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So, I've bought my domain www.spencerderek.com, and currently it redirects to a school-supplied demo reel/portfolio site. However, as of today, I am locked out of the studios at school for good and thus can no longer access the server to update that site (It will be up for two more years). I am therefore beginning work on a portfolio/ demo reel site of my own. Any tips would be welcome. I have never created a site of my own before and know nothing of HTML. Luckily I have access to a computer with Dreamweaver and both my roommates have just recently made their sites and can help me out a bit. I intend to essentially steal the layout of my friend's site www.notzuza.net, but there are some tweaks I need to make (I know for example that lightbox is not supported by IE, so I'm going to want to use something different for the gallery section).

I would send Ame a PM.

Okay, I can't help you out with HTML, but there are some basic marketer things I can suggest, especially after checking out your friend's site that you're intending to imitate.

First of all, unless you intend to make the font big and bold, don't do light text on dark backgrounds for content text. It's harder to read, and some folks actually find it really irritating. If you're using this site to promote yourself, you need to keep that in mind.

Second of all, you always need stuff on your homepage. I noticed your friend doesn't really have anything there, and it makes the site look like it's empty. Forcing people to click to get to *any* content is a bad move - rule of thumb says that you'll lose 90% of your audience for each click they have to go through. Now, a good site with built-in audience can beat that easily, but as a rule, I would start from that metric. If you're going to have a blog or nested twitter feed or something, I would actually put the feed right on the homepage next to a mini-gallery.

Third, make a "Contact Me" tab to go along the top, and have it be a basic form (name, email, message). That way, you can avoid spam-bots grabbing your email address, and people can easily get in contact with you.

If it's an option, see if you can find the plug-ins to make a Wordpress.com blog work for you. It's free, their layout tools are extremely powerful, and people with WP logins can comment on your blog easily (if that's what you want).

EDIT: And no matter what you use, use an analytics package so you can track where people come from to get to your site, where they go on your site, the abandon rate, popular pages, etc. Then use that data to optimize your site.

I looked into wordpress and found it HORRIBLY confusing. The number of loops I have to jump through just to actually be able to actually use it is ridiculous. (download and install wordpress, set up a wordpress account, set up a MYSQLDatabase, create a MYSQLDatabase account, etc, etc)

I'm not setting up a blog. A blog is actually what I want to get away from. It is regarded as unprofessional, at least for the purpose of looking for jobs. I think its largely because it orders things chronologically, which may not actually put your best work first, and forces people to actually look through archives and scroll down to see what they're looking for. As you said, each click loses a good portion of your viewers.
I know there are tools you can get to alter that though. I am looking at a gallery type setup though.

I actually meant wordpress.com not .org. .com is hosted by them on their own server, .org is for people who want to use the tools, but on their own server and with full customization control.

But if you don't want a blog in the first place, don't bother anyways.

SpecialKO said:

I actually meant wordpress.com not .org. .com is hosted by them on their own server, .org is for people who want to use the tools, but on their own server and with full customization control.

But if you don't want a blog in the first place, don't bother anyways.

Click to expand...

Yeah, no. I am still using spencerderek.com, and just changing from redirecting to Sheridan's site to actually creating a site of my own.

Actually i need to figure out what to do with the blogspot that I currently have.

I definitely think you're right about the front page looking empty though. I pointed that out to both my roommates as well. I think what I'll do to keep it simple for now but keep the site from looking empty on the homepage, is have an image roll similar to Stephen Silver's www.silvertoons.com. Rather than one simple graphic image like on my friend's site.

That image roll looks great. Shows off work and makes it clear that there's stuff to check out.

With a substantial amount of help from my roommate, work is well underway. Almost done, actually. Just got to do one more page, then update lytebox with new images for previous, next and close, and change my main title page to redirect back to the actual new main page, rather than back to the Sheridan site.
Want to take a look, see what you think, tell me if its broken? (I'm previewing in Firefox and in Safari and not seeing any problems, but I'm curious about other browsers, cause Firefox has done some weird things today when interpreting the tables)

*EDITED to correct url*

Just about finished. All that's left is to swap out those previous, next and close buttons in lytebox, and upload a new favicon.

Dunno if you're doing something in particular as we speak, but it 404s for me.

Oh, that page was just sort of a test page, so that if people WERE using the actual link, they wouldn't see my coding errors and stuff as I was doin' it. That page is gone now, and the actual link is just www.spencerderek.com (Its also in my signature)
Added at: 03:26
I still need to create an alternative way to view the portfolio section, incase anyone viewing it is using IE.

I lol'd at the pcture in the Bio.

It is legitimately the best photo ever taken of me. I had to use it.

Unless you've got a serious anti-spam blocker on your domain email, I would actually make a contact form instead of listing your email adress.

Looks very nice, otherwise (in Chrome on Mac).

SpecialKO said:

Unless you've got a serious anti-spam blocker on your domain email, I would actually make a contact form instead of listing your email adress.

Looks very nice, otherwise (in Chrome on Mac).

Click to expand...

Do you mean just have it in text/ as an image but not actually create a link? I actually have no idea what kind of anti spam I have with my domain. Its hosted through bluehost, if anyone is familiar with that site.

No, definitely not as text. Bots don't need links to grab email addresses as long as they're text.

Making an image which doesn't link is one way, but I mean make a contact form, where people fill out their names, email, and body, that then gets emailed to you. You might need some php to set it up, but it will keep bots from grabbing the email and spamming it to high heaven.

I've found the image method delays the spam onslaught, but doesn't stop it from ultimately happening. The thing I'd be concerned about with ONLY a PHP contact form though is, what if a potential client wants to find your email address to contact you later/prefers to message you with their own email program. I would figure if you're seriously ready for work, you may just have to take the spam as a given, set up your spam controls appropriately, and just put your email address up there.