Who likes photos of projects & workshops?

[Dr.Al]

Okay, I admit it, that was a click-bait title. Sorry.

I'm on the scrounge for volunteers. I'm about to publish a new version of my website and it'd be great if you could spare some time to browse around on the new one and tell me whether it works for you and any suggestions for improvement (even if they're just typo fixes). Link below...

I started my website a shade under 10 years ago as a place to put projects about my fledgling workshop (which then had little more than a mini-lathe and a bench grinder). Over the last 10 years, the website has grown and there are now about 700 pages on it and over 7,000 images.

However, the website looked quite dated, was hard to maintain and didn't really work on mobile phone browsers. In the evenings over the last month or two, I've been working on a new template and lots of new stuff that works in the background to make it easier for me to maintain (e.g. the menus, site index, category overviews and "what's new" page are all automatically generated based on a page-local "NestedText" config file). All of that should make it look more consistent as well as be easier to maintain.

Some examples of how the site has changed (old on the left, new on the right):

Home page on a big screen:



and on a small one:



Project page on a big screen:



and a small one:



Anyway, if you wouldn't mind have a browse around and sharing your thoughts, the new website is currently at:

https://www.cgtk.co.uk

That's the home page or alternatively you could use this link to go to a random project page on the site.

Please don't bookmark anything you find at that URL. It's only going to be live for the next week or so and then I'll migrate it over to www. instead of webdev.

Any comments you have would be greatly appreciated. I can't guarantee I'll do anything about them (e.g. if they're really difficult to resolve!) but I'll try my best. Comments can be shared in this thread, via PM, using the Contact form on the website (there's a link on every page) or even by postcard if you know my address! Up to you.

 

[Windows]

Works great on iPhone 15 portrait & landscape. Looks good and great content. V nice.

 

[duke]

Will do

 

[AndyP]

Looks very good on IOS 18 Safari.
Intrigued by the boar vice. Has the Victory been completed?

 

[Dr.Al]

Looks very good on IOS 18 Safari.

Thank you

Intrigued by the boat vice. Has the Victory been completed?

No. To be honest, I don't think I ever really enjoyed making it (I enjoyed making the vice much more than the boat!)

I started it when I was living in a flat with no chance of any workshop space and wanted to be making something, anything! When we moved & I could start doing stuff in the garage it got rapidly sidelined. I've had a few spurts of activity on it but I've pretty much accepted that it'll probably never get finished.

 

[Dr.Al]

Works great on iPhone 15 portrait & landscape. Looks good and great content. V nice.

Thank you.

 

[Mike G]

A neat, tidy, and well-organised workshop.....a neat, tidy and well organised website-to-be. I spent quite some time looking around (I think I even found a reference to me, although I can't be the only person who calls a router a screaming monster). My only observation would be that on a PC, sliding the slider down to scroll down a page disconcertingly takes the menu down with the page, so you lose the ability to navigate directly to somewhere on the top of the menu from the bottom of a page. It's trivially disconcerting, only until you work out what is going on. Otherwise, it looks great.

 

[duke]

I like it Dr.Al, I use an Asus chromebook and was able to navigate fine. The full view sidebar is a plus, photos are excellent.

 

[SamQ aka Ah! Q!]

In a Galaxy S23 far, far, away....well, the north-east... it looks fine Dr. B.. Android (of the solid state variety) coped straightforwardly.

 

[Chris152]

Looks great Al, and a pleasure to browse through. One question - what's the function of the 'What's New' page? Do you think of it as being like a blog, a chronologically ordered version of the Site Menu/ Index? I find it the only page tricky to read through, but could well be just me.

 

[AndyT]

Excellent site. It's especially nice to see how you have taken such care to write, spell and punctuate correctly. Good clear photos too, generally with plain, clear backgrounds. Very professional.

I also like the way that you record the details including tools, materials and model numbers where relevant, without clogging up the main narrative.

I did find a couple of very minor niggles on the home page. You can see in this screenshot how the strapline runs off-screen instead of wrapping:



This is on my phone, using Android 13 and Opera. It may be because of my possibly unusual display settings - text a bit bigger than the default for easy reading; general zoom level one step down from the default to fit more in. I expect most people never adjust these and I really don't want you to spend time testing every possible combination of settings.

Also, in the text on that page there's a reference to "the menu on the left" which makes sense on a PC but on the phone it's a three- line hamburger menu up at the top. I suggest you leave out the words "on the left" and trust your readers to find the one and only menu.

