Recently changed to touch sensitive photos on website - your opinion please

After a few trials of what I wanted for a website - I finally decided to go with a traditional gallery style  - with a little flexibility toward mobile devices.  Found some nice (free - link on bottom left corner)  software that allow the photos to be responsive and mouse/touch sensitive. Works fairly well so far... that why I 'm asking here, want more opinions.

Thingography.com

To note - websites and photography are hobbies. I am asking about the photography portion of the website not the CSS portion.  I experimented with CSS for making video transitions for video gifts to friends and family.

Thank You

Tracy

The site makes me feel like a hybrid from 2000 technology and 2008-2010 technology. I'd get rid of the bouncing text, the photos moving is alright, personally I prefer a gallery that fades in/out. 

A simple page of thumbnails you can click on for larger images is still the best (simplest) way to engage the visitor.

Just to back up what I'm saying, my web design/development company is celebrating our 20th year in business. The single biggest mistake amateurs make in building websites is becoming enraptured with things that hop, skip, jump, bounce, flash and crawl across the screen. (No offense)

The primary step in choosing a method of content delivery is to settle what the actual goal is for the website/section/page/element, and then find the solution that requires the shortest time and least amount of work on the part of the visitor to accomplish it.

Rob

The comments are appreciated  -  more professionally directed than a few other forums - Thank you.

Okay - the bouncy - flashing stuff will eventually fade away - - maybe a text slide in-out  now & then.
I did have a thumbnail homepage earlier, changed it as visit dropped.  Maybe it was just poor design...  Recently, wanted more flexibility for mobile devices, as many friends are using hand held devices. 

Looked at "Gallery" and "Piwigo".  Any thought on these?

Guess I'm here looking for input to decide which direction to pursue.

I believe learning JS, PHP & SQL (trying right now) would give me much more control & flexibility for my ideas.  As my website is not a business website - changes are slow - it is a kind of a  learn as you go.  My limit is programming languages .... and my circle of friends are not into Internet design.  At least no one complained about loading issues or something not working..... yet.....

Thank You

Your input is very much appreciated.

All of those things are important to learn - if your goal is to become a web designer or developer. If you goal is to become an ace photographer, then every hour you spend working on web design skills is an hour taken away from developing your skills as a photographer. That happens to me, 8 - 10 hours every day, except on those days where I'm shooting or processing photos as part of my web development duties, or on a holiday (like today).

It is not for me to judge the choices you're making, but I will say that although I was given my first camera almost 60 years ago, I'm a much better web designer/developer than I am a photographer, simply because of the time devoted over the last 20 years to learning and practicing web stuff. Don't get me wrong: I'm passionate about both subjects, but I can tell that I have light years to go to master my photography, and I'm running out of time.

This is my personal bottom line of just about any decision-making process: Just because it is possible to do something, doesn't mean you should choose to do it.

Good luck!

Rob

RobWood gave excellent advice.

I'll just say, this is why I went with smugmug and their templates.

I do like your web site.  It showed me a bunch of flowers that I want to plant  .  Now about the site itself.  I have always liked to have navigation on every page.  If you have several different galleries, I do not want to have to back up until I find the page that had the galleries listed.  I love the slide shows.  I do not care for the messages on the first pages that comes up.  IMHO they are to bold and in your face in comparison to the beautiful flowers.  It kind of ruins the shots.  

I am no longer a web designer, haven't been for many years, so all of this is just my own preferences.  Keep up the good work.

I found your answer to be a honest & realistic response.  My career lies in another area than either of these, photography & web design are hobbies. I have found that everyone needs hobbies or distractions as I often call them.  I watched my parents and many of their friends get old and realize most of them really have no hobbies to occupy their retirement years.  Many just sit around and complain while waiting to die (sounds cold, but true).  I theorize it has to do with their "era" of working all the time just to make end meet, never taking time to "relax' with hobbies - then thinking they are to old to learn after retirement. Too many of them fear technology....

I have tried to add as many hobbies or interests (that I enjoy) to my life to keep me busy, IF I make it to retirement. Photography and web design are just 2 interests - summer or warmer weather  is the mostly the time for photography and the colder winter time (as it suppose to be -9 degrees tonight without the wind chill) is the computer or internet design time (and some other hobbies). 

I really enjoy taking my dog for walks (he likes it too) on hiking trails with the camera - this has also reduced work stress in my life.  I have learned that "Distractions" are necessary if you want to live a long healthy life.  And learning is what keeps you mentally active (without any physical issues like a stroke or Alzheimer's to mess up your plans ).

Sorry to go off track..... You are never to old to learn new things....  My goal is to learn.. whatever I need, to do what needs to be done.  I will probably never be the best, but I try! 

T.

Don't set limits for yourself - there are enough people out there trying to do that for you.....

And I will check out smugmug again....  And I already started to redesign my home page......slowly....

The tacky "bouncy" words are already out of the next homepage design - as I already started it today. Will go back to a larger thumbnail design - while keeping it touch sensitive and responsive.    Getting better & faster at making changes.... especially when it is below Zero outside - and the electrical power is still working....

Comments were/are welcome.....

