Any website that covers cute dogs is bound to be a hit, right?

My little guy is a cross between a smooth haired fox terrier and a wire haired fox terrier. The result is a rough coated, even tempered bundle of energy.

I found All Mutt.com which discusses the different (designer?) cross breeds and how they turn out. Results will obviously differ as different dogs will pick up different traits. I’ve met two full siblings of my dog (different litters) and while the resemblence was clear their coats were totally different. The other two were much, much hairier.

The site runs on WordPress recognising its merit as a content management system and not just a blogging tool. Each pedigree breed is given its own category so you can click the breed, eg Labrador Retriever and read info about different crosses. The categories could do with an introduction at the top of the page (ie category description) with info about the pedigree but that could just be me since down in NZ we have Labradors and Golden Retrievers and consider them to be distinct breeds.

The Pomeranian Chihuahua Mix cracks me up. Both breeds are feisty so you’d have to think the result would be about as sane/safe as the baby seal they are visually compared to.

“Does the guy in this picture look like a baby seal or what? It’s not a baby seal, it’s a Pomeranian Chihuahua mix.”

The content of the site finds a good balance between stuffing it full of keywords and writing readable text.

Oh, and you can find them on twitter too http://twitter.com/#!/allmutt

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Best Web Designers is the site run by “thatsfine” from the digitalpoint forums. I always admire people who are ballsy enough to stand up and say “We’re the best”. We Kiwis are more humble and tend to say “We’re proud of our work” without actually challenging others in our field.

If you delve under the covers you’ll find a nicely constructed site that appears to allow theme switching – a gimmick from dynamicdrive – presumably to show off their templating skills. The form to allow you to use it is nowhere to be seen though.

It’s interesting that they’ve chosen to use English english on their pages and not US english. See the Search Engine Optimisation page as an example. The only zeds to be found on the page are in optimizing and optimized – noone could accuse them of keyword stuffing.

Personally I would have used Optimisation and Optimization equally through the page – but maybe they know something I don’t and Google (et al) aren’t troubled by dialects. A quick check would show that Google understands they spelling difference but still serves up different results: optimisation versus optimization. Maybe the phrases are so terrifyingly competitive that it’s just not worth it.

The portfolio page shows an impressive list of sites but a quick sample found about half to be suspended or “down”. If all had live links a quick run through with Xenu would make it easy to keep the list up to date. Those that I did successfully visit were nice, well constructed sites. WordPress seems to be the CMS of choice and the implementations look good.

The testimonials page needs to be broken up with thumbshots of the sites being referred to, otherwise it is just a long page of dark gray. They’re good though and I expect a link to this YouTube testimonial will be going up shortly. You’ve got to love customers like that!

The text on the site needs to be edited – the wording is a bit clumsy in places and hasn’t been updated to reflect the passing of time.

The company has been providing these services successfully since two years.

Elsewhere we are told the site has been around since 2006 so that would make it 4 years now. That kind of proofing is the bane of any content manager and is not restricted to ESL writers. I’ll probably re-read this in a months time and have sentences that make me think “why did I say that, that way?”

My final check was to run the home page through the w3 validator. Check any discussion on validation and you’ll get arguments for and against. Normally I wouldn’t be too fussed but when I’m reviewing a site builder you expect a site to only throw unusual and insignificant errors.

I was surprised then to find simple things like attributes in uppercase, opening & ending tag mismatches and ampersands coded as & rather than &. These are all really minor and would only take a couple of minutes to clear up.

All in all, the site is easy to use and presents the services of Best Web Designers and thatsfine very well. Equally importantly their portfolio shows that they can deliver.

Thats the latest tweet from Mark, author of The Tinnitus Book. I have a mild ringing in my ears all the time – so I can totally sympathise with the real sufferers!

Mark tells me he wrote the book himself – the result of being afflicted with tinnitus and making the best of a bad situation. His book sells via ClickBank so it’s a safe, secure transaction for those who wish to buy.

I may be a little hasty prodding around on the site as their are many sections which are incomplete but it promises to be a useful source of information with articles, letters and a forum. Read the rest of this entry »