I few years ago I rashly took on the job of converting an old static html site to use a CMS, so I do have a feeling for how much effort it takes to get everything so well organised and presented.

 

[Dr.Al]

A neat, tidy, and well-organised workshop.....a neat, tidy and well organised website-to-be. I spent quite some time looking around (I think I even found a reference to me, although I can't be the only person who calls a router a screaming monster).

Thanks Mike, and yes: that was a reference to you. I think there are quite a lot more - some explicit in the form of references to "Mike's Magic Mix" and some more generic (and encompassing others such as @AndyT) in the form of (e.g.) "members of a woodworking forum who offered invaluable advice".

My only observation would be that on a PC, sliding the slider down to scroll down a page disconcertingly takes the menu down with the page, so you lose the ability to navigate directly to somewhere on the top of the menu from the bottom of a page. It's trivially disconcerting, only until you work out what is going on. Otherwise, it looks great.

Thanks for the feedback. Hmm... to be honest, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do anything about that: just because I don't know how! The design was based on this one I found online and all the sidebar stuff was built into the template. I think it might be beyond my skill set to try to figure out how to make the sidebar thing react differently.

What I think I could do quite easily is add a button at the bottom of the page to scroll all the way to the top. Do you think that would help? Other suggestions also welcome! For now I've added that button (in the bottom right of every page, but only appearing when you start to scroll). I'd be interested to know what you think.

I like it Dr.Al, I use an Asus chromebook and was able to navigate fine. The full view sidebar is a plus, photos are excellent.

Thank you. I've done all my testing on either Windows with Vivaldi/Firefox or Android with Vivaldi so it's nice to hear of other configurations where it works (or doesn't!)

In a Galaxy S23 far, far, away....well, the north-east... it looks fine Dr. B.. Android (of the solid state variety) coped straightforwardly.

Great, thanks.

Looks great Al, and a pleasure to browse through. One question - what's the function of the 'What's New' page? Do you think of it as being like a blog, a chronologically ordered version of the Site Menu/ Index? I find it the only page tricky to read through, but could well be just me.

That used to be the "home page" of the site. I originally added it thinking that it might be useful to occasional visitors to the site to see what new stuff had been added since their last visit. It seemed a bit of a shame to have it as the front page, so I moved it onto its own page.

I'd be very open to suggestions of ways to make it more readable. One of things I've added in the new update is an RSS feed for those who still use such things - that means you can "follow" the website (if that's the right term) and see when stuff gets added. In the Vivaldi browser its presence is indicated by a little icon on the address bar:

Excellent site. It's especially nice to see how you have taken such care to write, spell and punctuate correctly.

Thank you (it's nice that you noticed!) I always make a point (on here as well as on my website) of typing stuff out and then going back and reading it all through before posting to make sure there aren't any (many?) typos or things that aren't clear. Some things inevitably slip through (I've found a few ancient mistakes when I've been reviewing the site content), but I do my best.

Good clear photos too, generally with plain, clear backgrounds. Very professional.

Thanks. I find the photography side of it all quite a challenge.

I also like the way that you record the details including tools, materials and model numbers where relevant, without clogging up the main narrative.

I did find a couple of very minor niggles on the home page. You can see in this screenshot how the strapline runs off-screen instead of wrapping:

View attachment 30001

Oh, that's really annoying. It's supposed to wrap after the colon, like this (Vivaldi on Android):

This is on my phone, using Android 13 and Opera. It may be because of my possibly unusual display settings - text a bit bigger than the default for easy reading; general zoom level one step down from the default to fit more in. I expect most people never adjust these and I really don't want you to spend time testing every possible combination of settings.

It's definitely going to bug me now though, so I'll install that browser and see if I can figure out what's going on. Debugging problems on mobile browsers seems to be very difficult though.

Also, in the text on that page there's a reference to "the menu on the left" which makes sense on a PC but on the phone it's a three- line hamburger menu up at the top. I suggest you leave out the words "on the left" and trust your readers to find the one and only menu.

Done (as you can see in the screenshot I just posted) - thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Dr.Al]

@AndyT would you mind having another look at the home page? You might need to reload the page after visiting it (browsers don't always reload cached pages unless you tell them to).

I've changed the way the text alongside the logo is presented so hopefully it'll wrap more reliably.

I've also finally sorted out (I think) getting the logo to be vertically aligned with the centre of the strap-line. I'd spent several hours on that a few weeks ago and eventually gave up, but I think I've found a way to make it work. I hate CSS.

 

[AndyT]

@AndyT would you mind having another look at the home page? You might need to reload the page after visiting it (browsers don't always reload cached pages unless you tell them to).

