Would appreciate your comments

[Tony Monaghan]

On my revamped website;

Link (http://www.monaghan.tv)

Forget the tunes and Google ads (that's a placeholder), just wondering what y'all think about it. Leave a comment on my guestbook thingie if you so wish...

T

[swinkler]

I like it. It's clean, things load fast. Very nice.

Steve Winkler

[nikolas]

Tony,

Before I'm ready to make a decent feedback and throw my mind into your website, I would like to know what your aim is for your website. I'm used to seeing professional composers (computer game composers, or media ones) websites, or graphic designers, and computer game related stuff, so I'm not sure what to look for in your design.

Sorry that I can't be of further assitance right now. Hopefully we'll speak again soon. :)

Nikolas

[Tony Monaghan]

Tony,

Before I'm ready to make a decent feedback and throw my mind into your website, I would like to know what your aim is for your website. I'm used to seeing professional composers (computer game composers, or media ones) websites, or graphic designers, and computer game related stuff, so I'm not sure what to look for in your design.

Sorry that I can't be of further assitance right now. Hopefully we'll speak again soon. :)

Nikolas

Thanks for looking Nikolas, I'm not a prefessional composer and have no intention to be so. This is just a personal site for an inveterate banjo player. Thing is, I get loads of web traffic which warrants a half decent website at the very least. So many different ways to present a website - static site, blog, over the top flash or whatever.

Just looking for an honest opinion as to the overall look and feel, it's not meant to be self promoting in any major way.

[Larry G. Alexander]

Great music, Mr. Tony! I enjoyed your playing.

As you know I am a big banjo fan and have written much music for it through the years. Do you also like American bluegrass?

Your site looks good except that your type is too small for these old eyes. :)

Regards,

[Tony Monaghan]

Thanks for looking Steve and Larry.

I surely do enjoy bluegrass music and particularly banjo but my banjo only has four strings and isn't quite tuned for that style.

I do however indulge in some bluegrass mandolin when I get the chance to play with some friends of mine. *()

I'll look at doing something about the text sizes, thanks for the input.

[AlanPerkins]

Here is my two cents' worth:

I love the banner. I think it is personal and presumably reflects who you are, so has a touch of "home" or intimacy about it.

The colour scheme is nice and works well.

The fonts are perhaps a tad small, although I personally like small fonts, bt I think Larry's point is valid.

I don't think it is a good idea to have the menus down the side as well as across the top. The duplication is redundant and takes up space. It kind of feels like you are trying to make use of widgets for the sake of making use of widgets. The menus look cool down the side, but the top ones are probably more efficient and functional. You can probably, by getting rid of those, eliminate the need for the left hand column - putting the webcam down the right hand side.

The listening room concept is good, but I would suggest that you list each piece separately, perhaps with a header and a little story about it, and perhaps even with room for comments to be added under each, but even without the interactivity, the option of telling your story with each piece is probably more powerful than a generic "juke box" concept.

I would suggest you remove the Garritan menu because you are taking people off your site. Perhaps instead have a page about how you produce your music - the uninitiated will be interested to read a small overview of the sampling/sequencing process and you can there put a link to the Garritan page. Otherwise it is only meaningful to those in the know. To those without that background it is kind of more like an advertisement and will just confuse or irritate.

Well that was probably a little more than 2c worth. Feel free to ignore if you don't agree - it's your website!

Overall I think it is well done.

Alan

[snorlax]

Tony...
Nice. I left a comment in the guestbook...is there a way to get back to the site, though, after having signed the guestbook? If there is, I didn't see it.
Snor

[Tony Monaghan]

Thanks Alan and Snor for having a look.

I've removed the menu from the left column but that can't be deleted (at least for now), so I've left the StudioCam in place. I've increased the font size and added a link in the guestbook to go back to the main site.

Working on a different way to present the mp3's.

Any other suggestions welcome.

[nikolas]

Hi Tony, again,

Thanks for letting me know your intentions. :)

I do like the colour scheme very much and the font (don't know if you made them any larger already) are fine now for me. The colours of the fonts are ok, as well.

I have to admit, though, that I find your website a little "cramped" and out of space. There's bits everywhere to looks and I did get a little lost. Many menus, many different links (from NSS, from other time zones, from a webcamera, etc).

Of course I'm pretty sure that you would find use for a live webcam feed in your website, as well as links to NSS forums and timezone information. I mean, honestly, all these seem very useful to me, honestly. Just that I hadn't imagined them on a personal site.

The banner is only awesome and you should NEVER change it!

In short I think that it's a very welcoming site (although a little intimidating to those not used to such layouts), and very friendly, by all means and everything. You also look cool playing your banjo with those "performers playing too slow" people! ;)

In short I really enjoyed my visit to your website and I'm pretty sure I'll be visiting it again. :)

[Tony Monaghan]

Hi Tony, again,

Thanks for letting me know your intentions. :)

I do like the colour scheme very much and the font (don't know if you made them any larger already) are fine now for me. The colours of the fonts are ok, as well.

