Website review/critique group

Hi Leah & Anthony,

I wanted to propose an idea for this forum - a peer review group where we could look at and critique each others’ websites and possibly even social media presences.

This would not be about discussing the artwork, per se, but would be focused on the online presentation of it, which is something I think many of us struggle with.

The subject might fall slightly outside the scope of this forum (or then again maybe not), but I think this kind of feedback could be of substantial value to those of us who are working artists.

I’m going live with a new website next week, and would be happy to offer myself up for the first round of criticism once it’s in place.

Thanks,
Jeff

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This is an absolutely fantastic idea Jeff! Organized feedback on web presence is something I haven’t seen offered anywhere else. I’ll set up the category today.

Thank you!

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Awesome. I’ll post my new site there next week.

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Heck yeah! I’m totally down with this!

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I would love feedback on my website. Thank you Shawna

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While I might not be the best reviewer of websites—I think that yours is a hit Shawna. It is clean, easy to navigate, and populated with great content. Hopefully some others here that are more well-versed in website design may chime in with some more constructive feedback.

Thanks Anthony!

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Hi everyone – I built a new website, and I would really appreciate any feedback you have. This is my first time putting a site together, and I would really love to have an an artist’s perspective on how it looks and works. [https://nataliefeatherston.com]

Thank you for your help!
Natalie

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Hi Natalie, your website looks great!

I notice that the URLs for pages linked from the top navigation menu all have the format ?page_id=217. By contrast, two of the search engines I checked link to URLs like /about and /contact. Those URLs currently give 404 - page not found errors. I think it’s possible to configure WordPress to use the latter URL format.

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Thank you so much Orlando- I appreciate it! I will look into the URLs-- thanks for letting me know!

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Great looking site Natalie, I love how clean it is and the fact your art work takes precedence over everything else.

As Orlando caught above - those things are called Permalinks; in Wordpress I think you have yours set to “Plain” there should be a few other options in there, you likely want “Day and name” so try it out if you see that option in the settings to do with Permalinks. Then the individual pages have names instead of random numbers, and if you ever added a blog or anything it would date the entries too. This is better for search engines!

You can also utilise the copyright © symbol at the bottom of your site if you like, you can either copy/paste it from this very sentence, or if you’re on a Mac you can hold the option key & g to type that character.

Your Facebook link goes to a personal page - this is fine if all that does on your personal page is art/business related, but you may want to have a separate Facebook page purely for promotion/professional/reasons. I know it is an extra thing to then have to deal with - but it might be worth considering if it makes sense to you.

Super ‘clutter-free’ site though, well done!

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Thank you so much for taking the time to have a look and for all the helpful suggestions, Martin! I really appreciate it. I found a video this morning that explains how to change the permalink, which I will do right away. This whole thing has been a huge learning curve, that’s for sure. I’ll also update the copyright symbol!

You make an excellent point about Facebook-- I think mosts of my posts are art related, but it’s not exactly a business page, either. My instagram is probably more ‘business’. My thinking was that if someone wanted to connect on Facebook they would be looking for a more personal connection rather than something you’d see on a business page, but I may have to give that some more thought.

So glad to hear you like the look of the site! I really appreciate the help and feed back- thank you!

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I agree about FaceBook. I generally post artwork on Instagram and family/general stuff on FB. After I recently posted the link to my blog, which I had never done before because I rarely post anything on the blog, my own cousin clicked thru to my website. Her response was she was “absolutely floored” by the extent of my work. She had never been to the website! I will post links there more often and also post artwork there more regularly.

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