My Online Portfolio, opinions needed

[Scottio200]

Hi

I have just got my domain and webspace for my online portfolio and would like some feedback on this before I pass the address onto potential employers.

The address is http://www.scott-tomlinson.co.uk

And feedback would be greatly appriciated

Thanks
Scottio

[pumpman]

2nd and 3rd page of your portfolio, none of the links work (page not found) It's a bit green, and the tiling effect looks poor(the background of your home page)
apart from that it all seems to work( I can't code bugger all so I'm no expert I'm just giving you my impression of your site)

[Subby]

was it coded in a wysiwyg editor?

Oh and using empty paragraph tags to align stuff isnt great practice.
Also could do with some margin adjustment to pull the text away from the left border.
Title tag need to be filled on the index page.
Background image isnt tiling properly on the right hand side.

[neo2810]

Scott, sorry mate but for the experience you list on your CV page the site looks rushed, amatuerish and bland. I would love to offer you some constructive advice on which elements of the site to fix, but I'm afraid for me it's a complete restart.

- Starting with the colour. Lime green is nausiating. Pick a more neutral, professional colour like grey, black, white, easy blue, even dark red. Not lime green, not for a professional CV site...
- The background is horrible. Don't use it again. Plain colours as a background are so much more effective. Patterns went out in the 90's.
- Spelling error "I also learnd new skills" bottom of second paragraph on "About Me" section.
- Rethink the CV page. Too much of "Hard working" "Team Player" and other buzz words which employers cringe at. Those elements an interviewer will extract from your employment history and how you come across in an interview. Adding them to your CV just makes you look desperate.
- Make your links clickable
- You have apparent experience with Flash, so use some to jazz the site up a bit.

Right, on a positive note, I like the music. I really think you should be making that the focal point of your site since your talent lies there, rather than harping on about your programming skills and hiding the music away on the third page. If I was a potential employer looking at your site I wouldn't have got as far as the third page!

As a webdesigner, I would be looking to make my opening page really catchy. I'd use flash with some eye candy and incorporate some of your original tunes within it. I'd also lay it out to get a message across about which direction you'd most like to go (at the moment your CV cries desperation. You seem to be telling us you can do everything and dont care which way you go). I'd highlight on the main page what type of role you're after, and then elaborate on your skills on a more formal CV page.

Apologies for this being very negative, but I think it'll help you more than talking bollox to make you feel better. Get cracking and let us see the results.

[Elwood]

If I was looking at that as an employer, I just couldnt take it seriously.

You list experience in Photoshop, Flash & HTML, and I dont mean to be rude about this, but its blatantly obvious you've either no experience in it, or you just chose not to put any effort in, neither of which come across too well!

The tiling is horrid, as is the colour scheme. The text is hard to read and messy because its lined up right onto that lighter green part.

I'm sorry but I'm with Neo, this is a start again job, or pay someone to do it properly.

If you're going to stick with it, my constructive criticism would be:

• Fix Tiling Problem
• Change background Pattern
• Remove the scrolling inside the page, let the visitors use their own window for scrolling
• Change the buttons when people click on them, so they can see what page they are on
• Add more contact details - phone number at least.

[/dev/null]

Use padding to move the content from the left border.
Different colour scheme - something more professional - green is waaay to "in your face"
Background - change it! - I'd use just a plain light colour.

You list HTML as one of your skills - USE IT! - You are using tables for layout - this is depreciated - use CSS. This will remove the massive number of lines of code you have in there including your "spacer" image. It might look ok in YOUR browser, but stick it in a text-only browser such as lynx and it'll be a nightmare, lol!
Your navigation links are images even though they are only textual - use a list, styled with CSS. Not only will it make your site load faster, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to add/edit/delete menu items.

It's plain to see you have used a WYSIWYG editor to create the site - this is not the impression you should be trying to give.

Non-technical - I'd make your portfolio a little more "organised" - rather than having a "created with" field, have a paragraph that explains each piece of work.

I'd put the intro a bit more professional - think about mreging your homepage and "about me" - You shouldn't need to explain how to navigate the site.

Title your site - it's set to "Untitled-1" atm.

Good luck with it.

[CzarJunkie]

The website is a mess.....and at no time does the home page mention what on earth it is you do, or have done. It's a portfolio, but of what?

[AspectUK]

Similar comments to above really.

The background is hideous, and doesn't tile well at all, please destroy it and make the world a safer place.

I think you may be better using a blog to showcase your work, it makes it easier to update and manage all your content and they are completely free.

You can keep the green theme, as I think it may look ok on a darker background eg: http://www.jide.fr/english/ Thats a basic free template for wordpress and it works quite well in green here http://photoshopit.wordpress.com/ don't get me wrong, it's not groundbreaking stuff or anytihng, but it looks nice and modern and far more appealing than your current selection.

Your site to me looks far too wordy, in fact, it's all text, you need to break it up with some images, left or right aligned so that the text wraps around them, say on the first page, a picture of yourself.

