Thread: check out my NEW and IMPROVED website!

hey, I'm super excited about the new website Brian Feister of DreamStarStudios created for me! DreamStar Studios | Web, Graphic, & Identity Design Studio (Delaware) | Photoshop, CSS, xHTML, & Web Design Blog

I'm SO excited I wanted you all to check it out, and tell me what you think good and bad... and I also wanted to give a HUGE GIANT thanks to Brian for his AWESOME work!!! Go Brian! He did all the photography on my site too, and he does all sorts of other promotional work.. so check out his site after mine!

I have a Journal page that I'm particularly stoked about- I hope to use it for dance tips/articles and advice and other useful resources for dancers and fans alike. I'll keep you all updated on how it's working out!


The link to my site's in my signature line below... please take a peek! ! !

Wow, I just love the look of this site! Elegant and uncluttured, yet artistic and beautiful. And you look gorgeous. Everything's easy to navigate and find, too.

If I may give feedback, two points bothered me a little:

- Viewing it on a laptop, your image is so big that the content on each page is right down the bottom of my screen. It could be easy to miss on a small screen.
- I think there's a bit too much text at the top of your performance page. As a client, what I'd want to see most are the 'packages' you offer, less of the introductory blurb.

Now, having said that, I believe my website has exactly the same problem with wordiness. I must go edit it down!

Brian ROCKS!!!!!! Every one of his websites has a different character to it and lets the dancer's personality come through. And he's a great photographer, too!

PS - I really like the understated, clean look of your new site. The old one was incredible, but this is just so slick.

Love it! Now I really want one by him

I think it looks great! Really nice work. I am going to send this to boyfriend who is building me a wordpress site for inspiration!

My only concern is that I don't like how you can't scroll through images in the gallery (or I can't figure it out). You have open a picture and close it, open a picture and close it. It was too tedious so I stopped looking at pics even though I wanted to see them all. :)

Hey, thanks for checking it out! :) He also did Carrara's.. she's 2nd or 3rd to post and her web link's in her signature too. He does awesome stuff!!!

I think you're right about the wordiness on that particular page.. thankfully the way he did the sites I can edit all that text all by myself... so whenever I stop being lazy I can fix it... good point thanks. I'll ask him about the scrolling pics too... I didn't think it was a big hassle.. but I guess maybe when I get more pics and stuff it might be.
he does give each site it's own personality.. you don't have to be afraid of a cookie-cutter site w/ Brian!!! For mine we wanted something clean and professional.. a more minimalistic site. :)

Hi Everyone,

I try not to post on here too often but in the face of critique I'd like to offer an explanation for some of the design decisions made for this site.

Shiraz – Professional Belly Dancer in Philadelphia, Delaware, & Baltimore

@jewelbellydance Carrara's site Carrara Nour | Professional Belly Dancer in Connecticut (CT) also gets the same feedback regarding header image size. The problem is (and I'm going to help some dancers who read this) large splash pages are the bane of good Google Rankings. Most dancers want to feature themselves on their site (go figure), but if you have a "splash page" you are SEVERELY penalized by Google in their ranking system. Google spiders look primarily at the FIRST page (the root URL) of your site. If there is no content there, then your site gets classified accordingly. *Writing on their notepads* "Nothing to see here, move along" and so no one will find your site in a Google search. The large header image is to recreate that effect. This is a common critique from bellydancers but the truth is that most other users don't have the same reaction because they're not accustomed to "splash pages" - they went out of style in web design about 5 years ago. Since alot of dancers are used to small websites that fit all of the content on a tiny screen, people forget that on my monitor (and by web user statistics, the monitors of about 70% of web citizens) those sites are tiny, hard to read, and only look impressive if you have an older computer (or a tiny laptop). Striking a balance in that way is a tough call for web designers... the job entails customizing an experience that is beautiful for the most people, when the reality is that the range of different computers, monitors, etc. is so broad it's losing battle.

The good news is that Shiraz's site looks great on iPhone's, iPads, and all newer computers. As the years go by her site will look better on more people's computers. With each new laptop upgrade, computer manufacturers are increasing pixel density, which means that small 10" & 12" laptops in a few years will easily fit most of the vertical content (including the text). So like a fine Shiraz, her site will get better with age rather than worse.

