Wanna criticize my wip website?

[Lingon]

Thanks for the comment, TimPaul. That first bit of your post makes me wonder… is the page I posted fancy bells and whistles? Because I totally agree with you, I want something very clean. Maybe I should limit it to three pages: a portfolio/home page, a contact page, and a blog to show that I'm active. I'm also leaning towards abandoning the idea of sidebar maps, because of how complex it is to make it work like I want; I've painted a couple of smaller segments in the same style to put in the top corners instead, which might even look better.

I can't say I'm waiting to get work, though. It's more important for me to have a great looking site than to get it up quickly. If I don't put effort into my site, visitors can't be sure I'll be putting effort into my work. First impression is important

[TimPaul]

Thanks for the comment, TimPaul. That first bit of your post makes me wonder… is the page I posted fancy bells and whistles? Because I totally agree with you, I want something very clean. Maybe I should limit it to three pages: a portfolio/home page, a contact page, and a blog to show that I'm active. I'm also leaning towards abandoning the idea of sidebar maps, because of how complex it is to make it work like I want; I've painted a couple of smaller segments in the same style to put in the top corners instead, which might even look better.

I can't say I'm waiting to get work, though. It's more important for me to have a great looking site than to get it up quickly. If I don't put effort into my site, visitors can't be sure I'll be putting effort into my work. First impression is important

That's what I mean by bells and whistles. You are trying to have a great looking website, over a presentable website. Are you a website designer, or a map maker? You want people coming to look at your site because of the awesome maps on the site, not because the site is awesome looking. Yes, the site does have to look good. But there are far more acceptable good looking websites, over Awesome looking websites.

Besides, you can always change your website when you come up with something awesome.

[Lingon]

Well, it's up
Thanks again for the feedback!
http://www.lingonberrymaps.com

[Psylence]

I've done a couple websites myself. Here's how I feel about it.

Pros: Nice. Clean. Presentable.

Cons: You pull people away from the interactiveness of your site.

Specifics: It's an awesome start, and has a good, clean look. While that might not necessarily 'pop', you're letting your work do the talking and that would be what I would expect from someone's portfolio site. I don't like how you handle the pictures within your portfolio and your Blog is a bit distracting as well. I, personally, would try to limit the amount of changing someone has to do.
Portfolio: Your portfolio and main page seem to be the same place... until you click on one of the images and then it redirects you to a different place which also has a little option to go back at the bottom and.... ya lost me. Not literally, it's pretty straight forward, but with a site this clean I want it immaculately clean. Personally I would take a direct approach. They click on the image, it expands the image right there in the same window. Next picture? Oh there's a little arrow on the right side, and a little list of the slides at the bottom. All you have to do is click off the pictures and it puts you right back on the main page - I believe Blogger is set up this way(or I've seen some people that have it set up that way).
Blog: If you're going to include a blog I(personally) would make the most recent a full article(or at the very least a longer cut-off on the amount of words before it hits the read more) and the rest shorter/more compact.

That's my 2 copper, but I must say - nice site! I like what you've got started there.

[Lingon]

Thanks for the praise and criticism, Psylence! I'm glad you like the look of the site About the portfolio, yeah, I know it's not optimal… The thing is, I decided to build the site in Iweb after all, because it seemed like the only simple, not ultra-expensive app that would let me build what I wanted. Then I found out that the gallery in Iweb can't display pictures in full size, and for some reason Iweb doesn't generate an index.html file for the site, so I can't use any of the gallery apps that I've found. So building the portfolio this way was the best I could come up with :/ Do you think it would become easier to navigate with arrows instead of thumbnails next to the picture?

The blog, sure, I can show a few more lines of text. I'll mostly be putting pictures there, I don't really plan to blog about anything, just show my latest work that doesn't need a place in the portfolio, so I figured the text should take minimum space. But maybe I should let the whole post be visible for that very reason – there won't be much text anyway, so forcing the visitor to click on the post to read the few words that were cut out is silly. Thanks for making me aware!

[Psylence]

I don't think arrows would be a good addition unless it was both arrows and thumbnails. This is mostly because you want people to see the thumbs - it's a great way for people to quickly go through and pick out perspectives/images they want a better look at.

[arsheesh]

Well I have to say, as someone who is just now trying to get my own wordpress blog up and running (and feeling completely lost) that I'm quite impressed with your clean attractive layout). Much more professional than my out of the box first efforts

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[jtougas]

I've had countless blogs (I'm a main factor in the "blogjam" on the internet) and none of them looked this good. If you implement the suggestions given I think you will have a real winner on your hands. Great Job