Working hard on putting together a new website design that I think will better reflect the purpose of this website and will hopefully make a good impression on the visitors to this site. The primary purpose of this website is to display a sample of my photography through portfolios for potential customers to see. My original design worked towards that end to some extent but it lacked some of the secondary purposes. I believe this design meets most of those now.
Here is a list of things that I decided to include:
- Portfolios - While I had portfolios(galleries) in the original design it was cumbersome and difficult to add and update the albums. I programmed the current implimentation on the new design to dynamically update the galleries by simply adding new photos to the website. Even the thumbnails are generated automatically after the photos are uploaded. This actually required writing the code twice. Originally it was done using C# code behind pages in asp.net. The new code is using MVC 3.0 instead. The primary reason for the update was to properly integrate an e-Commerce application into the website without using iframes or some other method of mixing technologies that could be prone to errors.
- An e-Commerce Shop - My plans for this include the ability to purchase a variety of photography related products. Posters, prints, and maybe even mousepads and such. I'm not sure where this will go eventually. (I'm still learning what this solution is capable of) Originally I tried to plug in this technology as an add on to the website. While there are some ways to do this all of them pretty much meant the main website was actually a separate entity. I was relatively successful at embedding an e-Commerce shop into a single page but I found the result a little confusing. I.E. Moving to a different page was a complete departure from the shop. A well implemeted solution should be integrated right into the site with common menus, cart, etc. on all of the pages. To accomplish this I started from the ground up a rebuilt the website on top of an e-Commerce solution using MVC 3.0. The result is a more natural and fluid experience when navigating between the information and the shop.
- Information on the services available. For this pretty much any old page could be used. I wanted more than this though so I added in a couple of things to bring the website alive and show off some of my photographs at the same time. One of these is the film strip seen on the home page. The second one is a picture slider with (for lack of a better term) advertisements that slide into view on the packages information page.
- I also plan to add a number of other resources as well and added a page for this. These will include links to other services that go hand in hand with my services. For instance iformation on caterers, wedding planners and shops, things like that. I will also include tips for planning successful photo sessions too.
- This blog - Currently I'm using the blog to post comments about the new site design. Eventually this will be where I put tips for planning and such. It also provides a way for registered users to add their own comments in response to the blog posts.
- Personal Albums - While I am still working on what the final solution here will be the primary purpose of this will be to allow customers to see their personal albums. First priority here is that the albums will be secured to only allow access to those the customers choose. I've already solved this portion although I may choose a different solution before it is done. The second purpose which I have not solved yet is to enable customers to order prints directly from these albums. It's this portion that will require additional programming to implement in a seemless manner.
- Contact information - To prevent hijacking the mail server the contact form requires validation. I don't like having to take the extra steps for this however it's necessary to keep the website functioning.