I have to admit, though, that I find your website a little "cramped" and out of space. There's bits everywhere to looks and I did get a little lost. Many menus, many different links (from NSS, from other time zones, from a webcamera, etc).

Of course I'm pretty sure that you would find use for a live webcam feed in your website, as well as links to NSS forums and timezone information. I mean, honestly, all these seem very useful to me, honestly. Just that I hadn't imagined them on a personal site.

The banner is only awesome and you should NEVER change it!

In short I think that it's a very welcoming site (although a little intimidating to those not used to such layouts), and very friendly, by all means and everything. You also look cool playing your banjo with those "performers playing too slow" people! ;)

In short I really enjoyed my visit to your website and I'm pretty sure I'll be visiting it again. :)

Thanks Nikolas for stopping by again. Coming up with a website design isn't as easy as it first appears. I's only a personal site and therefore not very important but getting feedback is invaluable.

As I mentioned before I get a lot of traffic on the site and even for a visitor who will never come by again it should be a pleasant experience.

I'm continuing to tweak and likely will come up with something completely different incorporating all the suggestions.

[bigears]

Hi Tony, I went back for another look and listen. I like your page and enjoyed reading a little bit about you. I encourage everyone to head over and take the time to listen to some of Tony's great music. You will be glad you did. In fact I'm streaming the music from his site as I write this.
Those songs sound great, Tony. Really good job on your recordings!
Is that your doggie? Looks like a great old pal.
Best regards, John

[Tony Monaghan]

Hi Tony, I went back for another look and listen. I like your page and enjoyed reading a little bit about you. I encourage everyone to head over and take the time to listen to some of Tony's great music. You will be glad you did. In fact I'm streaming the music from his site as I write this.
Those songs sound great, Tony. Really good job on your recordings!
Is that your doggie? Looks like a great old pal.
Best regards, John

John,

Thanks for stopping by! I appreciate your comments on the site (and the tunes), still tweaking and trying to get it right.

Not my dog unfortunately, can't have a dog where I live or I would.

[efiebke]

Tony -

Checked your web site yesterday. Nice Job! Gonna go back and hear some music when I get the time :)

Just one comment. . . When visiting your picture gallery (I was looking for lots of photos of your studio with all of your studio toys in it! LOL! :D), I believe that there wasn't a link available to bring me back to your main web page. Maybe I missed it??!!??!! :confused:

The photos, by the way, were BEAUTIFUL! I hope to visit Scotland someday (along with the rest of the British isles). It seems that every photo that I see from any part of that world is just sooooooo beautiful!

Again. . . Nice job! (And maybe check the links.)

Cheers! :)

Ted

[Tony Monaghan]

Tony -

Checked your web site yesterday. Nice Job! Gonna go back and hear some music when I get the time :)

Just one comment. . . When visiting your picture gallery (I was looking for lots of photos of your studio with all of your studio toys in it! LOL! :D), I believe that there wasn't a link available to bring me back to your main web page. Maybe I missed it??!!??!! :confused:

The photos, by the way, were BEAUTIFUL! I hope to visit Scotland someday (along with the rest of the British isles). It seems that every photo that I see from any part of that world is just sooooooo beautiful!

Again. . . Nice job! (And maybe check the links.)

Cheers! :)

Ted

Ted, thanks for taking the time to have a look at the site. I've now added a menu option in the Gallery section to take you back to the main site. It's the little things like this that are obvious but easy to miss and where another pair of eyes comes in very useful!

Yeah, Scotland is a beautiful place indeed, if you like rain :)

[WaldoB]

Great music, Mr. Tony! I enjoyed your playing.

As you know I am a big banjo fan and have written much music for it through the years. Do you also like American bluegrass?

Your site looks good except that your type is too small for these old eyes. :)

Regards,

Larry, I sympathize and hope you know some browser tricks to zoom in from your end. Using my laptop and the Firefox browser, I can make things bigger by hitting ctrl and = simultaneously. Similarly, ctrl with - will make it smaller, and ctrl with 0 will reset your view to the default.

Best wishes,

[rbowser-]

Tony! It looks totally faboo! Love the look and feel of it, very user friendly, handsome layout - it's great.

You've said a couple times that you get a lot of traffic - now how did you manage that? I limp along with from 1 to maybe 10 hits a week!

Randy B.

[Tony Monaghan]

Tony! It looks totally faboo! Love the look and feel of it, very user friendly, handsome layout - it's great.

You've said a couple times that you get a lot of traffic - now how did you manage that? I limp along with from 1 to maybe 10 hits a week!

Randy B.

Randy, thanks for stopping by.

Traffic has steadily built up over the past couple of years because of various factors. Using some search engine optimization techniques typing my name into Google brings up my site as the first on the page.

On average I'm getting 15,000 hits per month, a lot of it because I have music on the site, there are also links to the site from the forums and social networking sites that I'm a member of. Analysing the log files also shows people are simply typing my name into search engines and arriving that way, I wonder who they're really looking for?