New News for Old Readers
A man reading the newspaper in Georgetown, Penang.
I realize most people don’t like change. We love things to remain the same. We love the comfort and security of what we know. So, change becomes almost an advisory rather than a friend. Yet, change is inevitable. Personally, I thrive on change. I always have. If things remain the same for too long then I feel either boxed in or stagnate. I come by this honestly. My Pop was the same way. He loved to travel. If he wasn’t driving across the country or flying to some distant land then he felt uneasy. I think he developed this need for change or wanderlust in the military. Our family was always being transferred. From Germany to Texas, from Tennessee to Alaska we were always moving. With that said, I decided I needed more change. Not wanting to uproot my family and move to Mongolia I made the choice to simply make changes to my blog and give it a new look.
You are always welcome to criticize, but never without a suggestion. It is a bit like a photo critique. It is never helpful to just say, “I don’t like it” or “I love it” alone. Why do you not like it or love it?
A little background information on this blog’s new theme seems appropriate. This theme allows me to format the three types of posts. Yesterday’s post was formatted in a style called “Image”. This is designed to simply post one image with a short paragraph about the shot. It automatically puts a tab under the photo with the EXIF data. I like this format because as a photographic blog this gives an opportunity to post an image frequently without having to spend a lot of time writing a blog post to go with it. The next format is simply called “Gallery”. The gallery format, as you can surmise from the title, allows you to do a post with a gallery of images. There seems to be some bugs in this. Once I get it worked out I’ll post a gallery of images. The “Standard” format is what you’re reading now.
Changes like these always are a work in progress. There are small little issues that I’ve yet to figure out. I didn’t change only for the sake of change. There was actually some thoughtful motivation behind it. I was listening to a podcast on Photoshelter a few months back. They were interviewing a photo editor from a major magazine and this editor stated several times that when she visits a photographer’s website she wants quick access to a series of galleries. She said that photo editors want to get a feel of a photographer’s work and abilities. My old blog theme I used did not allow for this. This is why I’ve set up, what I’ve called “My Best”. Of course these portfolios will grow over time and images will change and rotate through. Another area that I wanted to change was how people comment in posts. My old blog didn’t allow for commenting on the homepage. This new theme not only allows for comments but with the tab that states “Comments” it really invites people to comment.
Poke around if you see problems e-mail me. (Thanks Erin) If you like it or don’t like – it feel free to leave a comment with suggestions on how it might improve. Let me leave you with this this thought:
“20 years from now you will be disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the one’s you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain
Hey Matt,
Really nice to see the make over of your site and as you have pointed out the precense of the gallery links and portfolio link makes a lot of difference.
From what i see the performance / loading time is noticeably slow even on my high speed broadband esp when i clicked on teh MyBest link above. If that gets addressed I guess it solves the problem. But that apart i love your site and always love to wait for the DoF podcasts 🙂
Good luck.
Shiv
India
Thanks Shiv. I think it is my hosting that is slow. I am looking at switching this week. …More change!
How is the performance now? Is it any better?
Matt, I like the changes….and here is why (for what is worth). For one, It definitely feels easier to navigate this new design. Also I like the idea of having galleries of your best work easily accessible. It helps to know the technical parts of your decision to change, totally makes sense.
Thanks Joe. Yeah, there was method to my madness. 😉
Looking great, Matt! Nice to see that you’ve got your comment bug dealt with too.
Thanks Erin for all your advice. It was helpful.
I sometimes think I’m a little old lady trapped inside a 30-something body. I can be quite resistant to change. 🙂
This layout is great for all the reasons you’ve done it. It’s easier to navigate around and get a sense of the entire body of your work, and I’m sure once I get used to it, I’ll enjoy the thumbnail layout for your blog entries. I just confused when blog entries aren’t in the traditional date-ordered format. Bear with me, I’ll catch up!
On a technical note, the thumbnail images on the front of your ‘My best’ galleries all look a little soft, although they’re back to their usual glory once inside the gallery. Is some information being lost when they’re downsized?
Thanks Cathy. The “My Best” gallery is something produced within the theme. But the “Galleries” page is produced by PhotoShelter. So that might explain the quality difference.
Cathy, I made a menu item, “Blog by Date”. But I am not sure that works. Tell me what you think.
That works for me! Gosh…now I feel like a real fuddy-duddy… 🙂
Now that I look through it more and got over the change (I really liked your old blog) I realize I like it a lot -it just had to grow on me, and I was initially thrown out by the yellow background ..
The idea of having your best work display separately is great for the ones that are visiting for the first time and want to have a glimpse of your work. I specially like the simplicity of that gallery, that, I think is a major improvement from the old one.
The “Galleries” link is not working for me, but guess you already know that and are working on it.
Having the sponsors at the bottom makes it look cleaner, really nice.
it is loading a bit slow, not terribly.
I’ve been working on my site for a couple of months, didn’t hire anybody and now I regret it, there is still a lot of things I need to change and tweak, but I still published it so I can get the feed back and frankly was tired of changing things and not having it online…so I feel your pain!
Thanks – Yes, the yellow was a hard sell to most folks. I liked it, but like this better. What you said about getting it up and making the changes on the fly is really what I had to do. Doing the bulk of this by myself was not easy. I had way too many small issues, so I have a buddy from Texas that knows CSS and is helping me make the small but !important changes. The Gallery link works. It is the Galley page that is messed up and needs work. That is the next big issue. But now that you mention it, I might take that link down or make a Coming Soon page.
Matea,
The site should load quicker now.I changed server location and tweaked some internal things to speed things up.
Q: Do you like comments listed from most current to least or from old to new?
From Old to new, like it is right now….for me it’s more natural to see it that way, I know some people don’t like scrolling down, but it confuses me when it’s from new to old. personal preference…