I really wondered what was going to be waiting for me at The Imdateless.com Website. Was this going to be a male or female author? Was it just going to be like the other sites where the person goes out on dates with people and blogs about it? Or was this just going to be a dating website? Lots of possibilities, so lets hope for the best.
When I first got to the site I was greeted with a flash intro. I am not big on intro pages at all. I don’t think they serve a purpose other than inflating statistics for a page. I chose to skip the intro and I was presented with a membership page all done in flash. What the hell is going on here? This is a dating site? This isn’t a blog. Where is the blog? All of those shot through my mind immediately.
So I saw a non-flash intro link and clicked on that. Again, I am presented with a membership page and I am starting to get frustrated. I notice a news link on the left, so I click that. That expands into a couple of options so I click on current, and I am brought to a blog! Finally I found it. So for all of you who wonder where the blog is from the front page it is: Non-flash -> News link -> Current. Ok, since my first time visiting he added a “Current News” link on the front page. Just click that.
The design of the blog is very simple: two columns with navigation on the left. To give it a little bit of flair he is using a DHTML menu thing to expand and collapse all the options for the navigation. Kind of cool, but I can see where it will get annoying since he manually has to change it.
Now that I have gotten to the blog I found the golden gem. This blog, for the most part, is a very fun read. He talks about why he is dateless, his attempts at dating, and other things in his life. There are posts about updating the site which seem to get old and annoying quickly, but it just ads to his personality. One thing that he could benefit from is using includes as he talks about having to update like 90 pages every time he changes something.
The stories of why he doesn’t have a date and his attempts are the best. You just want to help this guy out with any advice you think you should give him. Some times I thought man he is trying way to hard, others I thought not hard enough, and other times I was asking myself “Why the hell is he doing that?” This is the only downside I have to the blog itself: it is good because of the topic and how he is telling it. What will happen when he does get a date? What will happen if he gets a second date? Will the stories still be as vividly told, or no? I hope not.
Overall we have a great blog with a great idea behind it. He even went so far as to make imdateless.com a company and to run it like a company. Interesting. The lack of a fluid design for the site and hard to find (originally) weblog make it hard to give it anything above a 4. This site has some improvements to make and I hope they get made. Interesting that my initial reaction for this site was give it a 2 or worse based on the hard to find navigation, but then this is the WEBLOG review and his weblog is very good.
The Imdateless.Com Website