Site: www.LightOfTheWild.com

After having this site up for around 6 months now, I finally took the time these past couple weeks to finish it up, so to speak...

I added content to these sections:

• About The Artist
• Order A Print
• Awards/Publications
• What Can I Do For You?

Also, I removed a few shots that weren't up to par (there's a few others on the chopping block), put up a couple new ones, fixed some typos, and edited a few small things.

My Goal: Have a simple, easy to navigate site that displays my work well. I want it to look professional, but I have zero web/design experience so that part might not be too possible. The target audiences for the site are potential customers and editors.

Basically, rip it apart. I want to know how I can make it better/more profitable. Thanks, everyone.

you need an image of yourself on the about me page. I'd also suggest you get some sort of image in the "Order A Print" page (the one when you were first matting?) and possibly links to the awards if they have them.

But it looks a hell of a lot better than my site, so what do I know?

Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing about the awards. If you can link them to your own images even. That way people have a visual idea.

I am guilty of this as well, but the pages with a bunch of words, I think you should add a picture here and there.

But overall, very clean, very simple, very easy to navigate and that's the whole point anyway.

See, I agree with both of you, but here's my big problem... I have no clue how to do any of that stuff, this was a monster for me to put together and I'm not even doing the real HTML . But at any rate, I'll see what I can come up with, thanks for the input so far. I really appreciate it.

Pmed.

Thanks for the PM, Matt. I'll definitely keep them in mind.

Looks nice and clean. You are way further along than I am. There are a few of us here on smugmug, I have been thinking about starting a thread about tips and such but the dgrin forums are really great, half the time they just give you the code you need and you just copy/paste and that's it. I'm sure if you searched or posted those questions you'd get your answer.

Yeah, part of the problem is time right now, I'm more just trying to get all the ideas/things I should fix on the table, then I can go through when I have some time and work on each one individually.

Scott,

• make
• yourself
• a
• list
• that
• you
• can
• check
• off!

That's what I do whenever I'm working on any of my sites. Either in a post here on the forum, or as a blog entry... Who cares who sees it? It gives you a good way to remember everything and check it off. Plus if you share any code with how you did any one thing it might help some other members here.

Originally Posted by jacobsen1

Scott,

• make
• yourself
• a
• list
• that
• you
• can
• check
• off!

That's what I do whenever I'm working on any of my sites. Either in a post here on the forum, or as a blog entry... Who cares who sees it? It gives you a good way to remember everything and check it off. Plus if you share any code with how you did any one thing it might help some other members here.

I definitely will before I jump into it, I love lists. This will all probably have to wait til I get back from Texas though, too many tests/projects right now. I mostly just wanted to open the discussion and see what everyone thought now that it's about 90-95% done.

This might be a good shot for the "Order A Print" page... (is this the one you were referring to, Ben?)

Originally Posted by Stime187

(is this the one you were referring to, Ben?)

yes.

Scott,
It looks good. I agree it would be nice to have some pictures on the order a print page and the about the artist page. Otherwise, I think it's a great setup. Congrats!
Reed

So, I'm considering adding a slideshow to the main page above the gallery thumbnails and below the header... thoughts?

Nothing crazy fancy, just some of my best shots around 500px on the longest side... just to give visitors something to look at/overview. Apparently they are really easy to set up on SmugMug.

^ I am all for intro slideshows if you couldnt tell from mine... I think its a nice invitation to your site and if done correctly, draws ppl in for more.

Originally Posted by subimatt

^ I am all for intro slideshows if you couldnt tell from mine... I think its a nice invitation to your site and if done correctly, draws ppl in for more.

Cool. I'll set one up when I'm bored (or need a break) and see what you guys think.