Web designers, portfolio sites, and the indecision we live by

[chrisHPZ]

I guess I wasn't the only one unhappy with their site. Been putting this together after considering everything I've read about simplistic layouts. I guess it does make sense that a website is not attractive if its layout is overly complex. Anyway, enough with the cryptic gibberish as I've been up for the last 21 hours. I'm really interested in everyone's thoughts on the content. I like the layout so its staying. Let's hear it WDF. Oh, don't bother with the contact page, something went wrong as it isn't processing the script. And I'm too tired to mess with it right now.

[delstu]

At times it is my internet connection (cable) but the site, "http://www.cdemarco.com/" is timing out (not loading).

[chrisHPZ]

I

At times it is my internet connection (cable) but the site, "http://www.cdemarco.com/" is timing out (not loading).

it happens to everyone

[TheGAME1264]

It's a very slow load indeed.

I'm not going to comment on the layout. Whether or not you like it or I like it really doesn't matter worth a damn. What matters if if they (meaning the people who will actually retain your services) like it.

A few things, though:

1) If a directory requires you to link to it, it's not a real directory. It's an SEO scam.

2) Some of those links don't lead to where you're featured on their site. One (the Freelance Designers link) is a login page.

3) In your list of videos, hover over the "Earth and Nature Video". There's a weird effect going on there.

4) I'd have a default picture loaded in the top of your Photoshop examples.

I'm sure others will pick it apart and be more anal about the design and things, but that's their business.

[chrisHPZ]

Yeah I know about the site loading slowly. Seems like early in the morning this happens, and all day on Sundays. Interesting about the SEO thing. We had to do that BS as per a college assignment. So I did it and never bothered anymore with it. Default picture on the Ps page huh, why didn't I add that in there anyway?

[TheGAME1264]

That's because most SEO (the true stuff) is user experience stuff. A few things (e.g. meta tags, robots.txt) are specific to search engines and bots, but most of it relates to things like consistent navigation, quality content, etc.

I'd say your load time is related to the free hosting cloud service you use. You're better off spending a few bucks a month on a quality host than you are trying to host it for free. I know why you want to host it for free (i.e. it's free!) but in this case, you really do get what you pay for.

Find a decent host, spend $5 a month on a good basic plan, and if your site's going to convert anyway, it'll convert more with the $5 a month plan. Here's the best one I know of.

[chrisHPZ]

Damn, I paid $25 for the year for this service. I guess I can get hooked up with another hosting site as $25 isn't going to break me. Got anyone in mind that offers unlimited space and bandwidth? The space issue is important to me. Especially since I've been working with video projects. These files even when compressed are never small.

[TheGAME1264]

That's going to be a tough one. As I stated in another thread, there really isn't such thing as unlimited hard drive space (it will always be finite, and it will always be determined by the size of the drive). It's a promise a host can't keep, and one that usually comes with some rigid terms and conditions (no excessive use of CPU isn't allowed, no scripts that chew up resource, you have to own everything you put on). Same thing goes with bandwidth...if you're using too much by the host's terms, you're out on your ***, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

Unfortunately, this is standard practice now in the hosting industry. It used to be that only the shady hosts offered this, but even quality hosts have started to (although in Sectorlink's case, it's restricted to one of their higher-end shared plans.) Sooner or later, though, it's going to have to undergo a sharp correction. That's why I'm glad I'm in the position I'm in...I've got a server with a clearly defined amount of storage space, transfer, etc., and I'm not even close to any of the limits yet.

[delstu]

I do have some questions apart from the hosting problem:

How big a file is each page? Isn't that a web design problem if the files are too big? How can your larger files be optimized?

Just thinking about possibilities as I have not seen any of your pages.

[chrisHPZ]

Each html page is no larger than 8KB. However, I have a lot of image, video, and Flash content within the site. And as far as optimizing what I CAN optimize, all the images were optimized with the respective editor they were made with. Also, all of my personal work is loaded into my website from external files. This is one of the values of using what are called IFRAMES in html pages. You haven't looked at my site but you're asking these questions? Granted the content on the After Effects page takes some seconds to load because they are video files. Even when encoding them into compressed SWF or QT format, the files are large. It's the nature of video work.