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JagsR
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Location: Edinburgh

Comments welcome, please

Post by JagsR »

Hi folks

Website has gone live in the last couple of weeks. I'm a complete newbie at this (as my beloved son would tell me!) so would welcome any comments, advice, hints etc that you could give.

Website is : www.anthemion.co

Many thanks in advance.
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
AndrewH
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Post by AndrewH »

I have had just a brief look. I must say I like the style, the strong font you have chosen, the background colour. It looks good to me.

I see you like the "book now" approach and it is possibly the best way for a city apartment (IMO). Your availability calendar which links up with your prices is really neat, but don't hide them behind the "book now" button. People will want to know about availability and prices, before they decide to book.
JagsR
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Location: Edinburgh

Book Now Button

Post by JagsR »

Thanks, AndrewH

The "book now" button appears on every page and links to the "Book Now" page that contains the interactive calendar. Perhaps "Book Now" for the button text is too off-putting. I think I'll change it to "Pricing and Availability" with the same link to calendar.

Good insight!

J
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
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kevsboredagain
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Post by kevsboredagain »

It's beautiful property but I found myself wanting to see the photos bigger and I couldn't. They are all fairly small and no chance of clicking on any of them.

Many images seemed to be scaled down too which will slow down your site. I thought Wordpress avoided that problem.

Some of the layout looks like there are parts missing, where there's a small image floating right or left but no text next to it. Try to keep the arrangements balanced.

I agree with Andrew and I would be scared to click on Book Now in case I was committing to something. I would rather know that I was off to view prices or availability and then be asked if I wanted to book. I see there is a prices button at the bottom of some pages but I missed that and was looking at the side menu.

gmail address? Why? You have your own domain name so you don't need to share one with Joe Public and the scammers. It looks more professional to use your own.

A word of warning about Wordpress. People will be trying to hack into your site daily. Use a security plugin like Wordfence or similar. Do not use admin, administrator, your name, your domain name or anything obvious as a user name as these are the users which will be used by the hackers to try and get into your site. Also make sure you have the site backed up. Wordpress can crash sometimes and you could lose everything, if not prepared.
JagsR
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Location: Edinburgh

Kevsboredagain's comments

Post by JagsR »

Thanks for your comments, kevsboredagain. Can I ask what device you're using to view the photos etc? I'm using a Mac Thunderbolt screen which is a bit of a brute, and the resolution is OK.

What do you mean by scaled down? I have changed the resolution on Photoshop to make it web optimised. Isn't that supposed to make it load faster? (Can you see the "Oh sh** I've misunderstood" thought bubble above my head?!)

Totally take yours and Andrew's point on the book now. Have changed the buttons, but will change the sidebar too. Absolutely see where you're coming from, and I think you're right.

Yeah, I did wonder about the gmail address. Will check and change.

I'm using Askimet for hacker checking and I back up about once a week automatically. Do you think that'll do it?

Thanks for taking the time!
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
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kevsboredagain
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Re: Kevsboredagain's comments

Post by kevsboredagain »

JagsR wrote:Thanks for your comments, kevsboredagain. Can I ask what device you're using to view the photos etc? I'm using a Mac Thunderbolt screen which is a bit of a brute, and the resolution is OK.

What do you mean by scaled down? I have changed the resolution on Photoshop to make it web optimised. Isn't that supposed to make it load faster? (Can you see the "Oh sh** I've misunderstood" thought bubble above my head?!)

Totally take yours and Andrew's point on the book now. Have changed the buttons, but will change the sidebar too. Absolutely see where you're coming from, and I think you're right.

Yeah, I did wonder about the gmail address. Will check and change.

I'm using Askimet for hacker checking and I back up about once a week automatically. Do you think that'll do it?

Thanks for taking the time!
I'm using a 21" monitor so seeing everything full size. The images are fine for the context in which they are presented but the viewer has no option of seeing anything bigger. Many are less than 300 pixels which would not be accepted on most listing sites. I think some should be clickable or use a separate gallery for people who like to look at photos. They are gorgeous after all.