CV page, space it out better and use an image of a word doc, perhaps offer a pdf of your CV as well, many design types use them big daft glorified calculators called apple macs and don't have ms word!

On the portfolio instead of simply a play text link, use an icon for media player, and again, maybe offer an alternative of say quicktime or realplayer.

About me is all text, break it up with images.

Contact is pretty empty, put a web form in, again the beauty of a blog is that there is already one in there so no scripting needed.

Hope you get the job your looking for.

[Ganty]

I know fuck all about web design, but I am a dab hand at CV's mate.

Lots of things on their that I would edit, get rid of completely and elaborate on.

If you want me to go over the CV just drop me a message.

[Dopey Dan]

Well you have taken a bit of a beaten there m8. But thats why you posted it, and these guys do know what they are talking about.

I downloaded your actual CV - you may want to think about wether you want people to have access to your address etc.

Good Luck

[Freddy]

It's all been said m8. Complete restart. Get a template or pay someone to make one.

Whatever you do don't send it out in it's current state.

Painful to read huh. But don't worry there is light at the end of the tunnel

[Scottio200]

Thanks for everyones comments, tbh the site was made in 3 hours for a Uni assignment i forgot about, so its a bit messy. Everything you see graphics wise was created in Photoshop, then sliced in image ready and exported to HTML. Then it was loaded into dreamweaver and edited using the design view (i dont normally do this, mainly use the code view)

Iv never experimented with CSS or XHTML but i am looking into getting some books and learning over the next few weeks. Any links would be appriciated

I have been working on a new design today and have almost got it completed. Iv atached a screen of it, LMK what you guys think of the design. Iv went for a Web 2.0 look as most of the jobs iv seen advertised seem to want applicants who have an interest in this.

Cheers
scottio

[neo2810]

Scottio... that's better (much, much better) but I'm still not jumping over your colour choice. It's a bit extreme. Those colours would work very well for some sites, but not a portfolio site (unless your advertising your services as a clown of course)...

Thats a complete no go for a start it doesnt impress anyone all it does is annoy people who have to wait for the thing to load and then figure out what they have waited for is pointless. I for one ( and so do a great number of other people ) just simply close any page that has flash or similar on the first page. As for music on a website DON'T make it compulsory !!!!! (have it as a link so you have the choice if you want to listen or not)

The golden rule for any website (and any GOOD web designer) would tell you a website should be fast to load , the info easily found, easy on the eye and it should serve the purpose for what it exists for.

Psx, you misunderstand... I was talking about a few flash items on an HTML based page, not a long shitty intro. The loading time would be perfectly acceptable. If you close all flash websites then youre missing out on at least half the web, pity...
Where music is concerned, I'm referring to a few well placed sound effects and snippits, not a blaring bockground loop.

Thanks for your "qualified" opinion, but this thread was about Scotts design, not my post.

[Freddy]

http://www.digital-forums.com/showthread.php?t=257812

Bunch of links there Scottio200

[Scottio200]

Thanks for those links inspironx, the change over from HTML to XHTML seems a very simple process, just looks like neater coding so far.

CSS is where i really need to swat up i think, im currently jobless so i have plenty of time to learn CSS and hopefully i can get it sorted out!

Oh and iv changed the colour scheme of the new layout, different shades of blue, nothing too in your face. Will work on site over weekend as i need it for a job offer iv had.

Cheers
Scottio

[ruggie_uk]

On a general note, move your degree to the top of your education section.
Remove your GCSE grades, they are irrelevant now. All you are showing is that you were a C/D student - not what people want to see. You are graduate calibre now, GCSE's mean fuck all.
Front page, spice it up - professionally, make an impact - use that prime real estate to say who you are and what you can be.
And times new roman? Damn, this aint the independant.

[Freddy]

Yeah CSS is the way man. Check here - http://www.cssplay.co.uk/

In particular this page - http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/

Note that you can have flyout menus and much more that was only ever possible with JScript et al.

But the fancy stuff comes second only to the basics of CSS; positioning your content and controlling the look of an entire site with just a few tweaks.

lmao @ ruggie - he speaks the truth

[Dopey Dan]

On a general note, move your degree to the top of your education section.
Remove your GCSE grades, they are irrelevant now. All you are showing is that you were a C/D student - not what people want to see. You are graduate calibre now, GCSE's mean fuck all.

Totally Agree

[canardo]

few more comments
set the title of the page so it doesnt come up as untitled 1
as your graphical Id put some more examples of the stuff you have done!

[Scottio200]

Well im not really graphical, never any good at art or anything, im more musical tbh.

Only really been designing sites in photoshop for about 3 months, just been experimenting with different stuff and seeing what i feel looks good.

Only ever designed 4 web templates, the one for the site, the new one, and 2 other sites i did. I used to buy/obtain templates and add the coding for the site.

Gonna try and knock up more templates over the next few days to put on there, but at the moment im re-doing the site from scratch, should be done by monday (fingers crossed)

Scottio