Mon, January 21st, 2008 by Brandon Stone
Jörg Colberg has a helpful list of design tips for photography sites. It would be nice to see more photobloggers take note of these suggestions. Most of this may be common sense, but I personally enjoy little reminders every so often.
Here's a summary of my five favorite quotes from his list:
- "Make sure navigational elements are clear and easy to find. [...] In the worst case, people like me just close the page when they can't figure out what to do."
- "Don't make the images you're showing too small. [...] Bigger is not always better, but smaller is almost always worse."
- "I've seen many cases where the image compression was so bad that the photos showed very visible artefacts. Needless to say, that's quite disastrous. Would you hand bad prints to a possible client?"
- "Huge warning signs and long text about copyright etc., right before people get to see photos, are a big turn-off for me. If you're so worried about somebody stealing low-quality images from a website [...] why do you have a website in the first place?"
- "Don't have thumbnails point to images which are just barely larger than the actual thumbnail. That's just ridiculous."
Check out his full list. It's worth a read.
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January 21st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I suggest signing up for a http://www.fotki.com/ ID. I am a Fotki user, not employee. I find their interface and functionality to be everything I need for a photo website. No reason to build your own!
You can even co-brand and build their web site into yours as a set of pages.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:28 pm
There are a lot of fantastic services out there for people to use. And most people would probably be better off never knowing what FTP means.
Regardless, there are still good reasons for certain people to build their own sites. Much of the independent spirit of photoblogging comes from people who enjoy a DIY mindset.
And there is at least one thing on that list that everyone needs to know, regardless of where you upload your photos... If you set your JPEG compression too low, your images will suffer greatly.
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:22 am
I'd add the following: make sure that your "Next" and "Previous" links are obvious, and remain in the same place from one page to the next. One of my biggest pet peeves when browsing photoblogs is when I'm paging through photos and I have to constantly move my mouse around to click on the pagination links.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:45 pm
The best of the most fundamental requirements are listed in Jörg Colberg's post. Whether you are inclined to design your own site or subscribe to a host with site templates provided, the points mentioned are of relative and optimum importance.
One other thing I think photographers/bloggers should be aware of is that "quantity does not always equal exposure".
There are some bloggers who have a front page with anywhere from one to twenty images, thinking they're better exposing their photography on a global network by having a high quantity of images. What they need to understand is that time is money (money out and money in) visitors are less inclined to wait for numerous images to download and if they're like me they'll just close the tab/window or browser altogether.
I would suggest after deigning a site or choosing a site template, you clock your site download times on various browsers MSIE, Firefox, Netscape, Opera etc to ensure your pages are not consuming exorbitant amounts of visitor’s time and money downloading. (Of course it is relative to your connection speed but have you ever considered how much money you're spending waiting for sites/images/text to download when you access a URL?)
Functionality is the absolutely important though I would suggest simplicity is also.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
i so do agree and am heading to read Mr. Colberg's post. For months i've been testing different software and photo services and some times i feel as if i'm over my head! LOL
just like the commenters above, i so agree that in browsing photo pages simplicity and download time is absolute must! i'm so happy to have stumbled upon this post! perhaps now i'll have a clearer path in getting my website out of construction... LOL
January 30th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I fully agree wtih Brandon's view on image compression.
Image compression can be a tricky thing...photos with an intense amount of detail sometimes demand little or no compression to maintain quality. I'm all for huge file sizes if the image loaded is worth the wait. Besides.... we are pretty deep in the information age, if you don't have broadband by now, you need to get with the times!
I also wanted to add... although web design is important for a photography Site, the photography itself should always be #1 priority.
February 4th, 2008 at 10:08 am
I like that list! Thanks for including it!
February 9th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
thax for sharing
Functionality is the absolutely important though I would suggest simplicity is also.
February 12th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Agree on compression stuff.
Actually that's why we create Image Compressor (www.image-compressor.com). This application compress file size while automatically maintains quality.
Try it, and let me know what you think about our software...