Web Site(s) Updates
13 Jul 2008
Along with the launch of googility.com I launched a parallel site: Googility.com named for the combination of Google and Agility. Please tell your agility friends and neighbors.
I also decided to revamp my other search pages and create a new menu system for my blog too. So if you are reading this entry from a feed reader, please take a look at AgilityNerd.com to see the new look.
On AgilityNerd I’ve removed the top left menu and converted to a menu spread across the top. The items that didn’t make sense for the top menu were added to the very bottom of the left hand menu. I’ve removed the little search box from the left hand menu and put all three types of search into a drop down menu cleverly titled: “Search”. So Search now contains the original search of the site (which now remembers what you searched for once you’ve performed a search for easier refinement), the Clean Run magazine search, and a link to Googility.com.
The layout of the Clean Run magazine search has been greatly cleaned up and looks more like the Googility layout than its old look which was more like the blog. I’ve gone to a clean bluish theme instead of my old greenish theme. I’ve also added Google ads to the right hand side of the page. While I was at it I added all the magazine descriptions through the current issue. I still need to update the individual article index thought.
When I launched Googility I thought I had loaded all of the sites I’ve referred to in the past. I found out Friday I had left off about 30 prominent sites. Then I realized I had left out all the agility equipment plans/manufacturer sites. So I did some Googling myself and added over 70 sites on Saturday and Sunday. Now there are nearly 200 sites directly entered into the search engine. Google also adds sites linked from (some of) those sites. So after many hours in front of the computer this weekend I think as Laura would say: “I searched the web so you don’t have to”.
So far I’ve only heard from a half dozen people asking me to add websites, which I’ve done. I’m starting to come up with “rules” for the types of websites I won’t add. The search engine is only valuable if it returns useful sites, add too many sites and the value of the results could be diluted. For example I won’t add generic dog/pet stores, I’ll only add their agility sections. Similarly, I’ve only added agility training related pages from the websites of a couple dog breeders. I am adding websites for agility clubs and agility trainers as I learn about more of them because I’ve already seen people search for trainers by areas of country.
Lastly I played around with the list of Googility websites and wrote a small program to manipulate and display a randomly selected list of three of the websites used by Googility on its front page. So each time you visit the site you’ll see links to three different agility related websites.
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