New Mexico Rides! A Motorcycle Community

[glenmike]

Ok, good folks, here it is...

http://www.newmexicorides.com

Have not promoted it as yet. Purpose is to reinforce rider safety awareness, and promote group motorcycle ride adventures in New Mexico... kind of a travel and safety combo. 90% of the photos were taken by my wife on the back of my Harley Road King at highway speed.

Thanks in advance for taking the time to look and comment.

Regards

Michael 'Poppi' Layne

[choco777]

Nice job. I really liked the site. The BG sometimes loaded slow but not too much not to wait for and enjoy. All links I tried worked. Gongratulations.

[glenmike]

Thanks, Choco. The BG stuff got a lot of thought before I waded into it and it could be an issue for some folks. I was after something different than typical tiles for the primary pages. That was all stuff my wife shot from behind me while we were up in the Chama area of New Mexico.

Another issue I have to deal with is the font size on the information pages. When I added the BG photos I basically decided that the text would not overlap the frame of the photo. Most of the text was written prior to the pic add which resulted in reducing the font size to fit the space. So I'll have to do some judicious blue pencil editing and rewrite much of the informational stuff so I can enlarge the font for easier reading.

Many thanks for your review.

Poppi

[Collectors-info]

Hi, I like the site. Mind you I like most things to do with bikes. Could do with dropping the front page image size down dramatically. Its at just over 1meg 1054kb & should really be about 60 to 100kb max. The main banners is at about 158kb & should think about this being 30 to 50 kb or smaller. Its only that it will take ages for those on dial up to open a page?

Good luck.

Chris.

[glenmike]

Thanks, Chris! Your point is well taken. I struggled with this one. I knew the pics used as background images were going to be whoppers when bumping up against a 56k socket. I'm looking at methodology to optimize the pics, and... if it just doesn't work, I'll have to look at an alternative. But dang it hoss, those pics sure set it off! At some point down the road this will be tied into podcasts, at the very least, and I'm in serious review of information for doing live Internet radio. The website will be only one aspect of the entire platform, but it is definitely the key.

How important is it that someone still on a 56k ride is going uphill at a slow loading site? Pretty important, since at least half the Internet surfers are continuing to use roller skates instead of Vipers. It's about the easiest way to lose traffic... so I guess you could say that I'm testing this rather than being blindly locked into it.

As noted in my original post, the website has not been promoted. This is basically the first exposure of the site to others outside my immediate circle of friends and associates... and where I'm counting on commentary just like yours to be placed on the table. Good stuff.

I appreciate your insight.

Poppi

[bill2006]

Nice site,
Not too slow on this computer, checking from an old laptop with slow connection and Windows 98. Pics loaded as expected, anyone with a newer PC wont have problems. I'll take another look later in the week from my own comp.

One thing though, the text is pushing against the right margin, consider indenting a bit to read easier.

Good luck.

[glenmike]

Thanks, Bill. I'll make that adjustment. I'm looking forward to your second look at the site with the other system. My box loads everything in about 2 seconds, but then again it's fairly new and I'm using wireless cable... not exactly a fair setup to judge what a person on a 56k stream is going to experience.

www.newmexicorides.com/safety.html

The above page is what all of them looked liked before adding the background. I left it as is due to the length of the commentary that was written; the one piece of writing that I do not want to pare down significantly. Probably better on a blog, but at this point not a serious concern. However, the page is simple, loads quickly, and does not have a lot of distractive 'noise' swarming over it. That makes for a quick load, but a static environment... 7 or 8 pages of that is boring. The background pics raise the asethic, at least in my opinion. But again, nothing is ground in granite.

I'll be watching for your continuing assessment.

Thank, you!

Poppi

[Collectors-info]

Originally Posted by glenmike

Thanks, Chris! Your point is well taken. I struggled with this one. I knew the pics used as background images were going to be whoppers when bumping up against a 56k socket. I'm looking at methodology to optimize the pics, and... if it just doesn't work, I'll have to look at an alternative. But dang it hoss, those pics sure set it off! At some point down the road this will be tied into podcasts, at the very least, and I'm in serious review of information for doing live Internet radio. The website will be only one aspect of the entire platform, but it is definitely the key.

