Adam Terrell

Adam Terrell

****- (Rated by 2 people, viewed by 90 people)

I've had this site for my shorts for a while. The blog is much more prevalent currently, and the videos are pretty bad and out-of-date. Still, I'd like to know how good the layout (and to some degree the content) is.

Added by Atomterrible in Portfolio

Adam Terrell has 2 Reviews

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  1. [img: avatar]
    PopJustice gave it ****- on 24th Nov 2010 and said:

    Hi I am James from pop-justice.co.nr and I will be reviewing your website today, please don't get offended by what I say and I am just saying it as I see it...

    The layout is average, it looks more of a wordpress theme. The header is nothing special, just an image with a quote and you haven't challenged yourself with the CSS which I think you could. Your fonts and links are a good size and I like the idea of having all your latest posts and images on your sidebar. Your footer is nice until I see the review me link button. It would look better if that was a link button as the rest is, the button make it stand out and it doesn't look nice.

    You wrote a fair amount on your about page, I also love the fact you wrote about your video setup, this would give people who use your images an idea of what camera etc... you used.

    It's good to see your site has a form you can fill in as some sites just say to speak to them via blogs, it shows you took your time making your site good for everyone.

    Your links site is very nice, and it shows once again you took your time writing a description for each of these, I especially like the link to your old guestbook. I find rare and great to read through.

    Your videos are ammusing and it some cases weird, but most of all it will keep visitors glued to your site.

    Overall your site is very well constructed and very well organised, it gives great content but you could improve the CSS and HTML on your site to make it better and more appealing. But I thought you put a lot of hard work and care

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  2. amphigory gave it ****- on 20th Nov 2010 and said:

    Hey! I'm Elia and I'll be demolishing your website today.

    I'll say first-hand my review might be a bit biased. I'm an avid photographer (stills only, with my droolable 5D Mark II, but I'm looking to venture into motion), so seeing multiple posts about an HMC150 immediately turns me on.

    To start off, your site is very to-the-point, which I like. While most personal blogs and portfolios have a written description, yours has a photo of what you enjoy the most: cameras and God. The proverb is true to life: a picture is worth a thousand words. All the way down to the last little detail, your site's favicon, gives little tidbits of what the site is about .I'm happy to see there are still people on the web who aren't ashamed of their beliefs.

    I won't comment on the content of the videos, since this is a site review, but I have to say they're enjoyable. Personally, "Blueberry Whisperer" is fitting for me. I went blueberry picking last summer and it took me two hours to fill a single bucket (could be chronic perfectionism in choosing the berries, but it just felt like everyone else was going 10x faster). I do also love the musical choices in these. And...serial killers at the vending machine? Now I know why I hate public restrooms so much.

    The site design itself is fairly average, but it does have some nice subtley to it that I like. Specifically, the faded footer border and sidebar gradient. I'm typically more drawn to top bars like you have, so that's also a plus.

    There are really only two aspects that stand out to me that I'm not particularly font of: the heavy shadow under the photo (I'm currently at a loss for words on how to improve it; it just feels like it could use some work), and the mixture of Verdana with Georgia. Verdana has its uses, but more often than not it seems a tad too old-school when it comes to web design. Also, I'd say lighten up the scripture at the top, not in terms of color, but in font weight and letter spacing. Currently it's slightly difficult to read, and I think it's something that should be immediately legible. It could use some margin beneath it as well, to accentuate the dual border that's sitting there, rather than merging them together.

    The links page could probably use some more work, in terms of typography. As of right now, the list feels like a bunch of Google ads, with the title followed by the URL followed by the description. Perhaps modernize it a bit, or it could be the Verdana that's getting to me again. (I believe Google ads use Verdana? Could be wrong.)

    What really could spruce up the site considerably would be to use a non-standard font for the serif. kimili.com is a fairly nice example of what can be done. The text there is a bit hard to read, but it's used nicely. I'm not sure what your vision is, but your site feels ever so slightly out of date. Experimenting with new fonts and padding can give it an enormously fresh look without changing the overall structure.

    What direction are you planning on taking the site? Is it more blog- or portfolio-oriented? You have it listed here as a portfolio, but the first noticeable part is your blog. If you're not concerned about changing too much, I'd say bring more of the focus to your work, perhaps with a small slideshow gallery on the home page.

