John Tougas Fantasy Cartography

[jtougas]

Well my portfolio/gallery site is up and running. I used Yola for the web builder and the hosting because they were free and fairly easy to use. I did make my own page background and used RecklessEnthusiasms awesome compass he posted earlier. It still amazes me how much work it is to get a bunch of pictures lined up on a website. The site isn't all that fancy but I think it looks pretty good. Too much stuff can really make a site look and load very bad and I didn't want that. I would really like some feedback from the guild on how it looks and functions and any ways that I might be able to improve it. Thanks

John Tougas Fantasy Cartography

[mearrin69]

Looks good!
M

[Midgardsormr]

Very nice looking! The color of the links in your nav bar are very similar. I like to use a reversed-out rollover, like on this page: http://www.bryanray.name/queen/ (Note that I was intending to implement some embedded fonts there, but it never happened). Here's the CSS I used to do that:

a:hover {
background: #CCCCCC;
}

I don't know if you have the ability to edit the actual HTML with Yola or not, but if you can, that might be of help.

Or you could just use a color that's more contrasty.

You should make the big header image a link back to your home page, even though you have a home link. And I don't care much for the "contact me" link being left-justified beneath the rest of the nav links. Actually, that entire navbar should maybe be centered to match the header and the horizontal rule. Contact could either be moved up into the main navbar to replace the redundant Home button. You could possibly make some room by killing the word "maps" where it's unneeded. We assume that most of the pages on a fantasy cartography gallery will, indeed, lead to maps.

I think the featured map "thumbnail" should be larger, and maybe put the description below it. Put your art in the viewer's face immediately. If they like the image, they'll click around for more, and they're likely to read the text. If your primary presentation is text, though, you'll lose a lot of viewers before they've even seen the good stuff. I got some really good advice about portfolio websites from the article "Your Portfolio Repels Jobs" by Jon Jones.

Glad to see you hanging your shingle! Good luck!

[jtougas]

Thanks for the advice. That article was a good read and very eye opening. I tried to follow the authors tips and I like the result. I think because I'm a writer I tend to get too "wordy" at times and thats not what this site is about. I streamlined the home page and made all the images larger. I'm stuck with the navigation the way it is although I did make it all fit on one line by following your advice. I also can't make my banner a link in the free version of the site that I am using so I am stuck with the "Home" link. Hopefully at some point I will be able to spring for the paid service.

[anstett]

No it doesn't suck, I like it

BOB