Thread: New site!! (revised from

Well... here it is! I wanted to have this ready last weekend but the server switch-over delayed me a bit. No biggie.

www.georgehester.com

I'm looking for any feedback I can get. I'm not yet done with the contact form and page so please don't send me any mail through it yet. (it won't go anywhere). :)

Some people who have seen my other site with the same domain name will maybe notice some similarities, but the entire overall design is new!

As I stated in a different thread, I needed to get away from my "personal" site and maintain a more professional and business-like site. Not that it's all "business" related, but I had to get away from the random pictures and multimedia that I will maintain in my personal site (which will be a new name and domain eventually).

This revised version is geared towards advertizing me and my designing. Not so much about all that other stuff that was there before. Hopefully I'm able to get more "straight to the point" with this site and it's less of a hassle to get around on it.

So... comments are welcome. Anything you see or catch, let me know. I posted it now because it's basically ready for the public to see... now I just need to know what to do to wrap it all up.


Thanks!!!

P.S. - sorry about the title... means to say (revised from my original...) or something... I couldn't decide what to write, hence me forgetting to finish it. :)

site looks great. I suggest you rethink the Titles of your pages. They are all George Hester something, which is great if the keywords that you want your visitors to find you by is George Hester. Perhaps you can go for marching band, marching band routines, drill design threw me for a loop for a while as I had drill bits and black & decker appliances in my mind. Just a suggestion. Your layout is beautiful.

Well done!

George

A very nice site with a great layout and color scheme. Navigated through it found it enjoyable to browse through. You learn something new everyday as I had no idea about drills!

One thought is that you should check the length of your I-frames as one or two were too long and were just blank for a couple hundered pixels. no big deal though.

Great jobs!

Danny

Originally Posted by aconstas1

site looks great. I suggest you rethink the Titles of your pages. They are all George Hester something, which is great if the keywords that you want your visitors to find you by is George Hester. Perhaps you can go for marching band, marching band routines, drill design threw me for a loop for a while as I had drill bits and black & decker appliances in my mind. Just a suggestion. Your layout is beautiful.

Well done!

I appreciate the suggestions on the titles. Unfortunately that's just the nature of my business. Drill Design is just the only real title because it's not just marching band... it's winterguard, indoor drumline, drum corps, indoor band, marching band, drill team... there's so many different groups that use "drill design" for their productions. I have thought about this a lot in the past too, and another title I use is "Visual Designer", but in my field of work, the term visual designer can be misconstrued with a person who is more involved with body/choreography and a more hands-on type of design, when I'm just a guy who puts dots on paper. :) It's weird, but you're correct... I need to find a way to make it less confusing.

But I still do need to change the title pages to match what they are. As far as keywords go, I do have all of that incorporated in the Meta Tags. I'm not too sure what difference it makes though.

Thanks for the suggestions... I'll see what I can do.

Originally Posted by Danny Canada

George

A very nice site with a great layout and color scheme. Navigated through it found it enjoyable to browse through. You learn something new everyday as I had no idea about drills!

One thought is that you should check the length of your I-frames as one or two were too long and were just blank for a couple hundered pixels. no big deal though.

Great jobs!

Danny

Thanks for the kind words...

I too have noticed that "problem" with the extra space at the end of the page in the inline frame. I have NO idea how to fix it, but this is the first time anyone other than me noticed. :) ha! I should probably look it up on here, now that you've mentioned it.

I have tried several things but nothing seems to work. Adjusted the size of both pages, changed fonts... bleh!

Do you, by any chance, know how to fix that??

And the wait is over. Well done, Hester, the site looks great, as expected. It looks well organized and everything flows.

I too noticed the extra space at the bottom of your bio. This, to me, an only mean one thing...you have extra invisible "aliens?" at the bottom of the page lol. Anyway, try this: Edit, Select All, and stroll down to see if you see anything that does not belong. Sometimes, you may have to go to your page properties and make your page extra long for better inspection.

Your picture for in the design section does not work.

Once again, beautiful job.

looks great George - easy to use - very impressed with the drill samples

Nice site, George. Fun to look around.

Originally Posted by aconstas1

site looks great. I suggest you rethink the Titles of your pages. They are all George Hester something, which is great if the keywords that you want your visitors to find you by is George Hester. Perhaps you can go for marching band, marching band routines, drill design threw me for a loop for a while as I had drill bits and black & decker appliances in my mind. Just a suggestion. Your layout is beautiful.

