Thread: My Images

I am still loading photos onto my aboriginal art site & need some help.
Firstly, I am presently using the gallery feature for my cave art photos. The pages were loading extremely slowly which was not surprising in one way because my pixels were too large. Just a couple of days ago my husband cut the pixels down to the size recommended by BV (using photoshop) but says he kept the sizes the same. I removed the old photo & replaced them with the newer ones ok. But when I checked the publiced site - the photo don't enlarge! To see what is happening please check http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/photos.php You will notice that the first 2 don't enlargen; but the next 2 do because they are still the old ones. What can I do? What do you think of the loading times? The 4 pages containing the cave art are all like it now! I think I need the photos on the coloured background as it makes the orche colour look better particularly as the watermarked cuts down the contrast. On plain white they look too plain.

Has anyone any idea as to why http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/jewellery.php loads so slowly? And it's twice as quick as it was - I've cut the gallery size down! The pixel of the images is smaller than the recommended size. I really want to use the gallery feature as I think the marbles frames really make the pieces look 1000%. (I haven't checked the pixel of the background photo yet - that may have to be reduced.)

I'm also totally confused as to what is going on with the lightbox feature as well. Please check out http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/paintings.php How fast does it load on your computer? On my computer the middle photo on the lightbox wasn't even unloading. (I just noticed that is is now - my husband put another processor in our computer this morning & its working better). In addition I had a moderately high pixel photo in the lightbox on the home page & when it eventually unloaded it was all the wrong shape - it went distorted horizontal when in fact the photo is a vertical when you enlarge it. (I replaced it with something else.) I though I could put large photos in the lightbox without it causing any problems; am I correct? In some cases I'm selling the paintings for several hundred $ so people need to see what they're getting; on the other hand if the page take forever to load - how many visitors will I get.
Is there any software I can buy to lessen loading times?

Just a quick suggestion.

First, if you have cut the picture size down - they can't enlarge - because they can't enlarge to a bigger size than they are originally.

Second, when using the gallery feature - make sure you are clicking the thumbnail feature. That will make the download time go faster - and will allow you to continue to use the larger pictures. The main page will download the smaller thumbnails - then will show the original version when they are clicked on.

I have ticked the thumbnail feature of gallery. I presume that is what you mean. I do have the thumbnails marked to the largest size. Does the size of your thumbnails affect loading time? As far as the cave art goes I think I can only go one size smaller. After that - they look a bit nothingness. What do you think? Check out http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.co...epaintings.php & http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/wanaruah.php After all one reason I swapped to BV was that everything was just way too small in my old store.

Hi Vicki, not quite sure what is happening with your images but with most of them, it seems like everything has reversed. As a sample! This image http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/tn_2001HR%20WM.png is at 127 kb & the lager pop up image http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/2001HR%20WM.jpg which normally would be larger in kb’s is at 42kb which is nearly 3 times smaller. (Strange) The thumbnails you have should really be about 15-20 kb max for this size image. Not a major thing, but all of this is slowing your pages down.

Good luck.

Thanks for pointing that out. Will check into it tomorrow. They were fine as far as the sizes went until my husband cut the pixels down.

We didn't rename anything (probably should for SEO) & as I had 5 pages of them, using Blue FTP I deleted the original images that had larger pixels, & transfered the new ones over. All my images reappeared immediately, so though everything was fine until after I finished & check the live site & found nothing enlargened anymore. Doing that couldn't have reversed thing could it?

"Your cave art photos cannot be displayed because it contain errors that is
what I got."

I assume your link address does not tally with what U typed in the properties link section in your BV page.

I suggest you U rename your photos simply PV 1001, 1002, 1003 etc.,
instead of the complicated % percentages that U are currently using now.

Originally Posted by zuriatman

"Your cave art photos cannot be displayed because it contain errors that is
what I got."

I assume your link address does not tally with what U typed in the properties link section in your BV page.

I suggest you U rename your photos simply PV 1001, 1002, 1003 etc.,
instead of the complicated % percentages that U are currently using now.

Not Exactly. Your enthusiasm is noted, but you are seemingly trying too hard!

>> The "%" symbol is defaulted as a 'placeholder' by the protocols whenever there is a blank space in titles, strings, or other "coding" and has nothing to do with how they present: it does, however, make a difference in how the Search Engines value them, for if they are not "recognizable" they hold no value and therefore will not be cached. If necessary, always use an underscore like_this between words in such instances.