I've changed the way the text alongside the logo is presented so hopefully it'll wrap more reliably.

I've also finally sorted out (I think) getting the logo to be vertically aligned with the centre of the strap-line. I'd spent several hours on that a few weeks ago and eventually gave up, but I think I've found a way to make it work. I hate CSS.

All fixed!

 

[Dr.Al]

Whoop whoop! Thanks Andy

 

[AJB Temple]

Only just had time to have a look. I spend an inordinate amount of time working on our web site, generally simplifying and reacting to customer feedback.

My constructive (I hope) comments:

Photos are frequently not sharp. Fine on a phone but really obvious on a large hi res screen or even a laptop.
Consider adding highlight buttons to interesting areas on your pictures, that auto enlarges what you choose
Shorten the title
In fact do this generally on page headers as it improves search spider tracking
Picture must have a super short description (which can be hidden if you wish) to allow search engines to include them in indexing
White background is tiring on the eyes - if whatever your using has background colour sliders, I would experiment.
It's very formulaic (versus creative ) with centred text and images everywhere. To keep readers engaged, there can be merit in varying this. In fact there can be merit in giving say woody versus metally sections a different site feel
Think about what you want people to take away from the text - it's all rather similarly descriptive so I found myself switching off after reading a few blocks
Personally I find contact pages a TOTAL pain. But may depend on how it is set up and whether it is web mail or direct to email. Web mail is slow to deal with so I prefer just to give a business email address (and phone and whats app in our case).
Social media links to Insta, FB and maybe TikTok increase traffic hugely (but you do need to snap new pics up quite often)
I find the "this is a free website etc etc" pointless. It's your choice to do it so no point in saying it.
It's totally fine to monetise your site. You are an engineering and software expert - sell some consulting of design services?
If you are going to let people email you, manage expectations on reply time - eg say 2 days (if you beat it then all good)
Ten pages on the index, plus the please donate text below that, is a LOT. I would try to make navigation simpler and better signposted.
if you want donations then use a "buy me a coffee" button or similar. Make it super easy. You can add things like SumUp payment methods easily or use one of the commercial donation sites that do this. Put the button in places people are likely to visit, not buried below a drop down list

The above is not intended to be horrid and negative. I've struggled myself with this website malarky and it's not as easy as people think. Happy to chat on phone if you want. PM me or ignore as you wish

 

[AJB Temple]

How to add a Button or a Widget to your website? | Knowledge Base | Buy Me a Coffee

Start receiving coffees for your work with Buy Me a Coffee Buttons and Widgets on your website

help.buymeacoffee.com

 

[Chris152]

if you want donations then use a "buy me a coffee" button or similar. Make it super easy.

As a punter who's used your site, Al, I'd say that's an excellent idea - no idea how it works but if it feels safe to use it, I'd have more than happily bought you a coffee after your help fitting the digital readout to our milling machine, for example. I read the donations message but thought it'd be difficult, and therefore too easy to ignore. Easy and safe would be key.

Fix it and I'll buy you a coffee!

 

[Dr.Al]

Only just had time to have a look. I spend an inordinate amount of time working on our web site, generally simplifying and reacting to customer feedback.

Thanks for having a look. I really appreciate the comments, even though there's only so much I can face dealing with...

My constructive (I hope) comments:

Definitely constructive.

Photos are frequently not sharp. Fine on a phone but really obvious on a large hi res screen or even a laptop.

I don't think there's much I can do about that. The photos were taken on my phone over the course of the last 10 years (there are over 7000 of them on the website) and the limit is a combination of the phone I had at the time and my limited photography skills.

Consider adding highlight buttons to interesting areas on your pictures, that auto enlarges what you choose

I'm not sure what you mean. Could you give me an example?

Shorten the title

Which one? "Dr Al's Miscellany"? Or do you mean the "strap-line" that follows it? I added that as (on the old site which looks like this: https://www.cgtk.co.uk) it felt a bit weird without anything saying what it's about.

In fact do this generally on page headers as it improves search spider tracking

Again I could do with a clarification here. To be honest, I'm not that concerned about "search spider tracking". As much as the website is something I like to have and I'm pleased that people are interested in reading the stuff on it, the more people who visit, the more it costs me! Suffice to say that search-engine-optimisation isn't very high on my list of priorityies!

Picture must have a super short description (which can be hidden if you wish) to allow search engines to include them in indexing

I'll have a think about that one, but doing that manually for 7000 images is a bit of a daunting prospect!

