Introducing my newly refurbished website and two new Fabulous Faces

If you follow my blog, you probably remember that I especially enjoy taking pictures of people and dogs when I meet them on my trail walks. I met Cindy and Lynn, two fabulous and friendly trail walkers, in Chagrin River Park this morning, and after a brief conversation, I asked if I could take their picture for my Fabulous Faces gallery. You can read about it here and see the many faces, human and canine,  I have photographed over my years of walking along the trail. Meeting Cindy and Lynn was truly the highlight of my walk today.

About my website and blog

I have a website, hosted on the SmugMug platform and a blog, hosted by WordPress. Both are named Seen Along the Trail because they are based on my frequent trail walks and the photos I take along the trail.The website and blog work in tandem. I take my camera with me on my trail walks and capture pictures of things I see along the trail.Then I bring them home, remove them from my camera to my computer, and upload them to my website where they stay until I am ready to write a post for my blog. Four or five times a week, I choose the photos I want to write about, write the post, and share it on the blog. (An analogy for this is the process you follow when you prepare a meal to share with your family or friends. You go to the store, buy good food, bring it home and store it in your refrigerator. Then a few days later, you take it out of the refrigerator, process it (i.e. prepare the meal) and serve it to your guests).

Refurbishing my website

For the past month I have been hard at work reorganizing my galleries and refurbishing my website to give it a fresh look and a design that is easy for visitors to navigate. I drew up the design, chose the picture galleries I want to share, and wrote the text. Then I began to build the site. Some parts of that process were easy, but sometimes I couldn’t make the pictures and text display on the screen the way I wanted them to. When that happened I called my granddaughter. Carrie is a web-developer with a company in Memphis, and she was a huge help to me. Just for example: One big problem I couldn’t resolve was how to get the images of the four seasons  to display in a row on the home page. Nothing I tried worked, so I told Carrie what I wanted to do, and she wrote the code that made it happen. Now they are lined up just as I pictured them. So with Carrie’s help on the technology end, and advice on layout from my daughter Becky,  the site was finally finished last night. Carrie and I gave each other a virtual high-five, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The website is “live.” You can visit it here, and I hope you will return for frequent walks down the trail with me on both my website and my blog.

How’s the experience from your perspective?

If you have any questions or comments for me, including about how the site looks on the device you are using to view it (desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile phone), just send an email my way. The contact form is in the menu at the top of the website’s home page.

Finally, a few pictures from today’s trail walk

White-throated sparrow

Red-bellied woodpecker

Northern cardinal

Red-bellied woodpecker

Red-winged blackbird

Red-winged blackbird and friend

Thanks for joining me for today’s trail walk.
I would welcome feedback on the website from your perspective.
See you soon! ~Trail Walker