New website
 

Hi everyone, I just completed a website and was hoping to get some feedback, and or constructive criticism. The samples were shot on FX-1. Lemme know what you think, thanks.


Jim Stork
www.ForestBeachFilms.com
HX-A1 & FX-1 owner

Great stuff, good design and great navigation.

Only criticism would be....

The sample videos are great. But the two videos start to load automatically at the same time, it might be better to have a "press to start" choice to start loading a video, rather than they just start and eat up your bandwidth and my connection speed.

that's my suggestion, hope it helps! everything else is great. Feel free to berate my website in return!

Neil

Hi there Jim...welcome to the forum

i really do like the look of you site...it's not overcrowded with info, and the two demos are fine, and very good quality for the web (i thought many of the shots in the first clip could have been enhanced with a tripod though)

but can I ask, are you ACTUALLY delivering HD??? obviously you're shooting in HD with the FX1, but you might want to clarify how/if you're delivering it?

anyway, nice looking site...(loved the professional look of the 2nd clip especially..was she a hired model/friend?)
Richard

Got this when I tried to look at your site:

"You have requested a page that is not currently available due to data transfer restrictions."

I wasn't able to view your site either. The link you posted re-directed me to a .Mac url which wouldn't open. I received the same message as the post above.

I've got a sneaky suspicion those quicktime files popped your bandwidth limit. Mine did the same as soon as i linked from here!

I think you could be right. I had the same thing happen to me and I didnt even post the url here. It was just from web traffic. I upgraded to the 4gb with 250gb transfer and have not had my bandwidth limit pop since.

I think the regular account comes with 10 gigs of transfer per month.

With that said, I think it is a good idea to host the website and the videos on two different accounts or servers so you don't have to worry about losing whole shebang.

Hi guys, thanks for looking into the site, and your feedback, its greatly appreciated! Yes I popped my bandwidth and am in the process of getting it back up. Thanks again to all those who went to check it out.

Richard, in regards to HD deliverability, all footage is cut in HDV then downconverted before burned to DVD. At a later point clients (most I have delt with do have HiDef TVs) can get the wedding in a HiDef format. B&G are welcome to view near final cut or final cut on my Hi Def TV which is linked to the computer, to see their wedding in true HD.

My girlfriend modeled for me in the second clip. Since my production company is titled Forest Beach Films, I wanted to capture that theme by producing a short clip on a beach.

Neil I totally agree with you in regards to the double loading, I cringe every time I see it. Is there a setting I can change to allow viewers to select when to download? Is this called "Hinted streaming"?

Again thanks for comments and criticisms, all which are helpful. I should have the site up soon.

Very good. I found the shadows on the text actually made it more difficult for me to read. By the way, in iWeb, applying shadow to a text box makes it an image, and therefore not readable by search engines.

Hi Jim,

My impressions based upon IE6 connecting via ISDN.

1. I like the photography.
2. The pages themselves take a long time to render and, while a page is being drawn, you can see various blocks of color appear momentarily before the final picture/object appears (esp. the navigation menu)
3. The GoDaddy header is off-putting and lessens the "clean" nature of your content.
4. The Weddings page doesn't work. Lots of red crosses (missing images, including GIFs). The nav bar disappears, too. So you end up "lost".
5. Refresh the Weddings page results in "Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)". Perhaps I hit on the site just as you were going to take it down/move it.

Of the above, #3 is the zinger for me. I'd recommend paying for hosting so you can keep the clean appearance that you are striving for.

Ok the website is officially back up! The ads are off, and I'm in the process of changing the shadow on the words. I agree it does make it more difficult to read. Great advice! I'm still not sure how to delay the samples to only stream when clicked on.

I'm guessing you have your quicktime movies set to automatically load and play. The control is in the movie itself. If you have QuickTime Pro navigate to Window>Show Movie properties, and click on the "Presentation" button on far right. Make the adjustments you need.

I just took a quick glance (busy morning). I'm using Firefox, and thought you might want to know that text at the bottom of the first page is being superimposed over other text.

I found the same thing as Robert but using IE7

thanks for letting me know, thats not supposed to happen. I made some adjustments about the superimposing text on the first page.

I'm not sure if it is an iWeb thing, but when I load a page, I see the nav bar items appear at first with a light bluish background along with some spacer items. After a few seconds, the background to these changes to black.

Looking at the HTML source, it probably has to do with using transparent PNG files. There's also an awful lot of HTML code to describe the nav bar.

All told, on my ISDN connection, it makes for a somewhat clunky appearance when loading the page.

If you can, I'd recommend coding the nav bar differently - you could achieve the same visual effect much more easily - and with less bandwidth - using CSS. This is especially true since your nav bar is, in effect, text only.

The iWeb nav bar relies heavily on JavaScript. This can be a problem for anyone browsing your site without JavaScript enabled.

By way of comparison, here's the HTML code for just one item in your nav bar:

<a style="display: block; height: 29px; left: 55px; position: absolute; top: 10px; width: 57px; z-index: 2; " onmouseout="NBmouseout('0');" href="Home.html" onmouseover="NBmouseover('0');"></a>
<div style="background: transparent url(About%20Us_files/navbar_1_normal.png) no-repeat scroll center; height: 36px; left: 212px; position: absolute; top: 7px; width: 96px; z-index: 1; " id="navbar_1_normal"></div>
<div style="background: transparent url(About%20Us_files/navbar_1_rollover.png) no-repeat scroll center; height: 36px; left: 212px; position: absolute; top: 7px; visibility: hidden; width: 96px; z-index: 1; " id="navbar_1_rollover"></div>

In contrast, here's one item from the nav bar on our website:

<td align="center"><strong><a href="index.htm">home</a></strong></td>

The Google thing....

You don't need to create a link in your main pages for the Google link. All the Google file does is tell Google that you own the site. It just needs to sit in the root directory of your site.

What you should do is create a site map (basically, a list of files on your site), and submit that to Google. Every now and then, Google's robot will drop by and survey your site.

There are a number of free tools you can use to create your site map.

e.g., http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Just enter your website address and it will create the file for you online (an XML file). Download it and put it on your website. Then go to Google and "register" it.

John thanks for your detailed advice, it means alot. I'll look into making the nav. headings more effiecent, and look into the google sitemap. thanks again!

Not a bad site overall but I do have one suggestion. Since the second video on your samples page is really more of a promo clip, it would be better served to have that on your homepage. Make it a smaller file, take it out of the player and use it on your homepage in place of the photo.

Thats a really interesting idea Heather, thanks for your input! I will be adding additional pages that cover other services, live music production, educational, etc . By having a wedding video on my front page I may be tying myself down. I do have to admit that I tend to skip through flash intro on other ppls sites.