How important is it that someone still on a 56k ride is going uphill at a slow loading site? Pretty important, since at least half the Internet surfers are continuing to use roller skates instead of Vipers. It's about the easiest way to lose traffic... so I guess you could say that I'm testing this rather than being blindly locked into it.

As noted in my original post, the website has not been promoted. This is basically the first exposure of the site to others outside my immediate circle of friends and associates... and where I'm counting on commentary just like yours to be placed on the table. Good stuff.

I appreciate your insight.

Poppi

Hi. Had a look at your images & most of them will reduce ok as they are not close up & detailed. I droped this one down to 279kb from about 1meg.
If you have a look at the url below
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b387/COLLECTORS-INFO/Rides4279kb.jpg

and then cut and paste the Url into this other site in the “Enter Url of an image”. Then press optimize.
http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/index.php

it will give you about 10 images to choose from. If need any help reducing the images, give us a shout. Just a handy way to view the image & choose whats best for your site.


Good luck

Chris

[glenmike]

Hi Chris! Thanks! I really appreciate the follow-up. I'll check it all out this afternoon. I'm on the run right now... headed out to earn the bread and bacon stuff.

Have a great week!

Poppi

[motoxxx]

Nice site with lots of good information. Congrats and keep up the good work.

[ryanhitchings]

One thing about your site mate, I love it!

[bill2006]

Originally Posted by glenmike

Thanks, Bill. I'll make that adjustment. I'm looking forward to your second look at the site with the other system. My box loads everything in about 2 seconds, but then again it's fairly new and I'm using wireless cable... not exactly a fair setup to judge what a person on a 56k stream is going to experience...

Ok, had another chance to look at your site, this time on broadband, pictures load very quickly. Consider:
-change page title NMR Home Page to New Mexico Rides, NMRd doesn't say anything and difficult to find.
-center this page: http://www.newmexicorides.com/
-add a Home button on most pages.

Good luck

[zigzag]

Ho Poppi,

The overall feel of your site is good, and once you have seen some of the slideshows, you want to stay in the site and see more. I'ts a happy place to be in.

I found it a bit difficult to navigate around your site at first. for example when you go to "Photo Albums", there is no menu to get you home.
Your home page and some others need a 'Center in Browser' set. You have to get into the habit of checking this b4 publishing, because when you add new items to a page, they sometimes land up outside the rhs of you web building page, and this automatically changes the page width.

Here are some stats on USA monitor resolutions. I am mentioning this so that you might consider resizing some of your backgrounds or pictures.
57% use 1024x768
17% use 1280x800
20% use 800x600
06% unknown

I believe that 50% of users are still on dialup. So in resizing pictures, the screen resolutions and lines speeds of all viewers need to be considered for now.

I have a speedy line and I found your slides shows great. And that it what your site is all about.

Regards

[circuspet.com]

glenmike:

Would love to see more of your site, but after waiting 3 min for your banner to load I fell asleep. A falling tree took out my cable and I'm on 28.8 dial-up ( and people still use this ). Check back with you next week.

[glenmike]

Bill, Zig Zag... Thanks for the heads-up. Good stuff. I'll be working on the pages a little later today and will incorporate your suggestions.

Circuspet... 28.8? Ouch! That's not sleep, more like comatose! Hope your cable service will be quickly responsive to the repair.

Thanks one and all!

Poppi
www.newmexicorides.com

[asirimarco]

Nice Site! I like the tours - the Quarai page needs to be centered. - everything came up fast for me on broadband.

[circuspet.com]

glenmike:

Always looking for that silver linning, I have deciced to use this slow moving web dinosaur to edit my site to load faster. By the way the 600 X 800 format loads the fastest and is the easiest to read ( larger print ).