Well done!

Alright Alex... I think I got it... I went ahead and retitled all my pages and the main site page reads "Quality Custom Drill Design for the Marching Arts". I think that'll work better!!

Originally Posted by AmaDee

I too noticed the extra space at the bottom of your bio. This, to me, an only mean one thing...you have extra invisible "aliens?" at the bottom of the page lol. Anyway, try this: Edit, Select All, and stroll down to see if you see anything that does not belong. Sometimes, you may have to go to your page properties and make your page extra long for better inspection.

HAHAHA... Well... trust me, I inspected it to the finest detail. I don't think there's anything I can do. :( The iFrame target is a page that has the bio text (which was composed of the normal 'text area') and the page is sized exactly to the dimensions of the text, which is 375px W x 1510px H. The text size is set to 10px - Tahoma.

So, when I preview and/or publish, the text appears smaller and the text wraps differently. ???? So, what I guess is happening is that the page that the iframe is going to (the bio text page) is still set to 1510 px H but since the text gets smaller and wraps differently, there's extra space. ?? I even tried resizing the page to only 1000px H... it did the same thing. :( So... I'm at a loss for now.

That's the only thing I've been able to conclude. (besides the fact that if I increase the size of my browser text looking at the published page, it fills it to the right size). hmmmm.... but then the text is huge. I don't like that look so much.

Maybe it's a slight flaw with BV? (didn't think I could find any). haha!

Originally Posted by AmaDee

Your picture for in the design section does not work.

Yeah - that's actually a tiny video (.wmv format) that I threw in there as a bit of a filler. It won't work on a lot of computer... Macs more specifically. If I had a flash video maker, I'd probably do that instead.

You'll notice that the black space in the middle on all of the design pages are occupied by a whole lot o' nothin'. I'm still trying to decide what to put there. :)

Originally Posted by asirimarco

looks great George - easy to use - very impressed with the drill samples

Thanks a lot!! I'm working to add more in the future (not til the summer) so check back again if you remember. I'm in that "season" now, so I'll add more as they get written. :)

Originally Posted by larazovich

Nice site, George. Fun to look around.

Thank you... I'm really glad you like it. I'm still trying to add the final touches but thankfully it's not as complex as I thought it would be.


All this feedback really helps. Thanks to everyone! :)

Okay... I think I found a solution for the iframe extra space issues...

What I did was changed it to using a Table... one collumn wide and however many rows down to accomodate each line of text.

It took me some time but I just copied/pasted the individual lines to separate rows and filled it all the way down. Now there's a little extra space left-to-right, but it eliminated the space on the bottom.

(and I tried re-sizing the iframe box to shorten it L-to-R but then it created a horiz scroll bar). boo!!!

Can't win 'em all! :)

Well, everything looks good now. I just used FF to view your site and I was able to see the video on the Design page.

And Hooray! You fixed the Bio...nice work!

Alright... it's officially done! (I hope). :)

I just got the contact form up and running and should be working. (I've tested it).

I've managed to fix the text "problems" from before, and all that's really left is to add a couple pictures in the blank areas in the Design pages, and it should be all set.

If anyone notices any other problems or has suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks again for the feedback. Hopefully I fixed everything that people noted.

Homepage Gramatically Errors

Now that you've taken care of all the major "fixes", here are some minor ones. The areas in question are bolded and colored

...USA and Thailand, many of which have received
high recognition in local, national, international,state and BOA level competitions.

An alumni of the University of Michigan, agraduate from Plymouth-Canton High School from (replace "from" with "in") Canton, MI, a 4-year member of The...

...drum & bugle corps and former cast member (of) the Broadway production of Blast!, George carries...

And finally, your error page's "back" button is unlabelled.

I've only went over the homepage. Gotta work now, but will take a look at the other pages for little nuisances like these later.

Ok, while we are into the corrections...
You mind to have a look a my site? I'm in for corrections (for English: please make that UK corrections as I'm not into the other lingos)

Much obliged, by Jove... (just for fun this last sentence was, ahem...sounded bit like Yoda, didn't it)

lol, Jove? (Jean Pierre). Open up another thread and I will be there to respond...let's not hog George's

Just copy/paste. I'm going to look right now, but won't be posting my response into this thread, so I'll be looking out for your's.

Apologies, did not want to hijack.
Sorry George.

