Website updates – September 2009
Update: 28th Sept at 10:28am – I’ve begun to implement the changes described below. Please excuse the mess while I move the galleries across!
I’m planning on redesigning (or at least tweaking) the design of my site over the next month or so. I’m probably going to stick with WordPress as the CMS to power the site – although there aren’t a great deal of decent WordPress photo gallery plugins that can do everything I want.
I currently use Alex Rabe’s excellent NextGEN gallery, which I’ve slightly modded – but I haven’t been able to get the permalinks to look neat and tidy:
hobbsy.com/photos/run-toto-run/20081007-manchester-moho/?nggpage=2&pid=347
vs.
hobbsy.com/photos/run-toto-run/20081007-manchester-moho/2/347
If my .htaccess skills were better I’d like to remove the question mark (which Google doesn’t seem to like in SEO terms, and ends up treating all the images in that album as the same page). I actually haven’t checked out the latest version of NextGEN for several months, so maybe Alex Rabe has now implemented an improved ‘pretty permalinks’ structure?
I’m going to increase the width of the left-side column from 500px to 640px (+10px margin either side), so my photos and video will be getting larger on the blog section – much like I’ve done on indiemusicblog.com. I guess I’ll probably keep the ‘full-size’ images of 960px in the gallery pages – although maybe 640px will be good enough?
I’m an admirer of the way Engadget’s photo galleries look, and the BBC’s galleries are decent too (although I don’t really want to use Ajax, as in the BBC example you can’t link to a specific image). I quite like the forum/comments implementation and layout used on videogamer.com. Have you spotted any good examples of photo galleries? Please let me know in the comments :)
Watermarking
I’m still undecided whether I should be adding a watermark to my photos, and how prominent it should be (positioned dead centre or bottom-right, and what sort of transparency?). Also, with regard to image usage/licensing – whether to just allow any blog to use my images (as long as they provide a link back to hobbsy.com), and maybe license them using Creative Commons.
In the first case, I find that if you don’t use a watermark of some sort, once Google Images indexes your photos it pretty much turns into a free-for-all, with no hope of ever being properly attributed or getting a link back. Most photographers I admire like Andrew Kendall, Danny North, Guy Eppel and liveon35mm don’t stamp a watermark over their images.
Other great photographers like Todd Oyyoung of ishootshows.com, Shirlaine Forrest, Peter Hill and the DrownedInSound team include a watermark on their web images (but placed in a corner or outside the frame), whereas agencies like Getty and Wire Images stamp a watermark across the centre.
With a watermark being in the corner, it’s easy enough for a blogger (if someone was determined enough) to crop it out in Photoshop, and then once that ‘new’ image hits the web and Google Images, you’re left with the same problem. I’ve been experimenting with a more transparent central watermark (see below) – but just may opt for something like ishootshows.com uses (a bottom-right logo). Let me know what you think?
I’m going to go through my archive and re-edit all my photos anyway (as I feel my editting technique/workflow has improved greatly over the past year), so whether to include a watermark is still an open option.
I’m also contemplating expanding hobbsy.com to include sections on web design, gadget reviews, affiliate marketing stuff, and a personal blog – rather than solely posting up my ‘recent’ photos.
In the meantime, you can view my photo updates on Flickr (or Facebook) and some video over at YouTube. I’ve also posted a few recent updates to indiemusicblog.com
If you have any opinions or suggestions I’d be happy to hear them
