Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson

Subject: Tech: My New Website
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 14 Jan 11 - 04:56 AM

Letting you all know (with Max's blessing, thank you Max) that www.nigelpatersonmusic.com was published this week. The site is in its first incarnation & not yet fully functional, but hopefully, if visitors like what they see, they'll bookmark & return later. I'm currently preparing a selective contents page containing titles of the works for which I already have copyright clearance. Ultimately, there will be about seventy arrangements for finger style/classical guitar in PDF format, mostly standard notation, but a few in 'tab' too. The cost of a download will be modest. I can't be more specific at this stage. here is where you'll find me,
                     Happy New Year to one & All,
                                                                        Nigel.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website
From: GUEST,goodlife
Date: 14 Jan 11 - 05:32 PM

a bit basic front page and link does not go any where must work harder to succeed
cheers

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Jan 11 - 05:39 PM

Goodlife may have a point - it's not really clear that the image is a link. You might want to put "CLICK ON IMAGE TO VISIT" directly below the image, or add an "enter" button or link in large typeface.

I enjoyed the recordings you have, Nigel.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Janie
Date: 14 Jan 11 - 11:25 PM

I enjoyed them also, Nigel. However, the image of you playing guitar, and then the image of the guitar neck and hand for the links to the recordings led me to anticipate accoustic guitar. There was an initial dissonance between what I anticipated hearing from the visuals and the actual instrumental sounds.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 05:23 AM

Thank you everyone for the initial feedback. I suspect special thanks to Joe for 'tweaking' the thread name...makes a big difference. Goodlife, which link in particular doesn't go anywhere? Please let me know because everything is working fine at my end. I'm slightly puzzled by the observations regarding the first page, if you scroll down, it says quite clearly "click on image to visit" which takes you to the home page. The link to 'Links & Pics' also works, as do all the links to my friends' sites. Janie, your point about the photos on the 'players' is important. Not one of the pieces features acoustic guitar, so I need to find photos that are relevant to the piece. I'm trying to use photos from my own collection, rather than buying 'stock' pictures to keep my costs down. I'm pleased you enjoyed listening to the music...very different from my Halliard days!
             I decided on a basic/minimalist sort of design, partly because it's my first attempt at building a site & I'm really having to take it a step at a time & secondly, I wanted to make it easy & clear for visitors to navigate their way around. I'm currently preparing a selective contents page which will hopefully go up next week.
             Please keep the constructive comments coming. Expressions like "steep learning curve" don't really do it for me at the moment!
             Kind Regards to All,
                                                Nigel.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 07:06 AM

Janie, managed to change one 'player' picture so far...me on stage MANY years ago, but more in keeping with the music. The change won't appear for a few days though.
                                                                                                                                     Nigel.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 07:53 AM

Homepage is possibly a bit big. The instruction for moving to the next page is not visible straight away on this monitor. Try adding an alt (and title) in the href or img tag. eg

<A HREF="your homepage url" alt="Click here to visit" title="Click here to visit"><img etc etc

that will give a pop-up reminder (not a window). hover over this link cresby.com for an idea of how it works.

I would view on old browsers and try to get all relevant information on the first page visible in one hit. Old browsers/monitors will tell you how big to make it. And modern browsers/users with a load of icons/favourites/toolbars (- Google!) cut down the usable area. How you configure YOUR browser is not necessarily as bad as it gets, your audience won't blame themselves, regardless of the clutter they have.

If you are using Frontpage try help for "alt" properties. Or edit the HTML in notepad and look for IMG and HREF and see if you can slot the code in. Dreamweaver offers the alt property but maybe not title.

Otherwise the site has to represent you and it is clean and uncluttered.

The "Home.htm" page - beneath the fretboard images, the text obscures something (with block background?) and the text in a white box overflows the white box at the bottom. All of which could be seen by playing with several browsers and reducing the size of them to see how your pages react.

Best of luck. and try my page found here and give me feedback. There are 1600 lines of JavaScript and it may just misbehave if approached in a certain way. PM me or webmail me with comments.