I just love the way you can learn new things here. Your site looks really
good. I like the samples. I never knew there was a designer for that.

Originally Posted by AmaDee

Homepage Gramatically Errors

Now that you've taken care of all the major "fixes", here are some minor ones. The areas in question are bolded and colored

And finally, your error page's "back" button is unlabelled.

I've only went over the homepage. Gotta work now, but will take a look at the other pages for little nuisances like these later.

AmaDee... Thanks for pointing that stuff out... all fixed.

...except for this "error page" one. I checked it and it works fine. Maybe it just didn't load for you??

Let me know if it still isn't working. I just republished to be sure.

Originally Posted by TSP

Apologies, did not want to hijack.
Sorry George.

haha... don't worry... it's really okay. seriously. Besides, I just NOW realized that the other thread I was posting on the past few days (Site Additions...) was also in this section and I didn't realize it. I just kept replying through my CP.

So... in a way, I had two threads open talking about the same stuff in the same section. ah well. :)


I will go and check out your site... woulda done it anyway. :) But yeah, if you started a new thread, that'd be easier to check back on the responses.


See ya!

Originally Posted by SAman

I just love the way you can learn new things here. Your site looks really
good. I like the samples. I never knew there was a designer for that.

I hear ya! I've had a blast looking around at what everyone does here. It's very educational.

And thanks! This is "take 3" for me on here, as far as site re-design. I think I've got one now that works best for my business and is much easier to manage than the last couple.

Oh, Sweeet. The back button looks good. Once again, silly me, I viewed your site in IE7. Haven't installed flash on it because I really don't care much for the browser. Anyway, the button looks good in FF, but I only saw one correction as far as the grammatical errors. It could be that you don't have a no cache script and I am viewing the old file.

Originally Posted by AmaDee

Oh, Sweeet. The back button looks good. Once again, silly me, I viewed your site in IE7. Haven't installed flash on it because I really don't care much for the browser. Anyway, the button looks good in FF, but I only saw one correction as far as the grammatical errors. It could be that you don't have a no cache script and I am viewing the old file.

For me... I'm not that familiar with "no cache" stuff, but whenever I'm on my site and make changes, I have to hit the refresh button for that stuff to appear. Maybe that's all you need to do. ??

Hmm... I went and looked at the "error page" with IE7 and you're right... it's blank. :( I don't know how to fix that. You said something about not having Flash installed. Do I need some sort of plug-in??

I think so...about IE and flash. I haven't taken the time to do much with that browser.

About the fact that I'm not seeing your changes, I refresh over 5 times. Just in case, here's a no cache script that you can put in the "between head tag" of your page html

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<script type="text/javascript">

okay... I tried to add that, but it moved the page flush to the left side and the background went from black to white. What did I do wrong?

(I changed it back already though)

And you put the script between the head tag? I don't know then. Do you have other scripts in that tag? Ummmm...

NAVAL!!!!

yeah, when I opened it, there was a script already there... should I overwrite it??

the script is:

<LINK REL="SHORTCUT ICON"
HREF="http://www.georgehester.com/various/favicon.ico">

but that's just for my little "GH" icon that shows up in the address bar.


Also, it's weird how the changes I just made aren't working, however yesterday when I fixed the "Bio" and stuff, it all worked fine and you noticed it right away. hmm... ??

I have one of those little thingies, too. I have mine in the "Start of Page" section of the HTML. Try that and see...

PS: make sure you paste both codes into another doc, just incase. I don't know...I get paranoid...go figure!

Originally Posted by AmaDee

I have one of those little thingies, too. I have mine in the "Start of Page" section of the HTML. Try that and see...

PS: make sure you paste both codes into another doc, just incase. I don't know...I get paranoid...go figure!

again... didn't work.

I moved the ico script to the start and the no cache you gave me in the between head tag.

??

is it really necessary??? ;) hahaha!

Oh, man. Don't be mad. BUT...um...see, what had happen was...ok! here's the script

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">

I had a couple of scripts in that section and copied parts of my bookmark this page script along with the no cache script. Truely, I apologize for the waste of time.

hahaha!! hey, I don't care. it was an easy fix... :)

and now it works!! yay! thank you.

should I put that script in all of my pages??

Hooray!!! And yes, definitely put it in all of your pages. And if you want that bookmark this page script, let me know. You can make some kinda button or so....just a thought.

Wow George, that's a great site. I love the look of it.