Yes, you are right I typed in the wrong address - you will find 4 pages of cave art photos if you go to http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/caveart.php
It turns out that the photo problem was a bit easier that I thought. Hubby HAD changed the sizes; I understood he had just changed the pixels. (I gave him the BV direction page to read - so it wasn't my instructions.) I've swapped them over again. Unfortunately I understand I've lost a bit of quality in some because they've been altered twice now.
I'm afraid some of the strange numbering system is also due to him - I change quite a few things over - but for some reason he has some ideas with names. It really gets bad when he names the folder as well. He decided one had to be called NEW ABORIGINAL STORE XXXXXXXXX......so put a photo from that folder on the site & get's an html error message on the php page. No one on the forum could figure out the problem - suddenly I saw the photo's identity still had the file's name it came from. xxxx has an html meaning. Changed the photos identity completely - end of problem. I was pleased with myself anyway; at least I'm learning a bit about how things work.

I have redone quite a few of my photos to get the quality up & the pixel size down. I have tried a few different sizes on different pages. Because of problems at this end, I have some difficulty working out page loading times. Can I get an opinion of photo sizes & loading times on these pages please:- http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/jewellery.php
http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/paintings.php
http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/prints.php
http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/xray.php

Any comments or opinions would be appreciated. eg. which size works best for you.

Hi,

There two things that I would like to comment on:

Your jewellery photos are too small and should be enlarged same as the other pages. I would also change it to a Light box instead of gallery

Please remove all the distortions from all your pages such as copyrights and
lines of arrows and suchs I find it an inappropriate form of protection. Better to use scripts to prevent right click, capture, printing and save as.
You can find a lot of scripts in the VodaTalk archives.

G'day from NSW.,
I had a quick look at your site and I feel I should tip you off that your site dosen't show up as well as it is meant to on some browsers?, screen resolutions.
Some of the text is over the top of other text etc. This can be caused by using fonts that are not available to all computers and just different browsers etc.
The other problem I see is that your pages aren't centred. You have probably built your pages to suit YOUR screen resolution and it fills your whole screen. When viewed at my resolution (1280x960) your pages are all to the left side and I have a blank space filled by your background, on the right side. Remedy, Go to page properties in your BV pages and tick the box to center the page, save & publish.
To see how your pages look in other browsers etc. visit http://browsershots.org/ and type in the full url address for any of your pages you want to test in other browsers and Operating systems. Only problem with it is that you only see whatever fits on the screen.
Visit this site and you can check other things about your page construction and you'll also have access to a photo optimization tool on line that is very handy. http://www.sitereportcard.com/
Just one more comment. I'd like to have seen you use navaldesign's )fellow vodatalk member) php solution to building a page template using html boxes, locking them into position so every page using the template has items in exactly the same place. See thread here. With your pages, when you flick from one to another, your left menu, your Nav bar etc. all move slightly and this looks unprofessional, (sorry - don't take that to heart).
I have not shown my site on here before as it is still under construction, but if you visit it, www.crookwellshow.com.au you will see what I've achieved using his method. If I want to edit something, the change is globally done on ALL pages using it. I still have lots of pages to add and therefore some links in the menu aren't connected yet.
If I can be of any help on these matters, you can contact me direct. I want you to do well!!! :)
Regards,
Rick

@ pioneerViki,

I also noted that you have a link to freeviral.com on the bottom of each page. I'm very sceptical about these types of links. I've read other threads (not mentioning this particular one) that indicate that these "Viral marketing" campaigns have a very adverse affect on your search engine credibility. Some even get you banned on SE's. Do a search about increasing traffic on this VodaTalk forum. Also, I suggest you start a new thread in "search engine forum" asking for comments about THIS particular one.
Regards,
Rick

Thanks for the tips. I had the jewellery photos to maximum size; they looked better, but they were loading way, way too slow on my computer. How was the speed on yours? I use lightbox for most things; but the gallery frame, just seemed to improve them out of sight in my opinion.
I have tried a number of things to protect my images; so far the watermarks are the best things; I have used right click protection in the past; but I am asurred it is a waste of time. There are 1,000,000 ideas as to what works best in way of photo protection.
As noted the page set-up looks just fine in my computer; but I have been getting reports that it doesn't in others. I will certainly follow up your suggestions & links above.
As for the php advise - apart from the fact I could not get anyone to tell me how to make a TEMPLET in php (I finally figured out how it had to be done after re-reading things dozens of times) - is please go to http://www.aboriginalarttreasures.com/Playpage.html & you will see what I want each page to look like. After the site was published things didn't line up how I liked, I experimented with a couple of pages moving html boxes a bit, but still couldn't get them right. The site was built using the same templet - I have moved the menu bar html box on a few pages, but only a few. Why there are the differences I don't know. I surprised myself that the php worked first try!