OK, I think I understand your motivations a bit better. Thanks for explaining it so articulately. I'm going to help you with your web hobby, if you'd like. I completely agree with you about people growing old with no productive or creative outlet to pursue. I don't know your age, but my parents grew up during the Great Depression, and neither had any sort of hobby. I know from experience that the best vaccine for prematurely aging is ongoing mental and physical challenges. A good hobby or two can do wonders.

For example, I build radio control battleships, armed with CO2-powered guns that shoot ball bearings at other model warships. My friends and I get our ships out on a pond, and spend the day trying to sink each other. In addition, my wife and I play guitar and sing every evening - me on acoustic six-string, she on acoustic bass. Finger-picking the guitar keeps my arthritis at bay. Then there's my photography - I suppose it is my hobby, too. 

At any rate, whether you go out to shoot photos, or stay home and develop a website, the same "rules" apply in maximizing your time spent in pursuit of either one.

First, decide what your overall goal or mission is, and why you're doing it. I can tell just by your posts that your goal in web work is not simply to fiddle (nothing wrong with that), but to create attractive and useful pages. Otherwise, you wouldn't be looking for help. Regardless of how you look at it, every photo shoot and every website needs to have a clearly defined mission. In both media, virtually anything you can imagine can be done, but without focus, the mind (and the audience) wanders off before the payoff. The estimate now is that a web page needs to grab the visitor's attention in milliseconds, and keep it until there's a conversion moment.

Second, define success. What do you want the visitor to your site to actually do? Download something? Throw items in a shopping cart and check out? Fill out an inquiry form? Share the page on their social media pages? If the website has a clearly-defined successful interaction, the visitor is more likely to play along.

Third, look at every feature and every function, and ask yourself, "Will this (whatever it is) speed success, or slow it down?" The reason this is so important is that every second that passes by before the visitor's instant gratification bell gets rung increases the chances that they will bail out of your site before the happy ending (so-to-speak). The classic example of this is a Flash movie that plays on your home page before a buyer can get to your online store. That may be perfectly in sync with a company that sells Flash movies online, but inappropriate and counterproductive for a site that sells photographs.

Look at it this way: If you want the visitors to quickly and easily get to the meat, then don't make them eat broccoli first. They'll just go to the next site that caters to carnivores. Don't be afraid to remind the visitors why they're there, and what you want them to do next.

Fourth, make it easy to find every bit of important content: logical, easy to navigate, breadcrumbs, "you are here" and "you've been there" indicators, in short, lead the visitor to the good stuff. A search engine configured to find tags and keywords in worth its weight in gold.

Fifth, make it easy to find the site: SEO and SEM are vitally important, and along those lines, keep adding fresh content as often as possible.

To summarize:

• Every website has a primary mission. Define it before you build.
• Every page has a mission, and that is to help further the site's mission.
• Every element and every bit of content on every page has a mission, and that is help further the site's mission.
• Every feature and every function has a mission, and that is help further the site's mission.
• If you can't state clearly how that page, element, function, feature or paragraph is furthering the mission of the site, toss it!

Hope this helps,


Rob

I have updated the homepage to a thumbnail style again without messages...

thank you for your honest opinion...  if you have time, let me know if this is an improvement...  the homepage is the only change.

Thingography.com 

Tracy

It's an improvement, but it's still too animated, and the categories aren't logically presented. Auto-run slideshows should be used very sparingly. They should be used to entice people to stay on the home page long enough to get a feel for what the site has to offer. Once the visitor gets it, and clicks something, then from then on, simply let the visitors go at their own pace. 

It looks to me, just from a brief browse, that you have 7 general categories of photos:

Flora (mostly flowers)
Fauna (amphibians)
Meteorology (clouds)
Objects
Black and White
Color
Selective Color

As a visitor, I think I'd like to see the home page stay still, but with a banner slideshow that only takes up maybe a third of the screen above the fold. In it, a sample of each of the main categories, with a mouseover halt in the slideshow that lets me pick a particular image/category.

Underneath the banner slideshow (but still above the fold) welcome me to the site, and in one or two sentences, tell me what I can expect to find, and why. Then present two broad categories that reflect the lion's share of the selections: Maybe (1) Color, and (2) Black and White. Clicking on either one presents subcategories, each with its own small thumbnail.

The idea is to mimic, as closely as possible, human interaction. Imagine that you're having a conversation with someone you've just met. You would start out very generally, and only after establishing a common connection, start getting into specifics. In "webspeak," it's called drilling down. Let the visitors explore on their own terms, at their own pace.

Summary:

• minimize automated animation
• Introduce the content in general terms, with 2 or 3 broad categories
• Let the visitors explore at their own pace
• expand broad categories into logical subcategories
• always make it clear where the visitors are, and where they've been. You have over 1,000 photos on the site, and it would be easy to get lost and confused.

Good luck!

Rob 

 Thank you Rob

Made a few more changes to the homepage, while trying to conform to your recommendations - Still working on it - trying to figure out what I like that "works' - and have the coding skill to complete correctly  - across  major browsers.  

Thank you

Thingography.com 

T.