I've been gone for a little while. I see your new titles. That is much better; However, you should put the "George Hester" and "www.georgehester.com" after the Quality custom drill design.... not before it. Doing so will make your page titles waaaayyy more effective for SERPS. Great job on your site.

Originally Posted by Patience

Wow George, that's a great site. I love the look of it.

word! :) many thanks! I look forward to seeing your site in the future.

Originally Posted by aconstas1

I've been gone for a little while. I see your new titles. That is much better; However, you should put the "George Hester" and "www.georgehester.com" after the Quality custom drill design.... not before it. Doing so will make your page titles waaaayyy more effective for SERPS. Great job on your site.

Cool... gotcha. Thanks. I fixed the main title again. I think this will work: "Quality custom marching band drill design by George Hester"

:)

cool avatar, George...photoshop?

Originally Posted by Hester

word! :) many thanks! I look forward to seeing your site in the future.

Thanks pal!

Originally Posted by AmaDee

cool avatar, George...photoshop?

yes! it's actually the large version of my new favicon for my site.

I see that. If you have some free time, can I have one of those? Using the same wordings as my avatar, but feel free to revamp it. Pretty pleeeeassse?

George...i'm always amazed at your site...AWESOME as usual and wonderful feel and a thrill to go through. Most of the same comments as those above and i agree with Mapillar..great avatar. Keep up with the good work.

stay tuned, George...am taking a look and I will be responding...

Originally Posted by beegud2

George...i'm always amazed at your site...AWESOME as usual and wonderful feel and a thrill to go through. Most of the same comments as those above and i agree with Mapillar..great avatar. Keep up with the good work.

Hey Beez... great to hear from you again. Yeah, this was a much needed re-design and I'm really happy with the way it came out. Thanks very much for the compliments. :)

Originally Posted by AmaDee

I see that. If you have some free time, can I have one of those? Using the same wordings as my avatar, but feel free to revamp it. Pretty pleeeeassse?

what exactly are you looking for?? You mean a little colored reflective bulb thing like that????

I have a lot of free time... :) but whatever you need probably won't take me that long anyway. Just clarify what you want and I'll throw it together.

I don't know...go crazy. Look at my website for theme idea. (Just make it a little girly...not too much, just a little)

As you can see, I have insomnia. Too many ideas about the site I told you about...

Originally Posted by AmaDee

I don't know...go crazy. Look at my website for theme idea. (Just make it a little girly...not too much, just a little)

As you can see, I have insomnia. Too many ideas about the site I told you about...

Hmm... okay... forgive me because I'm still not understanding. Would you like a personalized avatar similar to what you have, but jazzed up a bit? I'm sorry... I just have no idea what [exactly] you want me to make. :)

yes, a personal avatar. But as you can see with the one that I THREW together, it has the initials MD/DM, which could mean DM (Designs by Mapillar) or MD (as in my name, Mapillar D). I would like to keep that theme, if that's possible. But like I said, you can design it however you want with whatever colors you like. I only ask that you girl it up a bit (no animated images, as in animals or people)

Hey George, you still need to fix the two typos AmaDee spotted on your home page:
in Canton MI
member of the Broadway

On your bio page: Band, which
I'd recast Most recently, George studied at the University of Houston with Joe... and James...

overseas is one word
pursuing instead of pusing

That's all I have time for now. Your site is very attractive.

Originally Posted by Malhoeira

Hey George, you still need to fix the two typos AmaDee spotted on your home page:
in Canton MI
member of the Broadway

On your bio page: Band, which
I'd recast Most recently, George studied at the University of Houston with Joe... and James...

overseas is one word
pursuing instead of pusing

That's all I have time for now. Your site is very attractive.

Sarah - Thank you so much!!!

I honestly think that some of these typos were missed because I just screwed up when I fixed it and re-wrote it. ha!! At least, the pursuing one... I just changed that part a couple days ago, I think. and the "member of the broadway..." I know I messed that up in the edit process... it's correct on my notepad file.

Sweet! I fixed the rest... Thanks very much. :)

(most of this was done late at night too... so I'm not surprised). :)

Originally Posted by AmaDee

yes, a personal avatar. But as you can see with the one that I THREW together, it has the initials MD/DM, which could mean DM (Designs by Mapillar) or MD (as in my name, Mapillar D). I would like to keep that theme, if that's possible. But like I said, you can design it however you want with whatever colors you like. I only ask that you girl it up a bit (no animated images, as in animals or people)

wow... I didn't even realize you responded... I skipped right past this yesterday and came back again today to see if you replied yet! hahaha! Sometimes I skim right past important stuff.