White background is tiring on the eyes - if whatever your using has background colour sliders, I would experiment.

What I'm using is a simple text editor and manually hacked CSS. Interestingly, someone on the MIG-welding forum commented that they struggled to read the text a bit (so I made it darker) and someone else highlighted an accessibility requirement for a certain level of contrast between background and text (so I made it darker again!). If I made the background darker it's probably mean I'd run out of dynamic range to meet the accessibility contrast requirements.

It's very formulaic (versus creative ) with centred text and images everywhere. To keep readers engaged, there can be merit in varying this. In fact there can be merit in giving say woody versus metally sections a different site feel

I think I'll look at this for new pages, but going back and re-laying out the pages would be a huge amount of work (just too many of them, especially if you're including things like all 143 pages of the Travel Tool chest build log.

Think about what you want people to take away from the text - it's all rather similarly descriptive so I found myself switching off after reading a few blocks

I've tried to write less like that as I've gained more experience of writing, but I'm not going to go back and rewrite the earlier stuff. As to what I want people to take away, I just want to write about what I've done. The mini-lathe stuff (the earliest stuff on my website) is mostly about explaining how parts are made so that they're easy to reproduce by others as they're intended to make the mini-lathe work better (based a lot on one of the websites from which I learnt a lot of useful mini-lathe tips). Once I started to digress into woodwork, it felt less likely that people would be copying the exact thing I'd made so the descriptions are less detailed.

Personally I find contact pages a TOTAL pain. But may depend on how it is set up and whether it is web mail or direct to email. Web mail is slow to deal with so I prefer just to give a business email address (and phone and whats app in our case).

Completely agree about contact pages, but they're a useful spam trap. Before I put added various CAPTCHA type things to my website, I used to get daily emails trying to sell me search engine optimisation or make my "company" more money. There are still occasional things like that but its much rarer. It isn't a business and I don't want to put my personal email address on the site.

Social media links to Insta, FB and maybe TikTok increase traffic hugely (but you do need to snap new pics up quite often)

I don't use Instagram, Facebook or TikTok and, as I said, I don't care about increasing traffic.

I find the "this is a free website etc etc" pointless. It's your choice to do it so no point in saying it.

I can see why you'd think that, but I get reasonably regular £10+ donations via that link (and those donations bought me a Clifton #4½), so I'm not going to remove it.

It's totally fine to monetise your site. You are an engineering and software expert - sell some consulting of design services?

Not interested. This website is a hobby and it'll take all the pleasure out of it if it becomes a second source of income.

Ten pages on the index, plus the please donate text below that, is a LOT. I would try to make navigation simpler and better signposted.

Ten pages felt like a relatively tiny subset to me, but I take your point. I'll have a think about alternatives. I've added a "Projects" page to allow an alternative way of browsing that seems to be popular with some people (although I hate websites that work like this):

https://www.cgtk.co.uk/overview

I'm sure many people will like it so it's probably worth pursuing (it still needs a bit of work on styling), but personally I prefer more categorisation.

if you want donations then use a "buy me a coffee" button or similar. Make it super easy. You can add things like SumUp payment methods easily or use one of the commercial donation sites that do this. Put the button in places people are likely to visit, not buried below a drop down list

I'll have a look at that, thanks. I've received quite a lot of donations over the years, generally in the £10-20 range but occasionally higher (I think the record was $100) and sometimes lower. I had thought that the paypal link that's on there was a fairly easy option, but I'll have a look at those buttons and see what's involved.

The above is not intended to be horrid and negative. I've struggled myself with this website malarky and it's not as easy as people think. Happy to chat on phone if you want. PM me or ignore as you wish

I didn't take it as horrid or negative at all; I really appreciate the feedback. Some of it is probably not viable in the time that I'm willing to devote to a hobby website (I want to spend more time making stuff!) and some of it doesn't bother me purely because I don't really care how "busy" the website is, but I'll definitely go through it all and see what I can do.

Thanks for taking the time both to browse the site and to pass on the feedback.

 

[AJB Temple]

Let's chat rather than type. Fully understand. For me I think of websites as marketing and if it is not going to make money I don't do it, so I come at it from a business perspective.

For search engine stuff your home page is the key area to focus on, then any landing pages. Don't fret about 7000, focus on a few that are the landing spots.

If you don't care about traffic then none of this matters much. If you want lots of coffees then it matters a lot, but totes your call.

Ask yourself "why am I doing this and who is my target audience?". These are the 2 key questions. If it is simply a hobby site then commercially that is in effect a vanity project (sorry - not being horrid, just straight), which is fine, but even then you still want to reach your target audience presumably.

