New site

[nephiliim]

Hey folks,

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I have been really busy with schoolwork and preparing for my next internship, so not much time to make photo's or go out for a walk.
In the ours I have to myself, I have been working on my very first peronal website though, creating it in flash.
Thought you would like to see it, there's still a lot of work in progress and I'm not quite satisfied with the gallery yet, but it gets better every day.

The site is located on http://www.macrozoo.nl, if it shows a blank, black page just press F5.

All the best,

Tom B
_________________
Sometimes smaller is better eh? nodge nodge :lol

Canon EOS 450D
Sigma MACRO 70mm F2.8 EX DG
Tamron AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro

No external flash yet

[Ken Ramos]

Really like your new site there Tom. It's simple, not cluttered, and very easy to navigate and I like the way things are displayed on it with the fading in and out of selected images and themes. Very nice.

[rjlittlefield]

Tom,

The site works for me just like you described. It'd be really good if you can figure out how to fix that F5 problem -- most viewers won't think to "refresh" when the screen comes up black.

The layout and fade effects are very nice.

But there seems to be something missing -- I can't see the bugs very well! My eyes are fine, and so is my monitor. The problem is that I can't figure out how to make the pictures big enough to show the detail that I'm pretty sure your camera captured.

Can you give us some sort of zoom, so we can really appreciate your lovely images?

--Rik

[Carl_Constantine]

if you want to be found by search engines, stay away from a flash only site. Your content cannot be searched if you use flash exclusively (fine for some graphics, but not an entire site).
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Carl B. Constantine

[nephiliim]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the tips, still trying to figure out the zoomthing. About the all flash site, I first tried to set it up in css.. but I wanted to minimize the number of pages. Maybe I'll find a midway solution soon.

All the best,

Tom Burger
_________________
Sometimes smaller is better eh? nodge nodge :lol

Canon EOS 450D
Sigma MACRO 70mm F2.8 EX DG
Tamron AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro

No external flash yet

[Ken Ramos]

TomB replied:

[nephiliim]

I am thinking about making a intropage with all kinds of short descrition words, allready made a bunch of metatags.

All the best,

Tom B
_________________
Sometimes smaller is better eh? nodge nodge :lol

Canon EOS 450D
Sigma MACRO 70mm F2.8 EX DG
Tamron AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro

No external flash yet

[Carl_Constantine]

Metatags really aren't used by search engines anymore. You get ranked by your actual content, links to and from your site, keywords in the content of your site (Macro photography new zealand -- for example). Search Engine Optimization is a real art and technique. I don't know everything about it, but I do know a few things.

While you can do the initial site design in flash if you like, use that as a base to do realy html or php pages or you just won't be picked up. You can use CSS for your styles and menus, use PHP where appropriate or just do HTML. Also, if you do the entire site in flash, if you add a new gallery, you have to recompile and reupload your flash file. If it's complex, it's not always convenient.

If you need help with this, I do web design and can do a very nice site for you. You are of course not going to get any cool transition effects between pages like you do in Flash, but you will have a very nice, manageable web site. Your gallery pages will be controlled through a backend photo-upload script, then just immedidately appear on the site. no front-end changes at all (I do this for a lot of clients that need a photo gallery on their web site).

Also note, you need to apply a javascript fix for the flash object to work correctly with IE. In IE, the flash object is not actually ACTIVE until you click on it. Since you want it active immediately, you can download a bit of javascript and apply a minor change to your code to make it work consistantly. Here's a link to what you need:

http://amarasoftware.com/macromedia-ie-solution.htm
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Carl B. Constantine