What a work of art! Beautiful!

His work is beautiful! Lucky ladies!!

Oops I didn't mean lucky, I mean hard-working, committed, and beautiful!!

I looooove carrara's feature pic and logo as well as mine ... I'm a fan.. now I just understand why hehe thanks brian!! :)

Originally Posted by DreamStarStudios

@jewelbellydance Carrara's site Carrara Nour | Professional Belly Dancer in Connecticut (CT) also gets the same feedback regarding header image size. The problem is (and I'm going to help some dancers who read this) large splash pages are the bane of good Google Rankings. Most dancers want to feature themselves on their site (go figure), but if you have a "splash page" you are SEVERELY penalized by Google in their ranking system. Google spiders look primarily at the FIRST page (the root URL) of your site. If there is no content there, then your site gets classified accordingly. *Writing on their notepads* "Nothing to see here, move along" and so no one will find your site in a Google search. The large header image is to recreate that effect. This is a common critique from bellydancers but the truth is that most other users don't have the same reaction because they're not accustomed to "splash pages" - they went out of style in web design about 5 years ago. Since alot of dancers are used to small websites that fit all of the content on a tiny screen, people forget that on my monitor (and by web user statistics, the monitors of about 70% of web citizens) those sites are tiny, hard to read, and only look impressive if you have an older computer (or a tiny laptop). Striking a balance in that way is a tough call for web designers... the job entails customizing an experience that is beautiful for the most people, when the reality is that the range of different computers, monitors, etc. is so broad it's losing battle.

It would be interesting to compare the bounce rate and the time spent on site of two nearly identical sites...one where you can see the main text when you land on the homepage and one where you have to scroll (like Shiraz and Carrara's). I've not seen the research myself, but I've always read that you're not supposed to make your readers scroll to get to the content. I'd be curious to see the results. Have you ever done something like this, Brian?

Originally Posted by andalee-oriental

It would be interesting to compare the bounce rate and the time spent on site of two nearly identical sites...one where you can see the main text when you land on the homepage and one where you have to scroll (like Shiraz and Carrara's). I've not seen the research myself, but I've always read that you're not supposed to make your readers scroll to get to the content. I'd be curious to see the results. Have you ever done something like this, Brian?

Speaking from personal experience, my website's always had a pretty normal bounce rate - 25-30%. (Although, I'm sure my blog probably throws off that statistic, since a lot of people probably hop onto my website for a minute to see if I've updated my blog, and then go away if they don't see any new content. Same goes for my gallery, since a lot of my friends like to stalk my website to see if I've added new photos).

I think a lot of those DIY articles are good as general rules of thumb, but I wouldn't interpret them as the law. At the end of the day, I think clear, relevant content is far more important when it comes to keeping your viewers glued to your site.

And most importantly, if my website gets me gigs, and if my clients like it, that's all that matters to me. So far, so good

You've now been bookmarked as "inspiration"

really nice!

Originally Posted by andalee-oriental

It would be interesting to compare the bounce rate and the time spent on site of two nearly identical sites...one where you can see the main text when you land on the homepage and one where you have to scroll (like Shiraz and Carrara's). I've not seen the research myself, but I've always read that you're not supposed to make your readers scroll to get to the content. I'd be curious to see the results. Have you ever done something like this, Brian?

Good question Andalee. We web designers also thought the same thing up until recently, obviously I'm speaking in generalizations here. There are still alot of web designers who hold to the whole "rule of the page fold".

The first article explains things from a hard scientific facts & numbers perspective, the rest share interesting insights by people who have graciously spent more time than I'm going to making a good case for their position.

The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing | cxpartners

Debunking the Myth of the Page Fold in Web Design

Useful Guidelines About Current Web User Display Configurations

Life Below 600px

Another issue that most people fail to consider is that Mobile Web Browsing is currently making HUGE changes to our standards for display sizes. Not because they are higher resolution but because they are portrait oriented rather than landscape. I'm not sure about Droids or other Smartphones, but I know that iPhones and iPads allow for both portrait AND landscape orientation. If you have a long website then people get to see a nice satisfying chunk of content when they come to your site, on the other hand if you have a tiny, everything-packed-above-the-fold site, then people aren't going to see a thing when they see visit your site from their mobile browser. Some people browse in landscape orientation, but I personally (and many that I know) generally browse in portrait orientation by default because some of the devices functions can only be oriented portrait.

