But it looks good to me.

 

[inkpad.t]

Hi there Dalkarls...

Just looking at your site from a visitors point of view.

The nav bar on the left... the fonts are hard to read and even look as though there not spell right because there hard to see... to small.. so is the copyright at the bottom and the social media buttons can be miss as well.

When you go live with your site/portfolio ... i would personally use a contact form and read your messages on your site mail rather than have a telephone Number unless its a business Number and not a personal number.

I like the minimalism look and coloring. i like the way if you click on an image that it enlarges and if you click it again it go's to the next image.

Are you going to provide services?... I would have a page for this and a link to it telling them what you can provide, just having a contact button and a telephone number would make me leave.. if there was a contact form i could fill in any questions i have.

You've got to bare in mind your world wide .. not everyone who visits will understand how your site works..

Bare in mind this only my personal take if i were to visit.. but i think all sites should have an about me page telling them your background,experience, and what your talents are.

Don't really see the point in the portfolio button as its on your home page images and the other links..

Overall though i can see this is going to be a good site...like it.

Please remember this only my personal thoughts when i visited..

 

[Hoogle]

it is a slideshow the navigation buttons are hidden though very popular style at the moment with photographers look at lara jade for example http://www.larajade.co.uk/ as you can see this style is spreading 6 months ago it was dark backgrounds. Web developers are starting to strip out wordpress themes to be really minimalistic commenting out code like get sidebar.php and get header.php etc etc and just leaving bare bones minimal wordpress. I quite like the style as it focuses on your work and only your work.

However I think as a website is lacking main information for example yes you have a minimalistic method of how to contact you via 3rd parties like facebook or linked in or direct email, But Nothing stating what Kind of work your able to offer people, a lot of business is recruited via things like flickr or believe it or not reverse image search. I think maybe a biography page and work you can offer people will ho a long way to drumming up more work. even if you have that on a sub domain and link to it, maybe even a seperate blog. because at the moment your site is not very seo friendly and is only good for people you approach and give a link to saying here is my portfolio, I assume like many websites you would want it to drum up business as well as demonstrate what your capable off, that can only really be achieved if people can find you.

Which brings up how to optimise your site to be search engine friendly. well the simple answer is relevant content Headings and text (believe it or not many websites dont actually have text on them the text is imported as an image if they use none web safe fonts) this may make your site look nice but search engines cant read it. and Apart from the menus and contact page there is no real content on your site that a spider will be able to point people searching for photographer digital artist etc.

Even your page title is portfolio of your name which is great if people already know your name. And I know meta key words are not a strong point in SEO these days google has learnt to dismiss it as people abused keywords.

Best way to fix this is to have a blog sounds stupid but every post you make in a blog is a keyword for your site also because you have the ability to have viewer comments on your blog you are getting far more keywords that spiders can use and best match your site to peoples search needs.

As for the site there is 1 little touch I would add that I think seperates amateur sites from pro sites is the use of a favicon just make a png image in ps 16 x 16 and upload it to any site like this http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ and download the favicon and then reload it via ftp into your root domain folder and you should automatically get the favicon there. you may also want to look into google web tools as well for tracking your site and checking your wordpress site does not get hijacked with malicious code (yes it happens more often than you would like on wordpress as people dont lock it down like they should.)

Only saying all this because I think I advised you quite a bit when you set out on this project and you have sort of asked for feedback.

Other than the few minor things depending how you look at them it is a great site.

 

[Hoogle]

lol sorry didnt mean to dupe inkpad in what he is saying I got side tracked and delayed in posting...

 

[ibclare]

After reading the above critiques, I went back and looked again. I obviously just focused on the images and how they were laid out.

I didn't even see that you had separated the categories in your nav bar. Clicking on your name linking back to the home page is redundant. I agree with inkpad on this one, and that you could have an about you page. Clicking on your name could go there.

Since you have categories, I think it would be better to have those categories described as three links on the main page with the names/descriptions, and no photos of your work. The layout of all of them on the home page just doesn't look or feel right to me. Especially if someone clicks through all of them, then sees the nav bar, which is a little hard to read as said above, because then they will just be cycling through work they've already seen.

Hoogle has excellent ideas for the seo. The idea of a blog is great since it increases your chances to be found through a search. I didn't know that. I got a good lesson from that discussion hoogle.

I could see adding a link to your services as suggested, a link to your blog, maybe your bio page if someone doesn't get there by clicking on your name (that's if you make that particular link of course), then contact information. One thing I would suggest you don't do is publish your phone number, especially as inkpad said, if it is a personal number. It's one thing for your local hardware store to publish their phone number, but the idiot spam you could get filling your voicemail, well . . .

I like the basic minimalist look. Concentrates on the point of your website.