So you want to know why The Weblog Review was created? Or maybe you want to know how it was created? Or where did the idea for the site even come from? All that and
more can be found below.
First lets start off with the idea for the site. If you were to do a simple whois lookup on networksolutions you would see that Brent Todd owns the domain. He is also the founder of the site. Now you wouldn't know that he has his own weblog unless you knew him before he took down the link to it. But that site does still exist, and is powered by the good people over at Blogger.
On their site they used to have a nice little section called blog of the week. That got old, and was changed to Blogs of Note. Brent wanted his site to become a blog of note, so he searched from one end of the internet to another for the latest and best designs for websites. He finally created a page that was in all css and dhtml, but alas, it did not impress the people over at blogger.
So he started posting thread after thread on their discussion boards as how one became a blog of note? It obviously wasn't design alone, but what was it? Who made the decision as to who made it and who didn't? Then someone responded with such an obvious answer: Why not create your own page for blogs of note? Thus the idea was born.
So again, he searched the internet and found numerous weblog portal, listing, whatever you want to call them, pages. But they were all the same, just a listing of the most recent weblogs updated. Nothing to clue one in to what the site was about other than the name. He was sure that names like "6 girls tell all" would get clicked on more often than "Computer Geek" so he wanted a way to tell each site apart. He decided that even though most weblogs were personal, some could be characterized into a category like computers or music.
So now there is the idea of categories, but still something was lacking. Its one thing to have a list of weblogs under each category, but still, the name issue came up. He thought that people would love to read up a little about a site before they actually read it. He had been to numerous sites and wished he never had. If only there was a way to warn people of bad sites and to tell people of good sites. Well what if there were reviews of sites like products on amazon? Great so now there will be reviews.
But what about lazy people someone asked. What about the people that only want to read the best sites out there and don't want to read a review of the site? This question kind of defeated the purpose of the reviews he thought, but then he realized the answer. A rating system. But not just by the reviewer, but by the people that read the reviews and the sites. Everyone knows that one person may love a site, but ten might hate it. Or even vise versa. Having people rate the sites would be very helpful.
Finally all questions were answered, and everything was written down on paper. Every idea for the site (at the time) and how it was going to be done. Almost three weeks
worth of programming and some money later, the site launched. Lots of bugs at first, and they got fixed quickly. The design of the site was lacking a lot, but it served
its purpose. The site grew to be an instant success. Hundreds of people a day showing up to read the new sites, and thousands a month. And thus, after lots of
preparation and hard work, The Weblog Review was formed.