Originally Posted by DreamStarStudios

Hi Everyone,

@jewelbellydance Carrara's site Carrara Nour | Professional Belly Dancer in Connecticut (CT) also gets the same feedback regarding header image size. The problem is (and I'm going to help some dancers who read this) large splash pages are the bane of good Google Rankings. Most dancers want to feature themselves on their site (go figure), but if you have a "splash page" you are SEVERELY penalized by Google in their ranking system. Google spiders look primarily at the FIRST page (the root URL) of your site. If there is no content there, then your site gets classified accordingly. *Writing on their notepads* "Nothing to see here, move along" and so no one will find your site in a Google search. The large header image is to recreate that effect. This is a common critique from bellydancers but the truth is that most other users don't have the same reaction because they're not accustomed to "splash pages" - they went out of style in web design about 5 years ago. Since alot of dancers are used to small websites that fit all of the content on a tiny screen, people forget that on my monitor (and by web user statistics, the monitors of about 70% of web citizens) those sites are tiny, hard to read, and only look impressive if you have an older computer (or a tiny laptop). Striking a balance in that way is a tough call for web designers... the job entails customizing an experience that is beautiful for the most people, when the reality is that the range of different computers, monitors, etc. is so broad it's losing battle.

The good news is that Shiraz's site looks great on iPhone's, iPads, and all newer computers. As the years go by her site will look better on more people's computers. With each new laptop upgrade, computer manufacturers are increasing pixel density, which means that small 10" & 12" laptops in a few years will easily fit most of the vertical content (including the text). So like a fine Shiraz, her site will get better with age rather than worse.

So if I understand correctly, you're saying that you put the large image in to get the effect of a splash page, whilst making it searchable? That makes perfect sense, and I think you've achieved that really well. I guess I'd question why you need to maintain the large image header on all the 'contents' pages, rather than just the home page? Is it because people will also land on those pages directly from searching? I guess the experience I'd want would be to land on the lovely-looking home page, be wowed by the image, want to know more...then I'd want to see the content easily on the other pages.

But these things are subject to personal preferences. It's good to see that there's more research being done on how people use websites overall.

Irrespective of what design decisions you've made, it's a wonderful website. So pretty to look at that you want to explore it further.

Now here's a wierd thing, I just tried to load Shiraz's site on my iPhone. Three times it closed my browser down. I wonder why?

(I'm interested in seeing how it appears because I'm getting a re-design on my web, so this is a useful discussion).

Originally Posted by jewelbellydance

So if I understand correctly, you're saying that you put the large image in to get the effect of a splash page, whilst making it searchable? That makes perfect sense, and I think you've achieved that really well. I guess I'd question why you need to maintain the large image header on all the 'contents' pages, rather than just the home page? Is it because people will also land on those pages directly from searching? I guess the experience I'd want would be to land on the lovely-looking home page, be wowed by the image, want to know more...then I'd want to see the content easily on the other pages.

But these things are subject to personal preferences. It's good to see that there's more research being done on how people use websites overall.

Irrespective of what design decisions you've made, it's a wonderful website. So pretty to look at that you want to explore it further.

Well, the reason for maintaining it throughout is mostly continuity, a dash of WordPress complexity, and the difficulty of finding a suitable way to present an image, still include the logo, and make it smaller all at the same time (otherwise you'd have no way of knowing who's site you're on, and the alternative would be something like deleting Shiraz photo and having just the logo which seems silly to me).

Regarding the iPhone browser crashing that was a great catch on your part, it looks like I was using a bit of super-secret shiny new technology that still has a bug and seems to be at odds with mobile Safari. Craziest thing is it's a Google script so I'm SUPER surprised... site should work in mobile Safari now :)

Tried again, still closed down! Gosh, mobile devices are just making web design even harder. So many variables to deal with.

'tis true. Should be fixed now.

thanks for the help Brian! I LOVE it! :) Now I should get a picture up here of the new business cards he designed for me.. they're HOT! ;)