    On a different subject, the order of your navigation menu is a bit strange. The way I see things is for visitors to go to each page in the order they appear in a menu, or in the order of most eye-catching. Since all of your links are the same, I go in order of appearance. Because of this, I end up reading about you, then contacting you, then visiting external links. If the links weren't opened in a new window, I'd never get around to viewing the videos. I think it might be better to arrange them as Home > About > Videos > Contact > Links (or vice versa with Contact and Links).

    Coding
    Usually this is where I'm my most brutal, but at first glance it doesn't look like you'll have too much to worry about.

    Looking at your head, though, I do notice one immediate problem, which could potentially hurt your search engine placement (though not entirely, since the tag itself is malformed). On each of your pages, you have <link ref="canonical" ... /> when in fact it should be <link rel="canonical" ... />. Simple typo, but of course it makes all the difference. Also, on your "Links" and "Video" pages, you have the canonical links set to your home page. When archiving those pages, search engines might assume you meant for those pages to actually be pointed to the home page. While canonical links are really only suggested guides for search engines, it does help to have them point to the proper page. They're meant as a last resort, after URL rewriting and redirects have met their maker.

    Moving on, many of your tags are self-closed in the XHTML format when you're declaring the document as HTML. HTML self-closing tags should be closed as <tag> rather than <tag />. It's not a no-no in the sense that your site will explode, but it's nice to be consistent.

    I'm also noticing a few paragraph tags nested inside other paragraph tags. It could be the result of using a WYSIWYG editor in a CMS; something I'd look into fixing.

    Closing thoughts
    Overall the design is a bit too standard and..."templately." It's pleasant enough, but other than the image at the top, it feels too basic and, for lack of a better fake word, templatey. Like I said earlier, look into some non-standard fonts to give it more of a personality.

    Your site has some wonderful potential. I'll be bookmarking it, because I'd love to see what you do with it. It needs some cleanup as far as design and coding go, and definitely start your switch to Vimeo hosting in higher quality. Some of your videos did make me laugh out loud. You have a wonderful imagination; keep up the good work!

    UPDATED 20 Nov 10:

    Four cracked lenses? I'd end up crying in a corner by that point. I remember from the film The Kid that 4 times is a pattern, 5 makes it a fact. I'm glad I've never had that bad an experience, but thankfully if I ever do, I have B&H locally. Hope it works out for you!

    I guess I didn't finish looking through the source code of your site. If I had, I may have noticed Webs.com's awful little appendage. I'd really suggest looking into another provider. Webs.com has some major limitations, and for the price they charge it's not really worth it. I won't recommend any hosting providers here as it's probably against some hidden terms of use violation. But, if you'd like some ideas (if you want to try another place), feel free to PM me.

    There's absolutely nothing wrong with copying & pasting from tutorials. As long as you understand what those snippets are meant to do, you're learning something. If you do want to take a huge step forward into the realms of non-standard fonts, there are a few options available, and countless tutorials covering them. To name a few, @font-face embedding, Cufon, sIFR and Facelift. Quick Google searches will bring up tons of info on all of them. Personally, Cufon is my favorite. It's lightweight and works seamlessly with JavaScript libraries, and it's excellent with kerning and anti-aliasing. Some sites will whole-heartedly recommend @font-face, but IE supports only .EOT fonts, and on Windows platforms you're doomed with aliased edges.

    To save myself from rambling endlessly, I'll stop here. If you want, I'm willing to discuss anything via AIM. If not, continue doing what you're doing; it works. :) Also, my mind's elsewhere at the moment, so everything I just wrote might be jumbled nonsense.

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    Atomterrible's Response:

    I'm totally flattered that I made you laugh. It's my goal. Would you believe me if I told you that I used a stock template from webs.com and made no changes to it? I guess you would, huh? I've been trying with CSS to make all the fonts the same, but with this template, my CSS friends tell me that I can't fix any other non-georgia fonts. Anyway, I know nothing about coding. I copy and paste from tutorial sites. :)

    I thought about the 5D mkII, but the audio controls aren't enough for me, and I need to record for hours straight without any stoppage. You should definitely get into videography. You'll be a level ahead since you have an eye for composition already and know how to work the settings on your camera. (Imagine that!)

    I noticed that you share my music tastes. No wonder you like my choices so much.

    I want to say I have never enjoyed reading a critical review of my site so much ever before. Thanks for that.

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