If it were me I would largely forget about history - most of your subs will have seen it so it's largely an archive, and get the site ready for the future. Make it sharper. Good luck.

 

[Windows]

BTW thanks for adding RSS, I use it all the time.

 

[Mike G]

Hmm... to be honest, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do anything about that: just because I don't know how! The design was based on this one I found online and all the sidebar stuff was built into the template. I think it might be beyond my skill set to try to figure out how to make the sidebar thing react differently.

What I think I could do quite easily is add a button at the bottom of the page to scroll all the way to the top. Do you think that would help?

Seriously, Al, it's not an issue worth fixing. I wouldn't give it another thought.........although I always find a "return to the top" button very useful on long pages.

I agree with Adrian with most things in life, but I take a different view on the issue of your website. I think your website is analogous with my 10-year-long Mike's Extension & Renovation thread. I don't do that to attract numbers, or to make any money. I don't do it for the sake of making a record for my own purposes. I post in that thread as a way of keeping a very small group of interested and interesting people chatting about related subjects, with me. It's neither a vanity project, nor a commercial one...........it's just a hobby. Most of us are hobby woodworkers, and having a hobby website is no more or less. It's a hobby.

 

[AJB Temple]

Yep. I agree ^^ well put. Good analogy.

I am guilty of seeing everything as a business.

 

[Dr.Al]

BTW thanks for adding RSS, I use it all the time.

Nice to know people still use it! Don't subscribe to the site as-is though: it'll disappear in a week or two when the real one goes live (at www. instead of webdev.)

Seriously, Al, it's not an issue worth fixing. I wouldn't give it another thought.........although I always find a "return to the top" button very useful on long pages.

I agree with Adrian with most things in life, but I take a different view on the issue of your website. I think your website is analogous with my 10-year-long Mike's Extension & Renovation thread. I don't do that to attract numbers, or to make any money. I don't do it for the sake of making a record for my own purposes. I post in that thread as a way of keeping a very small group of interested and interesting people chatting about related subjects, with me. It's neither a vanity project, nor a commercial one...........it's just a hobby. Most of us are hobby woodworkers, and having a hobby website is no more or less. It's a hobby.

Thanks Mike. I'm sure there's a bit of vanity in there, but for me the hobby aspect is the main thing. I get loads of messages from people from the existing site and it's nice to email chat with like-minded people. I enjoyed the challenge of making a website, but in my opinion a hobby stops being a hobby as soon as you start making money from it. I'd like to keep my woodwork & metalwork as a hobby.

 

[AJB Temple]

Ah - we are now into philosophy

An ideal life involves doing only work we want to do and enjoy. Then there is no difference between work and hobby. So monetise whatever you like.

Rather oddly, we get free energy now and again from our supplier. It was free from 7am to 9am so my frugal wife has been a max consumer since 7am with charging car, running w.m, tumbler and dishwasher and an oven. I pretended to be asleep.

Currently surveying carnage outside. A few smashed pots courtesy of storm whatever its name is. At least one tile off. Surveyed from sofa so could be worse. Still ever so windy in these parts.

 

[Phil]

Nice site, easy to use.

 

[Dr.Al]

I've just posted a minor update to the site with two main changes. Firstly, I've now got a projects overview page for those who like that sort of thing (I'm not that much of a fan). It allows filtering by category, so looks like this when you first visit:




but if you click (say) Woodwork it shows this:







(automatically bringing the woodwork introduction up to the top of the list) and if you then click "Furniture Projects" it shows this:







All of that is automatically generated, including the image for the "Furniture Projects" intro (two project images superimposed, some pages have three superimposed).

The other change is (following a suggestion from @duke via the web contact form) a brief "About Me" blurb in the side bar.

 

[AJB Temple]

Works fine. Having had another skim through, you've got a hell of a lot of potentially useful stuff in your site, but how does anyone know it's there? If I'm looking for say a MkII Tangential Tool Holder, how do I know you have one for me to learn about? I know you are not looking for lots or traffic and you don't care about monetisation, but there surely needs to be some level of search engine indexation, otherwise its just a secret treasure trove.

Some headings are a bit inadvertently misleading. For example I clicked on Navigation, expecting to find a tool that would help me navigate content on your site, whereas it is is fact a tool for Google Maps GPS navigation.

I think I would also be getting some clear and obvious copyright protection notices on your site and possibly auto watermark the imagery. You never know when your IP might be valuable (I know....internet and not for profit, but still).