Askimet is good for spam but won't do anything to stop people trying to login into your account. Without any protection hackers can make unlimited brute force attempts to login.

Scaled down is hard to explain. I did write an article once on it on LMH but most people ignore it because a) it looks fine, b) it loads fine when your have everything already in cache.

See
viewtopic.php?t=25270

One example is
http://anthemion.co/wp-content/uploads/ ... _1269a.jpg

The maximum it can be on the webpage page is 289px × 433px but the actual image is 696px × 1,043px. This means the viewer downloaded the 696 size image and the browser scaled it to fit the space in which you, as the designer placed it. Everything will look perfect but using an image which was 289 pixels in the first place would download 4 times faster and look identical.

Your images are not big so in this case the issue is only minor.

I don't understand why so many of the images have been made so small though.
eg. http://anthemion.co/wp-content/uploads/ ... allery.jpg

This one is also scaled
550px × 411px (scaled to 320px × 239px)

but why make it this small when there's a big blank space to the right of it? That section is 660 wide on full display so the original image of 550 would have gone well in there with plenty of padding.

It feels weird looking at pictures of Edinburgh as I lived there for 4 years. Haven't been there for 30 years though.
JagsR
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Getting a grasp

Post by JagsR »

Thanks KBA, for these further comments - I'm understanding better. I'll have a look re the scaling down, and check on the resolution again.

Will check re large scale gallery or click to enlarge.

Edinburgh's a fine city. Good buzz.
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
ChrisP
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Post by ChrisP »

A few quick comments.

1) Clicking the 'click here to book now' and 'prices and availability' buttons results in a 'page not found' error.

2) Being somewhat anal-retentive , I'm not keen on the main images (shown when clicking links on the left) changing sizes.

3) There are too many paragraphs <p> in the code with a space before the image on the ‘Quality dining kitchen and shower room’ which is pushing the image down the page and leaving empty space above.

4) Being anal again, find or create a new ‘Pin it’ icon so that it is the same size as the other icons, looks out of place otherwise.

5) Encrypt your email address and make it harder for bots to harvest for spam email.

Beautifully decorated flat.
annedab
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Post by annedab »

Your place looks lovely JagsR. Totally agree with all the other comments about "Book Now".

Looking forward to meeting you at some point over the summer :D
Regards

Anne

If there's no such thing as co-incidence, then why is there a word for it?
JagsR
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Thanks for comments!

Post by JagsR »

ChrisP - yes, had changed url from "book now" to "availability-and-prices" and hadn't updated the button. Now fixed.

Not sure what you mean by the changing size when clicking links left? I'm actually trying to install a lightbox for enlarged photos on click at present. As far as I know, nothing there just yet.....

pinterest button changed when I added pinterest plug-in for on-photo click. It's evidently interfered with the social media feather. Will need to go into code to fix it.

Have been frantically getting rid of <p>. It's bad enough on desktop but looks horrendous on mobile! Agree entirely!

How to encrypt email address? That's a new one on me? (I know, LMGTFY!......)

Thanks for comments!

Annedab, thanks - should be in a place near you sometime in May! ;)
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
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kevsboredagain
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Re: Thanks for comments!

Post by kevsboredagain »

JagsR wrote:
How to encrypt email address? That's a new one on me? (I know, LMGTFY!......)
http://wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html

Just use the encrypted string in place of your email address. If you have a contact form you may not even need to display your email address on your site at all.
JagsR
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Location: Edinburgh

Encryption

Post by JagsR »

Just use the encrypted string in place of your email address. If you have a contact form you may not even need to display your email address on your site at all.
Thanks - will probably just create link to contact form.

J
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
ChrisP
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Re: Thanks for comments!

Post by ChrisP »

JagsR wrote:How to encrypt email address? That's a new one on me? (I know, LMGTFY!......)
Check out this site, they have an online tool that will encrypt an email address. The site is a college in California.
JagsR wrote:Annedab, thanks - should be in a place near you sometime in May! ;)
Holiday or do you have a place over here? Give us a call (numbers on website) and we can meet up for a drink.
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