Website help

I

imported_Jakerooni

New member
Well I'm in the midst of completely revamping my entire website structure and I really want to add more impact.



Here is the intital "shell" I had someone come up with that does flash sites. He's going to hand it over to me for full control once I learn how to play with flash. (because the upkeep is going to be insane)



B&D Detailing



But I want to know how does one imbed a slideshow? I have a bunch of folders of details all uploaded on Photobucket and they have their own slide show. I need to imbed that into my website to make it seemless and I have to admit I'm rather stupid when it comes to this kind of thing.



Here's an example of the slideshow. I would like to embed this into my current website to play around with it and get it down. Any info outside "just post a link to it" would be greatly appreciated. My overall goal it to make it look like it belongs to and in the website itself.



Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
 
Extreme load time on the website, I know its still in the creation phase which is good, find some way to optimize the site so the flash loads faster. Flash is awsome but you don't want to much. On average try to have each page load within 2-5 seconds this is the time an average web user is willing to wait for content. I gave up on trying to view the page when I got stuck at 66%, ask him to reduce the ammount of flash used in the site or reduce the quality of the timages used if any are located on the home page, often times people use top quality images that take forever to load when something at 70% looks just as good and takes half the time to load. Also if there is a gallery of photos on the site make sure they are thumbnails and not full size pictures. The slideshow feature is something I want to do as well, I think it adds a nice touch to the site. One more thing what im going to do for my site is include videos of our process so customers can see exactly what they are getting from us. Anyway good luck with your site and im sorry if I was harsh, your on the right track just needs some refinement.
 
huh?? I didn't take that as harsh at all. Since it's completely still up in the air (I already know the name itself is changing) this is the time to get all these quirks out of the way. I know once it loads on the home page there's zero wait time for any other page. Although i have high speed internet so It might be a PITA for someone with slower speeds. Any clue about the imbedding part? I know I want to do some vids as well too. I know just like photobucket with pics I can upload vids to youtube like alot of other people do but I want the viewer to be able to see those video's through my site so it flows real nice. I see a lot of sites set up like this Just not detailing sites. So I know what I'm after is definatly possible. Just not sure if it's something I can do myself or if I have to outsource this if it's in my price range. Thanks for the tips though.
 
It's a great looking website, but i would recommended that you use flash.

If you are developing a web site for getting more potential customers, then it is recommended to limit Flash only to certain portions of the web site or not to use at all. Why??

1) Some users browser don't support flash.(They would have to download it and that take time, This might lead to losing of potential visitors.)

2. It can be slow to user that have dial up(A lot of people still use it), This might lead to losing of potential visitors.

3.It is hard to edit and add content(Like sideshow), unless you understand flash.

4. SEO-Search Engine Optimization (And this is the most important) Flash is not very search engine friendly. Search engines are often unable to process and rank flash website. So you customer can't find you.

I recommended using HTML. Ask you designer if he can convert it to HTML.
 
I've been in the web business since the beginning. I concur with the others. Flash isn't going to help you get more customers, and may even turn some off. The trend these days is to lightweight, standards-compliant sites that are great to view in mobile devices such as iPhones (which don't even support Flash).



Use of good, clean CSS and ********** can be suprisingly dynamic, check out this site for a photo gallery software that works great: Highslide JS - ********** thumbnail viewer



Embedding videos from YouTube is really easy in HTML.



I know it is hard to drop your investment in Flash, but if you move to HTML you won't regret it...none of my clients ever have.



(Edit: replace all the "****" with J_A_V_A_S_C_R_I_P_T...apparently not a good word to put into the post editor here!)
 
Well the only investment I have is time right now. I'm a HUGE fan of bartering. I pay cash for as little as I possibly can anymore and usually offer up my services in trade before I offer up any dollars. The site I have right now I feel is just to plain. Although it really does work because there are no other detailers anywhere near me with any sort of website more than just a landing page on the local yellowbooks and such. (still can't figure out why no one else does it) I have some decent programs to build a new site with including CS4 master suite and Publisher 2007. I'm just not fluent in them yet. (I just play around with them here and there) I'm really going to look into that site it looks like something I would use. Any other tips guys?
 
I would also suggest HTML... I hate at least 75% of flash sites I visit as they have just too much content loading at the same time and it takes way too long... I think if you "spice up" your current website you'll be good to go... maybe stick with only 2 colors throughout for background, text, etc., make the font more interesting, better photos (I only looked at 'detail of the month' of the Cayman S and photos seemed poor quality), ... that's all I can think of for now, hope it helps.



I made my site in Dreamweaver and many people, especially from Autopia, have told me it's one of the best they've seen... I like how my site looks but I know it's not efficient as I'm not web guru and didn't do everything the right way... for example, my header has selections like 'home', 'info', etc. which glow when you scroll over them, but each time you mouse over the text another pic loads that's as big as the header, because I didn't know how to do it the right way (any web guys here can PM me regarding that haha)... simple stuff like that is off but that's all in the coding so it doesn't affect visitors' liking of the site



In short, stick with HTML, make it your own style and make it pop.
 
Yea. I hate the fonts. I made mine using Tripod's "cookie cutter" sitebuilder and they have 4 font options.. That's it. I started playing in Dreamweaver a little bit ago to see how I can jazz it up. I was able to change the fonts to something much better. But I'm really not all that good with HTML yet either. The pics from here on out should be much much better as I now have a DSLR (Sony a300) camera to take much better pics with. I was bummed to no end how dull and lifeless the caymen's pics turned out. It really should've been one of my shining gems of a detail and everything was just "blah" that's basically when I said it was time to upgrade camera's So rest assured much better pics are coming.





