Welcome!

February 20, 2006 on 2:47 am | In Updates |

I thought a simple blog might be a good way to keep people updated on the latest info with the site.

After about 2 months in development, we were finally confident enough in the script last week for a soft launch. This is not some off the shelf open source script, but all custom built so it took a fair amount of time to get all the bugs out. I’m sure there are more that will pop up as the site becomes more heavily used, but so far everything seems to be working well. Some users have commented that the submit form could use a little refinement, which I am currently working on. If you have any comments, please feel free to let me know. We are trying to make the site as easy as possible to use.

A little background on how the site came about if you are interested. After launching several sites, and being active on some webmaster forums, I noticed a common theme that people really want to hear other’s opinions about their website. They also like to know how their sites rate to end users. This is especially important if the website has just been launched. So I thought a site devoted to serve this purpose would be useful. The site also functions like a directory, in that you get a permanent one way link by submitting. I wanted the directory part to be more visually based than a standard text based directories. That’s why I went for the thumbnails with short descriptions. I experimented with various thumbnail generating scripts, but decided on using user submitted thumbnails for 2 reasons: 1. I wanted the user to be able to control exactly what was shown. 2. I wanted to avoid the dreaded “image missing” that occurs with most automated systems.

Finally, the name. Yes it’s a little corny, but I think it is memorable and it does kind of grab you! What do you think?

 

Have a great week

-Jake