New web site!

Here's the result of the last week's labour - and the last half year's speculations and preperations!

Finally: I have just finished the complete re-design of my web-site and it is being uploaded as I write this!

So what’s new?

First of all, the old site consisted mainly of photos. I realized that it wasn’t doing me very much good with the search engines, since they are all geared for text and not for photos. Even after keywording all my photos they still didn’t show up in any Google search. So in the new design I have a lot more text, carefully filled with good keywords, on the different pages. Is that gonna do me any good? Don’t know yet. I have never targeted the “internet masses” with my business. But listening to people like Dan Heller, I figured it was worth a try. Even if it doesn’t convert into a steady sales channel, I hope that it will at least boost my Google ranking which fell from a modest 3 to a meager 2 recently, after they regrouped their priorities. (The ironic thing is that I started getting more profitable hits after that event!)

Secondly, the navigation sucked on the old site. Everything was arranged in categories and sub-categories and it was getting increasingly difficult to keep it logical. Now everything is arranged so it never takes more than one click to go anywhere from the main page! It makes it a lot easier to see what the site contains.

I also changed the general layout of the site, from a heavy, serious black to a bright and light white, which is a lot more readable for text and still totally acceptable for viewing photos.

And another thing I’m very excited about is the Web 2.0 features I’ve now implemented. Or at least Web 1.5. You can subscribe to a newsletter and there is an area for user comments and debate. Not very revolutionary, but pretty neat for an amateur web designer like myself. It was implemented with something called Joomla, pretty advanced stuff and a bit over my head most of the time. But once you’ve gotten it to work, it does a great job! So at least now there is those options. Whether they’ll be used or not, that’s another matter. Time will tell...

What else? The photo essays are no longer buried in some sub-menu but brought right up on the front page. The design could be better but overall I’m pretty happy about it. Lots of white-space although it’s not always in the best places (imo). And a side benefit: I think it’s gonna be a lot simpler for me to update and maintain the whole thing.

So that’s about it. I just have one last request. I would really appreciate it if you would have a look at the whole thing and tell me what you think. Is there any mistakes that catches your eyes? Something that doesn’t work? Grammatical mistakes? Anything.

Send me an e-mail, write in the comments section, here or on the web-site. The address is, if you don’t already know it, http://www.msmediaservice.com

UPDATE 2009 : I have a new-new site on www.mortensvenningsen.com !!

Thanks!