LOL ..... just remember to collect "tips & tricks" from those who know what they are talking about, and after knocking about a bit yourself, you will find that collecting good advice is not a way of cutting corners as much as it is adding wider perspectives to understand the bigger picture!

The problem is when you start you can't always see the 'big picture'. All you can see is the immediate problem you face. Also you can't always be aware of future problems you can be causing youself. eg. as I rebuilt the art site while it was still live on another server & only re-directed after I had a reasonably number of pages built I couldn't quite appreciate the problem if the html boxes weren't quite in the right place on my templete.
Back to the big picture. Checking browershots I have a major problem with the H1 tag being all over the place in different browers. I will have to get some advice about that. (At least the pictures looked fine in everything!) The lines running over look a mess, but if I change the font that should fix that problem.
Now to be checking all my pages in browershots!!! Thanks for the tip folks, at least I should get the problems fixed.....eventually!

Hi again,
I've got everything sorted out as best I can. I recently went to the public library where they have small screens & saw how my pages looked there & made some changes. I've checked out the 2 links above borowershoes & site reportings. Some of my pages don't look right in different browers. I want to ask some questions about it. What section of the forum should I list them under?

Hi, couple of things to have a look at! You have something on the pages called stat counter & the last chevron “>” in the code needs to be removed as is showing in the top left hand corner of most pages. BV auto adds this & sometimes you have to remove one of them.
Pages have about a 10% sideways scroll, mainly down to the top menu bar being 1090px
& the top image being 1020px. Usually best to keep a page well under the 1000px.
You mentioned about seeing your pages at home & at the library on a smaller screen.
Screen size has very little to do with how you view your page & how much you can see of a page with out using the scroll bars. This is determined by what screen resolution your monitors are set up at. The one at home maybe completely different than the one in the library. This is one of the reasons why many still go with the 800 wide way of doing things, as there is very little chance of side scroll on all screens & monitors what ever they are set at.

Good luck.

I am puzzled as to what ">" I have to remove to stop the sign from showing. I've experimented a little & nothing seems to change. This is the code for the dinkydi.info site (which has the same problem) as I was given it:-

<!-- Start of StatCounter Code -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var sc_project=2976233;
var sc_invisible=0;
var sc_partition=32;
var sc_security="ae4c6699";
</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter_xhtml.js"></script><noscript><div class="statcounter"><a class="statcounter" href="http://www.statcounter.com/"><img class="statcounter" src="http://c33.statcounter.com/2976233/0/ae4c6699/0/" alt="best counter" /></a></div></noscript>
<!-- End of StatCounter Code -->

And this is the code as I copied it out of my html box:-
<!-- Start of StatCounter Code -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var sc_project=2976233;
var sc_invisible=0;
var sc_partition=32;
var sc_security="ae4c6699";
</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter_xhtml.js"></script><noscript><div class="statcounter"><a class="statcounter" href="http://www.statcounter.com/"><img class="statcounter" src="http://c33.statcounter.com/2976233/0/ae4c6699/0/" alt="best counter" /></a></div></noscript>
<!-- End of StatCounter Code -->

I'm afraid I can't see any difference in them.

Hi, you have 1 extra chevron > at the end of this part of the code shown below that BV has unwontedly produced. Remove the chevron at the end of the code so it looks like <!-- End of StatCounter Code --

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter_xhtml.js"></script><noscript><div class="statcounter"><a class="statcounter" href="http://www.statcounter.com/"><img class="statcounter" src="http://c33.statcounter.com/2976218/0/d5d7115c/0/" alt="web site hit counter" /></a></div></noscript>
<!-- End of StatCounter Code -->>

Another BV user says he puts the code into 'Between Head Tag' rather than "Inside Body" where I had the code. Leaving the code identical to how it was & just removing it to Inside Body made it become invisible on my pages. (I haven't changed them all yet.)

Some advice on naming the photos.... if you have photo 1001 on page "a" (for example) that is a "tree" and you have a photo of a "bird" on page
"b" you cannot name that photo 1001 even if it is in a different folder. The Gallery/Lightbox feature can become "confused" over 2 photos with the same name even though they are in 2 different pages. Believe me...this is a tough problem to figure out a 3-4AM !!!!