 

[Dr.Al]

Works fine. Having had another skim through, you've got a hell of a lot of potentially useful stuff in your site, but how does anyone know it's there? If I'm looking for say a MkII Tangential Tool Holder, how do I know you have one for me to learn about? I know you are not looking for lots or traffic and you don't care about monetisation, but there surely needs to be some level of search engine indexation, otherwise its just a secret treasure trove.

I just did both a google & a duckduckgo search for "tangential tool holder" & my website appeared on the first page in both (one of the holders at the top in google & both holders further down in duckduckgo). I'm sure the google result depends on my search history, but either way it's findable. I have no need or aspiration to be top of any search engine result.

If it remains mostly a secret treasure trove then I'm fine with that. The new site is hopefully easier to browse than the old one & that brings plenty of contact.

Most importantly for me though is that it's a hobby and I want to enjoy maintaining it. Trawling through search engine optimisation bumf & plodding through pages adding keywords sounds like a very efficient way of stopping all my enjoyment of the process!

Some headings are a bit inadvertently misleading. For example I clicked on Navigation, expecting to find a tool that would help me navigate content on your site, whereas it is is fact a tool for Google Maps GPS navigation.

There are a couple of tools in that section. I guess I could call it "Mapping" or "Maps" or something?

I think I would also be getting some clear and obvious copyright protection notices on your site and possibly auto watermark the imagery. You never know when your IP might be valuable (I know....internet and not for profit, but still).

I think I'll stick with "not for profit". There is a copyright notice on every page (although perhaps it would be better on the main page rather than the menu, which isn't opened by default on small screens).

Watermarks can distract from images and besides, you yourself said the photos aren't great, so why would anyone want to steal them?

 

[AJB Temple]

Don't take it personally Al.

What I actually said, or meant to say, is many of the photos are not sharp. This is self evidently true, but is only worth dealing with as you go forward. You may benefit from a photo processor, maybe even one of the AI ones, that deals with this automatically (within the limits of your chosen camera). There are some very swift ones now. And cheap.

I am sure you realise that I am not suggesting there is a problem with stealing your photos, but rather your ideas and inventions. In my view your copyright symbol logically appears related to your website design not the ideas contained in it. And you have to look hard to notice even that. But it's your call - you asked for input and if you only want praise then I am sorry I have offended you.

Before making the comment about the tool on your site, which I chose at random, (along with several others) I did 5 searches in three different engines. None of them listed you as top. However, if you don't care, that's obviously fine: you asked for input and I gave it. Like everything, input is worth what you pay for it and mine was free so worth nothing.

Seriously - I think it is very evident that you are a clever man. I'm not out to criticise you. On the contrary I have frequently praised your work. I offered to chat off line. You asked for input - I would not have volunteered it otherwise. I shall step away now.

Very best wishes, Adrian

 

[Dr.Al]

Adrian, please don't think I was taking it personally: the comment I made about the photos was just my attempt at a joke (hence the emojis). I really do value the input, it's just that at the end of the day it's my hobby website & up to me what I think is worthwhile implementing.

That projects overview style page is something that's quite common but I don't especially like, but someone on the MIG welding forum requested it & I thought that the implementation sounded like an interesting challenge so I did it despite not liking that sort of thing. Search engine optimisation doesn't sound like an interesting challenge, so I won't .

I've made quite a few other changes based on feedback here and there & I'll continue to do if it feels right to me. I agree with you on the copyright symbol location. It was on the sidebar in the template I used & I left it there, but I agree that it's definitely worth moving (or duplicating). I'll do that when I make the next update.

I'm sure when this phone finally bites the dust (I never replace until I have to), I'll buy one with a better camera & hopefully that'll help with sharper photos. I hate both the idea & the process of post-processing, so I won't do that though.

I wasn't even slightly offended by your comments (I found them thought provoking and useful, even those I chose not to do anything about) and I sincerely hope I haven't offended in my replies trying to explain why I chose not to make all those changes.

 

[AJB Temple]

Cool. Don't let post processing of photos put you off. Some of them such as Skylars Luminar Neo are very easy to use and have one click presets that will deal with sharpening, luminosity, saturation etc. They will also put a copyright label very discreetly on every image either as a text box in a corner or a watermark or both, and you only have to set this up once in the default presets. You can bulk process too with these tools - but to do that it is best to choose software that has a half decent library system. This one click method is a compromise but much faster than using Adobe Photoshop etc and will give your imagery a consistent look. If you actually want to improve photos without forking out for an iphone 16pro (other very expensive phones are available), ditch the phone entirely and get a cheap second hand compact camera for your workshop. Ideally one that connects via wi fi to your laptop and will dump the images there straight away. This saves a lot of time.

