Realmac Software

I just put what I hope are the finishing touches on a new site I just built for a custom jeweler client, and would appreciate input from others, good or bad, as long as it is constructive criticism.

I struggled with IE compatibility and uneven behavior with the first dropdown menu theme I was using, but finally settled on Robbie White’s Syphon theme and now have rock solid dropdown menu performance.  The theme is highly modifed, from a visual standpoint, to match what I started with (ICon theme).

I have several hundred images that are presented with Collage II, which I’m using for the first time and really like.  For navigation, with the many galleries, I built my own forward, back and page graphics.  It isn’t as slick as a stock solution might be, but it looks good (IMHO) with the rest and seems to function properly.

Elsewhere I have used lots of stacks, but they all seem to get along with one another.  This was also my first site using Stacks, as I have always used blocks in the past.  I would have used Stacks on the Gallery pages, too, but was not able to incorporate Carousel into a Stacks page.  The only thing I gave up with using Blocks on the gallery pages is the ability to have the black background go all the way to the edge of the page in IE because of the overflow issues with IE.  If there is a way around it, I’d love to hear about it.

As another first for me, I"m embedding a Google calendar for his show schedule, and really like the way that the client will be able to update his site with that with very little effort.

Thanks in advance for taking a look and any suggestions you might have.

http://www.randypolk.com

Great looking site ... and my god, what unbelievable jewelry!

The only problem I noticed was Randy is misspelled “Ramdy” in the eighth slide in the home page slideshow. Also, in the calendar “Art at the Glen” in August is in Glenview, Illinois—there is no “Glen” illinois (that’s probably one for him to correct).

Vasily

Vasily Ingogly - 06 July 2010 09:48 PM

Great looking site ... and my god, what unbelievable jewelry!

The only problem I noticed was Randy is misspelled “Ramdy” in the eighth slide in the home page slideshow. Also, in the calendar “Art at the Glen” in August is in Glenview, Illinois—there is no “Glen” illinois (that’s probably one for him to correct).

Vasily

That’s two bog gold stars for you, Vasily.  Thanks for the comments, and even more so, the typo catches.  I’m still snow blind from looking at this so long, and fresh eyes really help.

One other thing on slide #8 ... it should be spelled “overwhelming” rather than “overwhealming”. I think I might go to the Art at the Glen show in August; his designs appeal to the Aging Hippie in me.

Vasily

One more catch and you get a coupon for a free ring*, Vasily.  How refreshing to find someone that actually reads.

* Sorry, not authorized to promise one of Randy’s rings, Mr. Aging Hippie.  If you might be interested in more than just oogling them at the show, though, I can send a 10% off coupon if you PM me.

Colorwave - 06 July 2010 09:09 PM

I just put what I hope are the finishing touches on a new site I just built for a custom jeweler client, and would appreciate input from others, good or bad, as long as it is constructive criticism.

I struggled with IE compatibility and uneven behavior with the first dropdown menu theme I was using, but finally settled on Robbie White’s Syphon theme and now have rock solid dropdown menu performance.  The theme is highly modifed, from a visual standpoint, to match what I started with (ICon theme).

I have several hundred images that are presented with Collage II, which I’m using for the first time and really like.  For navigation, with the many galleries, I built my own forward, back and page graphics.  It isn’t as slick as a stock solution might be, but it looks good (IMHO) with the rest and seems to function properly.

Elsewhere I have used lots of stacks, but they all seem to get along with one another.  This was also my first site using Stacks, as I have always used blocks in the past.  I would have used Stacks on the Gallery pages, too, but was not able to incorporate Carousel into a Stacks page.  The only thing I gave up with using Blocks on the gallery pages is the ability to have the black background go all the way to the edge of the page in IE because of the overflow issues with IE.  If there is a way around it, I’d love to hear about it.

As another first for me, I"m embedding a Google calendar for his show schedule, and really like the way that the client will be able to update his site with that with very little effort.

Thanks in advance for taking a look and any suggestions you might have.

http://www.randypolk.com

Great Site, Great Job! I would love to know what your method was to shoot the photos?

alanancy - 07 July 2010 04:44 AM

Great Site, Great Job! I would love to know what your method was to shoot the photos?

Many thanks.  I didn’t shoot all of the jewelry, as my client has been in the custom jewelry business for many years, so he had a lot of existing photography that predated my involvement.  I shot perhaps a quarter of the photos.  For what I did, I used two large 2’ x 4’ softboxes with studio strobes, on stands to get big, soft highlights. I also used white and black cards around each piece to sculpt the light.  I think the other photographers used hot lights, with more and smaller sources.  I think the best jewelry photography lights up the gemstones well and has highlights on the metal, but also some reflected shadows for a little definition and drama.

The site was down for 36 hours after changing servers with GoDaddy.  They promised a few minutes of downtime, and failed miserably with that promise.  I’m not a fan, but didn’t choose them myself.  I struggled some in getting the email contact page working with their non-RW friendly setup, but think I finally have sorted out.

Colorwave - 06 July 2010 11:33 PM

One more catch and you get a coupon for a free ring*, Vasily.  How refreshing to find someone that actually reads.

* Sorry, not authorized to promise one of Randy’s rings, Mr. Aging Hippie.  If you might be interested in more than just oogling them at the show, though, I can send a 10% off coupon if you PM me.

I’ll just be a Looky Lou at the August show ... jewelry is beyond my budget at the moment (though maybe not next year).

Vasily

Paul Bradforth - 26 July 2010 09:24 AM

On the Home page, there’s a slideshow that, for me, never loads. I just get the spinning ‘loading’ icon, and nothing ever happens, and at the bottom of the slideshow container it says ‘Photo 2 of 11’.

I’m getting the same error.

Looks great! I’m curious, are you still using the robbie white template? I didn’t know one could get a stacks page to go all the way up as to create a solid background. Looking at Robbie’s page there doesn’t seem to be a container (forgive me if I don’t have the correct term) where you have your content in a separate section . Did you do a lot of modifying to the CSS? Thanks for any info.

A very nice looking site, and, as others have said, great jewellery. A few points though:

Very nice use of the Collage throughout, but you’re allowing it to output PNGs instead of JPEGs, and they are around four times larger than JPEGs and take much longer to load, for no increase in quality. The couple I looked at were around 300Kb each, and they should really be no larger than about 70Kb. You can alter this by changing the ‘Image Format’ in the first tab of the Page Inspector from ‘Original’ to ‘JPEG Medium’. They’ll load much faster and look exactly the same.

To my mind, the body text on many of the pages is way too large. Example: the ‘About You’ page (great title for a page, by the way). For me, it gives the look of having been made for the visually challenged, and I don’t think that’s the kind of audience you’re aiming at! Why so large? I have to lean back from the screen to read it â?¦

On the Home page, there’s a slideshow that, for me, never loads. I just get the spinning ‘loading’ icon, and nothing ever happens, and at the bottom of the slideshow container it says ‘Photo 2 of 11’.

But generally, nice looking theme, good looking site, lovely job.

Paul Bradforth - 26 July 2010 09:24 AM

On the Home page, there’s a slideshow that, for me, never loads. I just get the spinning ‘loading’ icon, and nothing ever happens, and at the bottom of the slideshow container it says ‘Photo 2 of 11’.

Same here but I thought it was just my system.

slideshow not working for me either

Great site, I like the description on hover over the images

From a marketing standpoint, I’d work on pushing in some more “Calls to Action” - i.e. “Buy Here”, “Register Now”, etc.