TIA

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: GUEST,Mr Red on IE 8 & FF 3.6.13
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 08:43 AM

I suspect you have checked your site with IE8. And you may be running scripts without knowing it. You are in fact. They caused me serious problems on slow machines.
on IE it is a lot cleaner.
FF 3.6.13 shows some anomalies on screens of 1024 X 768 but not on 1280 x 720. Try a few - like your local library. Net cafes may have the latest equipment, libraries usually lag and run remote instances via proxy servers - they can show up problems - but ya gotta fix 'em if you want to reach the biggest audience. Whatever I say won't show you the visual problems. Look for yourself.

curretly viewed on WinXp

I check my site on IE5.5 - 8, FF2- 3.6 and sometimes Chrome and Opera (which is a stickler for standards adherence)

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 15 Jan 11 - 02:07 PM

Mr. Red, thank you for the detailed feedback. The advice about viewing my site with a variety of browsers & different versions of browsers is well taken & understood. However, when I see 'HREF' or 'edit the HTML', then I know I'm totally out of my depth. I'm building my site on a Mac using 'iWeb'. As I'm sure you know, 'iWeb' is a template based program, although I'm not using any of them, just the blank pages & working something up from scratch. I don't have to think about any sort of 'code' at all. I've only viewed my site on 'Safari', on which it displays perfectly & it also works well on iPhone too, but of course, they're all Apple products, so probably not unreasonable to expect them to 'play nicely' together! I had not appreciated how complicated this would become. Getting the content cleared for download has been bad enough! (And still ongoing). Mr. Red, I will PM you regarding your site, although I'm not sure I will be able to say anything terribly helpful. Thanks once again for taking so much time & trouble on my behalf,
                                     Kind Regards,
                                                             Nigel.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 20 Jan 11 - 08:42 AM

A huge thank you to everyone who took the time & trouble to make helpful suggestions. I incorporated all of them in a site update this morning. There is only so much one can do to 'tweak' a site in 'iWeb' to ensure it displays optimally in all browsers, so I've opted for a disclaimer on the first page that says the site is best viewed in 'Safari' (with a courtesy download link). My downloadable content should be ready in a week or two.
             The last word should go to Mr. Red (quoting from one of several incredibly helpful & detailed PMs)
                         "Asking opinions on Mudcat was the smartest move. We are a helpful lot."

                         How very true,
                                                   Kind Regards to All,
                                                                                     Nigel.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 22 Jan 11 - 03:38 AM

A final refresh. No more, I promise Joe!
                                                                     Nigel.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 28 Feb 11 - 06:37 AM

Website Update: I was hoping to be fully functional by mid March, but with more than three thousand titles to prepare, rather than the original seventy or so envisaged, my launch date has proven somewhat over optimistic! As they say in Swahili: "haraka haraka haina baraka"
                                                                   Remaining philosophical,
                                                                                                               Nigel.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 12:36 PM

I am very pleased to announce that nigelpatersonmusic.com went live today. Not all the content is in place yet, but there are still more than 500 titles to browse,
                                          Relieved & Exhausted,
                                                                               Nigel.

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Lester
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 12:48 PM

I don't get http://nigelpatersonmusic.com/nigelpatersonmusic.com/Content.html? I thought the titles were buttons which would open examples of your work "A few examples of my work" but nothing happens???

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Will Fly
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 12:49 PM

Well done, Nigel! It says 'best seen with Safari' but - so far - Firefox on my Mac seems to work OK.

Best of luck!

Subject: RE: Tech: My New Website - Nigel Paterson
From: Nigel Paterson
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 05:14 AM

Lester, the content page is only there to give a 'flavour' of what will be available. There are no hyperlinks. I always intended this page to be a stop-gap in advance of the site 'going live'. Now that the Download Store is on line, the content page becomes redundant & will be deleted in the next day or two. If you visit the Store, you will be able to browse & view examples of everything currently available. My own arrangements are still in preparation & will be added in the next few days, so not all the content is in place yet.
       Will Fly, thank you for your good wishes. Yes,it works ok in FF on my Mac too. The Download Store should work perfectly in all browsers.
                                                                                                Nigel.