Interlopers.net Forum - Half-Life 2 News & Tutorials

http://www.marksneddon.net/

Still doing shiz, the front page is finished though pretty much. The only thing thats bugging me is the big empty space between the navigation links and the contact info, not sure what I could/should put in there though.
Still need to fix the resume page and re-do some of the art content. It's getting there slowly though!!

Looks good, but on your resume the bullet points before the centered items make it looks weird to me.

esJ wrote:Still need to fix the resume page

Yeah, I need to work on that.

18 month bump? almost xD
Site has been finished for a while, any critiques would be welcome!

http://www.marksneddon.net

LOVE your weapons! Also the map you made looks very good

Site is good, nice clean simple design. Large images are good too.

The thing I find weird is that you have the map first, even though you are a 3d modeler.

bekey wrote:You should completely invert the order, the weapon at the end should be on the top first image, you need to catch the visitors eyes the moment they visit it. Don't waste their times.

'zis

First of all I'd like to help you with this, not in anyway back-stab you.

Good stuff.

• You show all important information when someone visits your site.
  They now know your name, your phone number, what you do and what's in your resume.
  
  

  Highlight to read:

  2 Questions.
  Why do you show your grades in your resume?
  Why do you share both a pdf and a rtf file for your Resume. If you want them to edit your Resume (and/or let them copy text, they can do that in the pdf as-well, and since pdf is an open file format it shouldn't be any problem with them having a program to let them copy that; unless you blocked that..)

  
  
• Your website works in IE6/7/8, Firefox 2+/3+, Safari 5, Chrome 5, Opera 10.
  
• You show detailed images of your works, so interested people can also view that you have an eye for detail.

Stuff that should be better.

• When someone visits your website all they see is your info and one big image. Big both visually and file wise. It's 574kB. That's big for an image that everyone must load. But it's not only that single image. You require everyone to load more than 5mB's of images. Just because they visit your website. That might seem nothing, but it's very inefficient requiring everyone to load all your images. When there is a specific time where you want them to do that, at-least use a decent file compression. Since you're using CS3 I assume you're familiar with the 'Save for Web & Devices' use a jpg compression from somewhere between 70-80. For specific images you might want to use a lower compression, say 80-90. With a compression of 70-80 it's very hard to detect any difference.
  
• You require everyone to scroll down to see some work. It's better to have a gallery or overview of images than just a list with very large images people have to scroll through. Also I advice adding date-stamps and what tools you used to achieve what you see in the images.
  
• You're also inconsistent with the amount of information you provide about what you made, for example only showing the amount of triangles, while in another picture you don't show anything (your m4, on the bottom of your site) and in other images you show what it is meant for and what kind of textures you used.
  
• Your site is too wide to be properly used on a 1024px x ...px screen, which is mostly still being used as a standard for websites. Unless ofcourse your webdesign is so special you decide you don't care, or when you know (which is nearly impossible) that the people interested for you, always use screens/windows larger than 1024 x ...px.
  
• You're not using javascript to hide your email-address (and phone-number). Crawlers can easily grab your email-address (and maybe additional info about you) and spam you. Since crawlers can't use javascript hiding/replacing it using javascript is a good way of getting rid of the (possible) negative attention from crawlers.
  
  Use something like this.
  
  HTML
  

  Code: Select all

  <span id="email_js_replacement">
someone -at- website -dot- com
</span>


  
  
  Javascript
  

  Code: Select all

  $('email_js_replacement').innerHTML = '<a href="mailto:someone@website.com">someone@website.com</a>';


  
  
  
  
• You're using php, but you're copyright footer is still showing 2009. This can say 3 things.
  1. You're using static html for the current year and forgot about updating it?
  2. You're using javascript and my computer thinks it's 2009, while it clearly states this to be 2010 in my windows calender stuff.
  3. You're using php to update the year, but the server time/date/year is still in 2009.
  
  I expect the first thing. And if so, switch to the 3rd one.
  Use this. It echo's the Year using php. Unless you're using some crappy host which servers still think it's 2009, it should work very well.
  

  Code: Select all

  <?php echo date("Y"); ?>

  
  
• You're using a large image as header. While this could easily be done with just plain html and css. Unless you're using a very special font and don't/can't use a font replacement technique (flash/javascript/css3/etc) it's logical using images. But even then you should use 2 small images of the parts where stuff is, not the whole complete white stuff between it. Also when you're using very few colours it's more efficient to use gif compression.
  
• Keywords, Description, language (not that important), and a custom favicon (shows detail). Use something like this.
  
  

  Code: Select all

  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="description" content="mark sneddon's portfolio, 3d stuff blabla, etc" />
<meta http-equiv="keywords" content="markssneddon, marks, sneddon, portfolio, etc etc" />
<meta http-equiv="language" content="en" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="images/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="icon" href="images/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />


  
  
• You're sharing files you might not what people to find using google (not directly).
  
  
  I think it's unwise to share your resume on google, maybe when they're is quite some personal info in it and people going directly to your resume don't see your portfolio website. Besides that you might have other files people might find using google since you're linking to them, somewhere; but you might not want that everyone can see them. Using robots.txt is a very old and some would say, a very solid way to ensure all search-engines don't document stuff you don't want them to document.
  
  Use something like this.
  
