Need your feedback on a possible site re-design (again!)

[DanFreemanPhoto]

Howdy,

A few things have been bugging me about my current website, mainly the loading times. Despite re-sizing and saving all the images at a lower quality, it still takes too long to load.

So I've managed to install a second wordpress theme inline with my current.

The new site is: http://www.danfreemanphotography.com/demo/

It's not 100% there, just the major bits. But it follows my philosophy, clean and simple.

There's a few things I've yet to figure out, like why the blog post images aren't displaying, but you still get the idea.

So what do you think?

Current or new site?

And does the new site load quickly/quicker? And does anyone have any problems viewing the new site?

 

[_Logie]

Loding times are fine. Looks good on FF5 and Chrome.

Really like the minimalistic approach, big fan of that in web design. Good clean layout, what's needed is there and easy to find. Very nice mate.

Much prefer it to your current site.

Only criticism is that you could maybe add a few bits of text to the front underneath the gallery slider. Maybe some grabbing columns or the such. Bit too bland with just a slider.

(Obviously as it is a demo I'll assume that's the reason a few pics are broken?)

 

[DanFreemanPhoto]

The only images I know aren't working are the blog post images (ie the ones on the blog main page), directly under the post title.

Can't figure out why they don't work!

 

[Revels]

Seems slow to me and it's a bit laggy but that's probably my connection.

If I'm honest, I think your best design was in the pre-wordpress days.

 

[_Logie]

Just had a peek at the img source there mate and it's saying it's not found.

http://www.danfreemanphotography.co.../06/birdlipsunset_header.jpg&h=250&w=625&zc=1

http://www.danfreemanphotography.com/demo/files/2011/06/birdlipsunset_header.jpg

That works ^

Weird error that. Hopefully you find a fix though. Good thing that plugin has a debug feature.

 

[DanFreemanPhoto]

Seems slow to me and it's a bit laggy but that's probably my connection.

If I'm honest, I think your best design was in the pre-wordpress days.

Yeh I really liked my first site, but it was so crap in terms of coding. The menus were just jpgs with hotspots on them! No way will I move from WP, unless it's easier and better.

Just had a peek at the img source there mate and it's saying it's not found.

Fix;

http://www.danfreemanphotography.co.../06/birdlipsunset_header.jpg&h=250&w=625&zc=1

http://www.danfreemanphotography.com/demo/files/2011/06/birdlipsunset_header.jpg

That works ^

Yeh the file is fine, but that image is set in the post options. You set an image as the featured image, and it should display. It works fine on my current site, so I'm not sure what the difference is this time.

 

[Revels]

Oh you can stick with WP, but if you had the skills to build what you had, just do it again and use WP as the backend..

Some themes don't accept featured images by default. You'll have to add a bit to the code in the functions file.

 

[DanFreemanPhoto]

This theme definitely has a featured image feature. Probably leave that for tomorrow