New Website

[Allen]

As many of you may have heard I lost virtually everything computer file wise with a theft of our two Macbooks a few months back. I managed to get some images back from files sent to me by Bob that were rescued from the server hack and trash of just a few days prior to our theft.

It's been a lot of painstaking work getting back websites that I work on for others, newsletters etc. that I have to publish, and I've been dreading having to go back and rebuild my own website. Anyone that has built a website knows what an awful lot of work it is trying to get it to look right on the majority of web browsers, not to mention that all the links work....and the spelling and grammar is up to snuff. That's not my forte, but my lovely wife is pretty good at pointing out my mistakes.

Anyway, I got my revamped website up and running with a few new features, and one that I'm really pleased with is the new iPhone / iPad compatibility. Just tested it out on my iPhone and it works a treat.

It needs a lot more tweaking and some different images when I get some instruments built, but at least I've got a working copy on both the server and my machine....oh and backups.

If you want to test it out and let me know what you think you can view it here.
Barron River Guitars

[ozziebluesman]

G'day Allen,

Just had a peruse through your new website and I like it very much. It is not cluttered at all and it is very easy to move around the site. Let your instruments do the talking for you. They are all beautiful on the eye!

Cheers

Alan

[kiwigeo]

Where's the porn????

[simonm]

For future reference. There are a bunch of online back-up services available which could help ensure that you won't be caught short in the future. There are generally a bunch of tricks with them that you have to watch out for - e.g. will only keep copies for for "live" disks as opposed to old disks. They might delete data after out 30 days - that kind of stuff.
Another alternative is email important file to yourself maybe as zip files and leave them on the mail server. Lots of service providers give you a gig or more of storage space anyway which you could use for files too.

Last but not least for websites, google's cache is a handy way of getting an emergency copy back.

I myself and pretty poor with backups but then again there isn't much on the machines that would cause me a headache or even a heartache if I lost it. Hmm ... maybe its time to do a fresh b'up of our local computers...


Oh ... almost forget.

Very nice, clean, easy to use website. The kind of design I like..

The only things that jump out at me are no mention of the finish you use (nitro, french polish etc) and one minor item on pricing - I find it odd to see top purfling as an "extra" although I can understand the logic.

[Nick]

I'm liking the layout Allen, nice & clean & really easy to navigate, if there's anything anybody wants to know about any specific area of your work it's not buried in the site. I like the gallery section too, I'm a bit hamstrung on my site (by the site provider's template) by how the images can be displayed...I like yours as I can pick, more specifically, the images I want to view. In the workshop section are you going to go a bit deeper into each build or leave it as a general overvue of what's on the bench at the moment? (Just being a nosey bugger! )

[Allen]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Good point about the pricing. That page was an effort to get something up that made it clear for potential customers. I'll have to re-assess it.

The problem with rebuilding the web site was that I use RapidWeaver and it works a bit like iWeb in that the entire site is saved as a package. Not individual files like with Dreamweaver for instance. It like iWeb will not just import all the files that were used to build a web site and re-create it. It must be done right from scratch. Now I've got a copy of the package in several places, so I should be good.

On the workshop page I'll cover what's being built as in depth as I have time for. When it's a commission like the current one it will probably be fairly comprehensive so the new owner can watch over my shoulder. I'll also cover what's going on with classes as they ramp up next year.

[DarwinStrings]

Looks good Allen, almost as good as you builds.

Jim

[kiwinoz62]

Allen,
Great web site, looks fantastic & very professionally put together.
I hope your business does' well, just like your ukelele classes. . .
All the best.

[Allen]

Thanks Wayne.

Websites are funny things. If they work well you rarely hear about it. No one emails to tell you that you did a crack up job of the layout, content and navigation. If they don't work well you don't hear about it at all.

I've found that its an absolute necessity for part of my marketing. I'd say to date that 80% of my sales and 100% of my commissions have come via the website.

[Matt Bach]

Nice site!

I've reached my dl limit for this month so my ADSL2+ has been shaved down to dialup speeds, which is pretty painful for most sites. Yours, however, loads in about a second, is easy on the eye and simple to navigate. Coming from a coding background I really appreciate it when extra care is given to the actual user experience (and doesn't just consist of hundreds of flash animations everywhere to please the site owner). Nice work on the images too.