  

  Code: Select all

  User-agent: *
Disallow: /personal-documents/


  
  
  Save it in your root as robots.txt . Analyse it using the Google Webmaster Tool.
  Using the Google Webmaster tool means you will need to identify your website (that you actually are an administrator) you can either do that by adding a code, something like this (you get your own personal one) into your HTML
  

  Code: Select all

  <meta name="verify-v1" content="code-blabla-sjadnsjadnsjandjsandskjadnlkjand=" />


  
  or by uploading a specific html file into a specific folder. If you have identified your website to google, you can let it re-crawl your website on your demand. Letting it update the description, robots, keywords etc. However other search engines might still not have updated your robots.txt/keywords/etc by then, you can either ignore it or try to force them to re-crawl.

I think this is all I can say at this moment. Got a bit tired by writing it. I hope you can use it for your benefit. I think it's a good counter-effort for your tutorial about 3ds max workspace.

Also, if anyone wonders, I do actually have experience with this stuff.

I liked the site but i found the images were very big and of course were right on the Home screen.
While direct, it could be better with smaller images that enlarge.

Dr. Delta wrote:You're not using javascript to hide your email-address (and phone-number). Crawlers can easily grab your email-address (and maybe additional info about you) and spam you. Since crawlers can't use javascript hiding/replacing it using javascript is a good way of getting rid of the (possible) negative attention from crawlers.

Did you know the most basic (read: 386 era and above) way of finding email addresses on a website is by executing a regular expression against the page's source? I guess not, since doing so in your javascript example would simply yield the email address from your javascript sourcecode. "part" + "of" + "your" + "@email.com" would be tons safer. And yes, crawlers have always included .js and .css files in their searches.

However, contrary to what you think, most crawlers these days are fullblown html engines. They execute javascript and render pages. Even moving parts of your email address via css only stops the ancient crawlers. Even the email -at- host -dot- com has been used so many times crawlers have heuristic methods of finding email addresses through those 'codes'. Obfuscation like this doesn't help enough. I think Flash is still safe to use, though i would recommend against it anyway..

I would recommend either using a non-personal email address for these contact pages or an email form (+captcha or something).


Other remarks:

-Never ever ever publish your phone number. Unless you like talking to telemarketeers... No, seriously, there is no need to put it on your website, no self-respecting company is going to contact you per telephone, i mean, cmon, its >1999!

-pdf is a respectable file format excellent for resumes. as has been said, i wouldnt publish it in any other format except pure html. Currently the pdf doesnt list much more infor than the html does. Dont list info twice, its confusing. Either get rid of the downloadable documents, or write different texts. (eg html=summary, pdf=fullblown resume)

-Resume: personally, i would prefer a standard english letter format. In its current format its pretty hard to follow imho. Eg, dont list your key skills, write about them. Dont list what you did at job xxx, write about it. ('from January 1st 10 BC till 26th of december 0 i worked at Nazareth Carpentry untill the owner died of a serious case of nail through the hands. My activities consisted of nailing people to self-made wooden crosses.' Your current resume doesnt say anything about why you quit for instance. Didnt like the job, mod/game finished? etc) Dont put quotes of your references in your resume, you aren't the readers digest... Only thing im missing is the social aspect of what makes you. Hobbies? Social status? Past job experiences (not even modding related) Other than that, i guess it gives the required information. Perhaps a 'i see myself in this or that direction in ten years' or something?

-Site: what others said. Try to keep in mind what employers need to know when they want to decide if you are suited.
1) can he do what we need him to do? (can he work in teams, can he work with engine x or program y, etc)
2) is he talented? (you seem to have taht covered :p)
3) what makes him better than all the other 12 year olds with a portfolio on the web? (im not trying to insult you here, but seriously, theres millions of sites with pictures of self-made maps and props, what makes you better than all the rest? SELL SELL SELL yourself.

wait wut, 1 year bump?

I completely agree with Z@C and Delta, Make a professional Email for your resume.
And if Phone numbers are needed just have them ask via email.

In the end you just need a good combo of writing describing work you could theoretically do and
examples that show what you CAN do.

I think Documents could be helpful though, just make sure to mention it is the same information.
This way if say I saw your resume and thought it looked good for (insert other company)'s roster,
I just download the PDF and professionally go "Hey, this guy looks like he could be what you're looking for".

zombie@computer wrote:I would recommend either using a non-personal email address for these contact pages or an email form (+captcha or something).

I get basically no spam to my personal email address.

zombie@computer wrote:Never ever ever publish your phone number. Unless you like talking to telemarketeers... No, seriously, there is no need to put it on your website, no self-respecting company is going to contact you per telephone, i mean, cmon, its >1999!

I have yet to receive an unsolicited non-business phonecall. It's been on my site for like 2 years at least, I'm comfortable having it there and it removes the barrier of a potential employer having to ask for it. Lots of companies do phone interviews, wouldn't be surprised if phone was a preferred form of contact over email for some companies.

zombie@computer wrote:-Resume: personally, i would prefer a standard english letter format. In its current format its pretty hard to follow imho. Eg, dont list your key skills, write about them. Dont list what you did at job xxx, write about it. ('from January 1st 10 BC till 26th of december 0 i worked at Nazareth Carpentry untill the owner died of a serious case of nail through the hands. My activities consisted of nailing people to self-made wooden crosses.' Your current resume doesnt say anything about why you quit for instance. Didnt like the job, mod/game finished? etc).

CV needs to be short and to the point, and convey the key information clearly. Most recruiters and HR departments will spend as little as 30 seconds reading your CV on average. The info you're talking about would be better suited to an interview imo.

Very nice work, also the clean layout of the page is good.

One thing, on your resume, you might want to move the mod experience paragraph to the left so it is under the professional experience paragraph