I am not in the slightest bit offended btw - more concerned that I had upset you.

Personally I find web editing and maintenance really tedious so I am forever seeking super easy methods and drag and drop shortcuts. AI web tools are in their infancy and quite useless, but the photo processing software has come a long way in the last 5 years.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Dr.Al]

Cool. Don't let post processing of photos put you off. Some of them such as Skylars Luminar Neo are very easy to use and have one click presets that will deal with sharpening, luminosity, saturation etc. They will also put a copyright label very discreetly on every image either as a text box in a corner or a watermark or both, and you only have to set this up once in the default presets. You can bulk process too with these tools - but to do that it is best to choose software that has a half decent library system. This one click method is a compromise but much faster than using Adobe Photoshop etc and will give your imagery a consistent look. If you actually want to improve photos without forking out for an iphone 16pro (other very expensive phones are available), ditch the phone entirely and get a cheap second hand compact camera for your workshop. Ideally one that connects via wi fi to your laptop and will dump the images there straight away. This saves a lot of time.

Thanks for the advice, I'll have a look at those. I like taking photos with my phone as it's always with me and always charged (and it uploads everything to google photos automatically). In the very early days of having a workshop I took a camera out there to use (I think it's still there, buried under stuff ) but found that whenever I came to use it the battery was flat.

Part of the reason I dislike post-processing (over and above cropping, scaling down and removing EXIF data) is that I think it's over done in general. It's got to the point that it's hard to know how much of what you're seeing is real and how much is skill with Photoshop etc. I know there are shades of grey in all these things and there's quite a lot of difference between a slight sharpening of an image and changing stuff to mislead / exaggerate, but it still makes me slightly uncomfortable. Of course there's a fair amount of automatic processing that's happening on the phone these days, but somehow it doesn't seem quite as bad if I'm not deciding to do it! Perhaps that's just me though....

In all honesty, I quite like the simplicity of the process I have at the moment: select the photos in Google Photos (often by just clicking on the "Today" button), download them, load the whole lot into paint.net, crop and resize one by one, add them to the website folder (my website build script automatically strips EXIF data). It's quick and doesn't involve too much mucking about, which I like (but which probably also explains the varying quality of the photos on the website!)

I am not in the slightest bit offended btw - more concerned that I had upset you.

Not in the slightest. I really do appreciate the feedback. It's just that at the end of the day, it's a hobby website and as it's my hobby, I get to decide what I can be bothered to implement.

Personally I find web editing and maintenance really tedious so I am forever seeking super easy methods and drag and drop shortcuts. AI web tools are in their infancy and quite useless, but the photo processing software has come a long way in the last 5 years.

I don't mind the process of writing what I've been doing for the web pages (I find it helps me quite a bit in learning from what I've done). With the home-brew site builder, the actual writing is really easy using Markdown, something I'm very familiar with.

I've added various functions to simplify things I do often (e.g. `i{filename1.jpg, filename2.jpg}` automatically adds two images side-by-side, sorting the full path to the images out automatically, `youtube{dQw4w9WgXcQ}` inserts an embedded youtube video (although it's unlikely I'd embed that one...), and `h{traveltoolchest}` gets magically turned into <a href="/woodwork/handtools/traveltoolchest">Travel Toolchest &amp; Workbench</a>, saving a lot of typing and remembering where various pages live on the website or what the page title is. There are a fair few other similar features.

Similarly, the "build logs" (e.g. this one for the tool chest) are generated from a single Markdown file (with ---- markers separating the pages); the generation script makes html pages for the website and also a BBCode version that can be pasted directly into this forum and the MIG welding forum so I can publish stuff on my website and on the two forums at the same time. With all those features, writing the content ends up being quite a quick and pleasant process.

I quite enjoy programming (and hate using frameworks I don't understand), so coming up with neat ways of doing things like the above and also auto-generating all the various bits and bobs like the site index, menu structure and the new overview page was quite a fun thing to work on. Styling it all and making it look okay (by hand-editing CSS) was a nightmare, but such is life.

Keep up the good work!

I'll do my best, thanks!

 

[AJB Temple]

Very good Al.