Let me see what I can come up with... I never really "try" to make anything... it always is a result of something else I'm doing and I just end up going "whoa, that's kinda cool". :)

This avatar was actually part of a photoshop tutorial I was doing, trying to create this bulb-like thing. I was gonna originally use it for my website links page, where I would put the bulb there dark, and with a mouse-over it would light up in color and with the logo of the website inside it. It turned out that they would have to be too big to do that, so I s****ped the idea.

Then when I wanted a new "favicon" I was going for the black/green feel and did about 10 different things that I didn't like. I put it away and didn't think of it.

During the process of deleting old files I wasn't using, I decided to play with this one last time... I was gonna try to put my initials inside the bulb thing, but it looked funny... I just used the G and did several different fonts... found one I thought looked neat... added a bevel and thought "hey, that looks cool!". So, I used it for my favicon and it's now my avatar. :)

So, that's the story on how I come up with things a lot of the time. It's never when I'm trying. So, if whatever I come up with doesn't look cool at first, gimme another shot. :)

I'll be back later. Maybe I'll have something for ya.

ok, I'll keep my box tuned in to Vodaland. The avatar is cool...I wish I could do that.

Oh, and about what I asked in the e-mail, s**** it...too busy and too far into the project to change anything. I'm just going to use what I have now cuz all I have to do is do the articles.

Did you check out the forum link? It's a tribute to something you did on your first site that I thought was waaayyy cool. If you haven't, click on the second link in my siggy. I plan on putting a construction sign up, so if you don't hurry, you won't get to see it until I'm done.

Originally Posted by AmaDee

ok, I'll keep my box tuned in to Vodaland. The avatar is cool...I wish I could do that.

Oh, and about what I asked in the e-mail, s**** it...too busy and too far into the project to change anything. I'm just going to use what I have now cuz all I have to do is do the articles.

Did you check out the forum link? It's a tribute to something you did on your first site that I thought was waaayyy cool. If you haven't, click on the second link in my siggy. I plan on putting a construction sign up, so if you don't hurry, you won't get to see it until I'm done.

you know what... I didn't even get that e-mail until just now.

For some reason it was in my spam. what the??

man, the past day has been really weird. I kinda took a "day off" from the computer yesterday and all this stuff happened. I missed your reply here and your e-mail back to me ended up in my spam folder. ?? For some reason, this happens to me every once in a long while... but it always happens. hmm...

WOW!!! Thanks for that e-mail. I'll read through it again and check out that stuff now.

I wish I could take a day off from my computer...must be nice. I have no idea why the mail was sent to your spam box. The e-mail didn't originate through my contact form...at least it didn't seem like it.

Let me know what you think about the site via e-mail. I'm not ready for the forum to take a look yet (which is why I'm about to put up the construction notice).

for anyone who reads this, could you please come check out my website (www.georgehester.com)and check in Firefox and IE if you have both. My site seems to be all kinda of messed up in Mozilla. :(

Well done George!!!
I had a look at your other site a while back, which i enjoyed, but prefer the look, layout and feel of this site.

"Black" sites are dodge, but you've nailed it with your colour combo's. We forget about what goes into the drill routines, I loved the 'behind the scene' look into your art.

Cheers,

Originally Posted by PlayItByBeer

Well done George!!!
I had a look at your other site a while back, which i enjoyed, but prefer the look, layout and feel of this site.

"Black" sites are dodge, but you've nailed it with your colour combo's. We forget about what goes into the drill routines, I loved the 'behind the scene' look into your art.

Cheers,

Hey... thanks so much. :) This site was fun to put together. I'm really glad you like it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I needed to simplify it up for my "business" and this was the creation. I am proud of it for sure.

However, I still can't get it to look good on firefox. Something random happened I guess. But it looks okay in IE. :)

hmph.

I'm not supposed to start a new thread, but I need some opinions on my re-design! I can't remember if this is number 3 or 4 but it's pretty much the same stuff... different look.

www.georgehester.com

Too dark? Too small? easy to navigate? anything else?? How does the text look? Any problems?


Thanks! :)

I find the gray letters on the black background a little hard to read. I recommend a bit more contrast, however, it is quite thematic with what you are about. Nice looking website!