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Wayne J. Cosshall - 14 Jan 2007 09:17 GMT

Hi All,

I've redesigned the article page on DIMi so I can put larger images in
articles. The rest of the site hasn't changed yet but I would love some
feedback on the page design. Any article on the site will show it, such
as:<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=799>

Cheers,

Wayne

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Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

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James McNangle - 14 Jan 2007 23:59 GMT

>Hi All,
>
>I've redesigned the article page on DIMi so I can put larger images in
>articles. The rest of the site hasn't changed yet but I would love some
>feedback on the page design. Any article on the site will show it, such
>as:<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=799>

I thought I had noticed the other day that one of your pages seemed less
cluttered, but this page seems to be exactly as I remember it when I complained
last. I would get rid of at least one of the columns of xxxx -- sorry, not
particularly relevant material, on either side of the page, and I would display
the sample images on pages of their own, without any of the clutter. Then you
really could make them substantially bigger.

As an added bonus, I suspect that you would also find that if you simplified
your pages they would load much faster.

James McNangle

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Douglas - 15 Jan 2007 06:47 GMT

: >Hi All,
: >
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
:
: James McNangle

---------------------------------

You may find, James, Wayne's agenda is not particularly to display photos
but to entice you to click on one of the advertisers you object to. This
site seems to be a revenue raising exercise from Google and Amazon ads (14
on one page really is over the top) and way to many other advertisers on the
same page to make it inviting for the masses.

My personal experience is to be distressed and switched off that so many of
his seemingly interesting links are in fact links to other commercial sites
intent on raising money from providing far too little content and way too
many advertisements from "click-through" banks.

Most Internationally successful "Photo information" sites make their money
by selling the owners books or offering Photo tours and even classes on
photography. Fred Miranda is an example of this success. He sells his own
actions and plugins for Photoshop and (last I looked) was pretty much free
of "click-through" ads.

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Wedding Photography anywhere between Kempsy NSW and Rainbow Beach Qld.
http://www.photosbydouglas.com
Your digital photos enlarged and printed on Canvas
http://canvas.photosbydouglas.com

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Wayne J. Cosshall - 15 Jan 2007 07:24 GMT

> You may find, James, Wayne's agenda is not particularly to display photos
> but to entice you to click on one of the advertisers you object to. This
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> actions and plugins for Photoshop and (last I looked) was pretty much free
> of "click-through" ads.

Hi Douglas,

Since I assume your wedding photography and printing is not for free, I
assume you are not averse to people making a quid?

Having been in magazine publishing for many years I can tell you it is
always an issue of appealing to the readers, as without them you get no
advertising. I have personally always found the pressure to put ads on
the right hand page in a mag more intrusive than ads placed consistently
on a web page that you quickly learn to ignore. Some mags run ads that
look like editorial at first glance, and that worries me a lot.

I am experimenting with the page look. I think the three google blocks
are not unreasonable (though the placement may be) but there are too
many amazon ones. I've been playing with their placement, thus the large
number on there at present, as I play with placement. Looking at many
similar sites, I'll be keeping one banner ad at the top (but may move it
above the site banner, as some do), move the top google ad, etc. As to
the others, they will be trimmed in number and undoubtedly moved around
till I am happy with them.

The book projects are underway and the workshops have been on for a long
time, just locally so far.

Cheers,

Wayne

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Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

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Wayne J. Cosshall - 15 Jan 2007 07:10 GMT

> I thought I had noticed the other day that one of your pages seemed less
> cluttered, but this page seems to be exactly as I remember it when I complained
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> James McNangle

Hi James,

Actually it is different, one column on the right gone.

With this layout I get 650 pixel wide images. I really do think this is
as big as you would want to go with article images in the juggling act
with download speed. The important images to see big, such as those for
judging image quality, can be downloaded in full anyway, so I am not
sure what I would gain from going even larger on the images. Then you
run into issues with people viewing the site on laptops and older machines.

Cheers,

Wayne

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Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

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Andrew McKenna - 15 Jan 2007 08:55 GMT

> Hi James,
>
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>
> Wayne

A suggestion: your padding appears to me to be way insufficient. Opening
out the whitespace at the column edges (it looks to be 0 or 1 pixel atm)
will considerably improve legibility at the cost of a few pixels.

I was going to ask why you kept the right-hand sidebar at all, but I was
using Firefox 2.0 with NoScript; when I rendered the same page in IE7.0
I saw all the Google ads. Sigh.

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Cheers

Andrew

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Wayne J. Cosshall - 15 Jan 2007 11:48 GMT

> A suggestion: your padding appears to me to be way insufficient. Opening
> out the whitespace at the column edges (it looks to be 0 or 1 pixel atm)
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> using Firefox 2.0 with NoScript; when I rendered the same page in IE7.0
> I saw all the Google ads. Sigh.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks. I'll look at the padding.

If you can suggest an alternate revenue strategy that earns some return
for all the effort I put into the site that will let me drop the google
ads I am listening :)

Cheers,

Wayne

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Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

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James McNangle - 16 Jan 2007 00:30 GMT

>If you can suggest an alternate revenue strategy that earns some return
>for all the effort I put into the site that will let me drop the google
>ads I am listening :)

How does Digital Photography Review fund its site? It looks to be a much more
expensive site to produce, yet it keeps its ads to an unobtrusive level. I feel
you must be well into the region of diminishing returns with the level of ads
and general clutter on your site. Because of all this, it's not a site I would
bookmark.

Incidentally you have a link on the two photos of the moon on your home page,
but this takes you to a general discussion on infrared photography, with no
obvious mention of the moon photos. And why is the infrared photo of the moon
sharper than the normal photo? I would have thought that the sharpness should
be the same.

James McNangle

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Mr.T - 16 Jan 2007 00:39 GMT

>And why is the infrared photo of the moon
> sharper than the normal photo? I would have thought that the sharpness should
> be the same.

I would expect it may be sharper due to less atmospheric distortion.

MrT.

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Wayne J. Cosshall - 16 Jan 2007 03:32 GMT

> How does Digital Photography Review fund its site? It looks to be a much more
> expensive site to produce, yet it keeps its ads to an unobtrusive level. I feel
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
>
> James McNangle

DPReview sells advertising on their site. They also make money off of
the camera price listings. Interesting, I find the animated ads they
have on their home page more annoying than static google or amazon ads.

When a camera is converted for IR, not only is the IR blocking filter
removed, but so is the anti-moire filter, so the images do get a small
boost in sharpness from this. Some of what you see may also be an
enhanced contrast effect of the IR. There could also be a slight
atmospheric seeing effect from the IR, this I am not sure of.

Cheers,

Wayne

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Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

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