I know coding is your day job whereas mine is a 90% forgotten remnant of a maths PhD donkeys ago so a monkey is better than me. I struggle with even basic stuff now such as getting Word files (menu templates) to appear as a truly crisp JPG on line. I keep meaning to develop a script, then I remember that I need to make some rolls, or paneer, or my current fave Italian crispy flatbreads. Also, it's winter and trudging in the rain to the spidder infested workshop is off putting.

 

[Dr.Al]

Very good Al.

I know coding is your day job whereas mine is a 90% forgotten remnant of a maths PhD donkeys ago so a monkey is better than me. I struggle with even basic stuff now such as getting Word files (menu templates) to appear as a truly crisp JPG on line. I keep meaning to develop a script, then I remember that I need to make some rolls, or paneer, or my current fave Italian crispy flatbreads. Also, it's winter and trudging in the rain to the spidder infested workshop is off putting.

Thankfully programming isn't my day job, but it is part of it. There's enough there that I enjoy it when it comes up, but not enough that it drives me potty. Most of my day job ends up being either circuit design or critiquing other people's circuit designs!


The disadvantage of being comfortable with programming is that I use it by default for a lot of tasks (even to the point that if someone asked me to add a column to a spreadsheet with the sum of the other two, I'd probably read the xlsx file into python, create the new column, then write it back out as xlsx - for me that would be quicker than trying to drive Excel). Then when I have to write a report in Word, I find everything confusing and counter-intuitive!

As for what you said about

basic stuff now such as getting Word files (menu templates) to appear as a truly crisp JPG on line

I'm not sure I even understand what that means & I certainly wouldn't consider it basic!

 

[Dr.Al]

Not that I imagine anyone really cares, but I've just pushed an updated version to the server. There have been loads of little changes as I've been going through the pages and reviewing them one-by-one, but major things I can remember are:

• More prominent link on the home-page to the projects browser thingy
• Made the projects browser thing look better on mobile phones (I hope)
• Added titles underneath the images on the front page.
• Added a content copyright at the bottom of every page (thanks Adrian) - copyright year is lifted from the publication date so is different on each page. I'm not sure if this needs more (e.g. "All rights reserved" or something); I was erring on the side of minimal clutter.
• Added a "Buy me a pizza" button that is hopefully a little more inviting than the old donate link (not that it's the end of the world if people don't click on it - as I said, I get enough to cover costs and a bit more at the moment). At the moment it goes to the same paypal link as the old one does (to save me signing up for yet another service), but I can always review that later. Thanks Adrian & Chris.
• Added a home-made animated icon on the build process links to (hopefully) make them a little more obvious (e.g. see this page). Given it's a 42 pixel square animation, I probably shouldn't have worried about whether it's a proper involute gear form, but I'm me so I did anyway
• Made the "Scroll to top" button not cover over the text at the bottom of the page on mobile browsers
• Fixed lots and lots of irritating little things, e.g. the fact you couldn't middle click (to open in a new tab) on the page navigation buttons on the build logs.

At the moment the website seems to be going very slowly, but I'm hoping that's just my network connection playing up and nothing fundamental...

I've reviewed (by reading them through from start-to-finish on a mobile browser) 162 out of the 197 project pages, although I'm made changes along the way & I probably won't go back and check all the ones I reviewed early on. I'm not even contemplating reviewing every single page (e.g. the 143-page build log for the travel tool chest): there's only so much time in my life!

 

[Mike G]

......At the moment the website seems to be going very slowly, but I'm hoping that's just my network connection playing up and nothing fundamental...

Not for me. It all seems perfectly fine at my end.

 

[AndyP]

And here, works a treat.
A minor issue :-
On the home page the hyperlinks work on both the image and the description.
On the project page the hyperlinks work only on the image and not on the description.

 

[Dr.Al]

Not for me. It all seems perfectly fine at my end.

Great, thanks.

And here, works a treat.
A minor issue :-
On the home page the hyperlinks work on both the image and the description.
On the project page the hyperlinks work only on the image and not on the description.

Thanks Andy. I'll see if I can fix that.

 

[AJB Temple]

• Added a content copyright at the bottom of every page (thanks Adrian) - copyright year is lifted from the publication date so is different on each page. I'm not sure if this needs more (e.g. "All rights reserved" or something); I was erring on the side of minimal clutter.

I would probably say clearly somewhere something like: "the owner of this website asserts and retains all rights to intellectual property, images, designs, inventions and copyright and they must not be copied or appropriated without prior written consent from the owner of this website". And where you have a copyright symbol add something like "IP rights asserted". This is not legal advice - it is just a protect yourself suggestion in case you invent the next biro without realising.

It's looking better Al and working better. Top man. Admirable work ethic.