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  #1  
Old 04-16-2009, 08:22 AM
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SVanderkolff SVanderkolff is offline
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New Website Up and running

The new website is up and running . please take a look and let me know what you think. I would really appreciate some feedback so I can make it look as professional as possible.
www.vanderkolffknives.com

Thanks
Steve


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Old 04-16-2009, 10:04 AM
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pipecrafter pipecrafter is offline
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Nice site, Steve. Simple and elegant.


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Old 04-16-2009, 10:10 AM
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mtnfolk mtnfolk is offline
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Steve,

Very nice. Great composition (of the pages)and nice photos. Looks like you mastered it.


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Old 04-16-2009, 10:30 AM
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Good looking layout Steve. I would suggest a few things.....

-The small images that first appear seem stretched, and when I clicked on several of them, it appeared the larger images were poorly "stitched"....sort of like two images where overlapped. The one that really looks overlapped is "Ironwood Burl Subhilt". The larger images for "Customer Design with Patch Knife", and "Twist Damascus and Mammoth Persian" do not come up at all. I think most of it has to do with resizing images...whatever software your using should have setting to maintain ratios when resizing....as well as quality levels.
Lord knows its time consuming and tedious, but I think its a good idea to go over EVERYTHING on your site, either by clicking through it, or by using a free "link checker" that is available online. Sometimes when you use a Photo album building software, it will automatically resize images, and make them look stretched, especially some of the online versions. I use a free program called !WebAlbum to build the albums on my site. Its one of the few that you can control image resizing without distortion of the images. Another option that does a very good job on images is JAlbum (online).

- I think the links at the top of the first page need to be a different color scheme....When I first brought the site up, it took me about 30 seconds to realize/see the links at the top of the screen.

The layout and look are very clean and simple (which I think is a big plus), but without trying to be mean, I think the quality of the photos needs to be better.


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Old 04-16-2009, 10:43 AM
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SharpByCoop SharpByCoop is offline
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Steve the photo quality is very nice. I found, as Ed now sees, how rigid the sizing is for the opening Flash animation. You need to cut and crop all your photos to the EXACT size that was originally provided (Which is 500x333 pixels. Then they will look exactly as cropped.)

The thumb aspect ratio is also something you may look into. I didn't use the provided website gallery and used an entirely different one. For me.

Nicely done. I fussed with mine for weeks afterwards, finding different looks. Keep on it.

Coop


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Old 04-17-2009, 06:59 AM
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Thanks Guys
I will check out the problems noted and see if I can fix them. I noticed that the website looks very different on my work monitor than it does on my home monitor. Is there some way of setting page size so that it looks the same regardless of size of monitor. In other words keep a constant ratio of page size to monitor screen?
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Steve


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Old 04-17-2009, 07:41 AM
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There are so many different sized monitors out there in use now. The rule of thumb used to be to build you site on a 15 inch monitor...because that was what the majority of computer owners used. Now a days I would suggest building a website on either a standard (NOT widescreen) 17" or 19" monitor. For a long time I kept a old 15", and would hook it up/use it when I was working on my site. Lately I have been using a standard 19" monitor for site maintenance, and it seems to be working out well. One of the biggest complaints I have with some websites is that when folks use a large monitor to build a site....the photos tend to be so large that they are bigger than the screen. Thats a big turn off, and I know when I run across it, I just go elsewhere.


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Old 04-17-2009, 10:02 PM
Frank Niro Frank Niro is offline
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Hi Steve.
Well I'm not into the computer or picture thing but if I go to the folders and then click on one it doesn't coordinate from there. frank


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Old 01-04-2010, 03:34 PM
seomul seomul is offline
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very nice website, if you are new to online business you might consider learning about Search Engine Optimization which is the way to successed online to promote your products.
My favorite sites: SEO Services | Internet Marketing | SEO Blog | SEO


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