EDIT* Just checked out your site and yea that's really along the lines of what I would want. Great job on it. Did you create all the graphics and logo yourself? And one thing I noticed about your site. It never gives a location as to where you are? Unless I just missed it.
 
If you want a mind-trip, check out css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design and do a "view source" on the code that builds all these pages. Super-lightweight, no crappy HTML table formats, and plenty of opportunity to style with images. Each page sample on the site runs the same HTML code, with a different style sheet and images! Less is more...
 
All the advise here is on point.



I should add that the sites that rank highest in search engines and the sites of large, succesful shops, have one thing in common: size and relevance of content.



Be thorough, explain your entire process in detail, and use key words frequenlty (Flint car detailing, Flint car washing, Flint car polishing).



This site has at least 20 total pages, and is full of long descriptions of all their services: autobellausa.com



It dominates the search engines in its market.
 
Nice and simple. I like that. I'm actually back in College (being 35 it's a real joy let me tell ya) for graphic communication. I'm just at the beginning but here shortly I'm sure i'm going to learn all about these lovely options. I'm just not the most patient person when it comes to learning something new. I like to get my feet wet and get at it.
 
Jakerooni said:
EDIT* Just checked out your site and yea that's really along the lines of what I would want. Great job on it. Did you create all the graphics and logo yourself? And one thing I noticed about your site. It never gives a location as to where you are? Unless I just missed it.
Click to expand...



I created everything except the DetailedImage logo on the info page. It doesn't give the location other than home page title "Chicagoland" because I don't have a fixed location just yet and didn't want to include information that would have potential clients looking to stop by in person and finding a small house not a detail shop.



BoxsterCharlie said:
If you want a mind-trip, check out css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design and do a "view source" on the code that builds all these pages. Super-lightweight, no crappy HTML table formats, and plenty of opportunity to style with images. Each page sample on the site runs the same HTML code, with a different style sheet and images! Less is more...
Click to expand...



Yea that page is awesome... my goal is to learn css soon and re-do my website because, like I said before, it could do a lot of "touch up" with coding.
 
BoxsterCharlie said:
The trend these days is to lightweight, standards-compliant sites that are great to view in mobile devices such as iPhones (which don't even support Flash).



Use of good, clean CSS and ********** can be suprisingly dynamic, check out this site for a photo gallery software that works great: Highslide JS - ********** thumbnail viewer
Click to expand...



Great advice here, and I use the Highslide gallery. Plenty of documentation available making it simple to install and implement into a standard HTML page.
 
Jakerooni said:
Well I'm in the midst of completely revamping my entire website structure and I really want to add more impact.



Here is the intital "shell" I had someone come up with that does flash sites. He's going to hand it over to me for full control once I learn how to play with flash. (because the upkeep is going to be insane)



B&D Detailing



But I want to know how does one imbed a slideshow? I have a bunch of folders of details all uploaded on Photobucket and they have their own slide show. I need to imbed that into my website to make it seemless and I have to admit I'm rather stupid when it comes to this kind of thing.



Here's an example of the slideshow. I would like to embed this into my current website to play around with it and get it down. Any info outside "just post a link to it" would be greatly appreciated. My overall goal it to make it look like it belongs to and in the website itself.



Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket
Click to expand...



very nice website where did you learn flash design it takes forever to learn action script
 
dallen said:
It's a great looking website, but i would recommended that you use flash.

If you are developing a web site for getting more potential customers, then it is recommended to limit Flash only to certain portions of the web site or not to use at all. Why??

1) Some users browser don't support flash.(They would have to download it and that take time, This might lead to losing of potential visitors.)

2. It can be slow to user that have dial up(A lot of people still use it), This might lead to losing of potential visitors.

3.It is hard to edit and add content(Like sideshow), unless you understand flash.

4. SEO-Search Engine Optimization (And this is the most important) Flash is not very search engine friendly. Search engines are often unable to process and rank flash website. So you customer can't find you.

I recommended using HTML. Ask you designer if he can convert it to HTML.
Click to expand...



Couldn't have said it better myself :)
 
Jake,



New site looks very nice!!! And, for the type of work you put out, I think the overall theme is perfect! The downer is the flash slowing things down. But, for me; if the overall site looks interesting, I'm gonna stay tuned and let the flash run. I say go with the flash!
 
Well I had a couple of guys working on different ideas for me. (one of which I showed here already) But I haven't heard from any of them in awhile. But I'm about half way through college for this stuff right now so I might just end up doing it all myself here soon anyways . I did the current one all by my lonesome and it seems to pull the right amount of traffic in.
 
Feedback:

-flash movie should be centered in screen.

-clicking b and d detailing should take the user to your about page, not all the way back to where they need to enter your site

-is this a template?

-price page needs to inform customer what they are getting for $X

-the image of the rx8 is more of a 3d model, compared to the rest of the cars.. changing this would add similarity throughout the entire site...
 
I thought the link that was posted was a demo, not a live site??
ohiostate said:
Feedback:

-flash movie should be centered in screen.

-clicking b and d detailing should take the user to your about page, not all the way back to where they need to enter your site

-is this a template?

-price page needs to inform customer what they are getting for $X

-the image of the rx8 is more of a 3d model, compared to the rest of the cars.. changing this would add similarity throughout the entire site...
Click to expand...
 
Yea that's not live at all. it's just a plain shell to show me what the mechanics of the site would be like. There is zero information there right now. If I do go ahead with it there would be a lot of changes and such.. Just the mechanics would work like that.
 
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