Site Review Blog

These are 2 reasons that people tend to move from one place to another. You move house out of need - like closer to work or for want. When it is the latter, the reasons are mostly for the lifestyle that is offered.

Now finding out about the lifestlye reasons are sometimes not easy. Well, when we were looking over the website for Greenville Real estate, we were pleasantly surprised. The website, while it is a Real Estate agent is not focussed on the buying and selling of properties. This makes up a significant part of the site, but at first glance it offers so Much more. Greenville S.C. real estate is focussed on the 3 most important aspects of Real estate - Location, Location, Location.

The Home page tells us clearly about where the Location is (Greenville, South Carolina), then it goes on to look at the locations within the Area (Greenville, Columbia and Charleston), and finally it talks about the natural Beauty of the Location (The foothills of Blue Ridge Mountain) . So, before we have even seen a listing for any of their properites we already know about the 3 most important things (Location, Location and Location). We already have a feel for this place before going anywhere near it - and the Real Estate Agent has focussed on the area first and their business second. They are obviously very proud and happy to live and work in the area.

As far as Real Estate websites Go, it is a real pleasure to see that the focus is on lifestyle first - and really, that is one of the factors why we all move house and it should be important! The site also contains all of the things you expect from a Real Estate Agent including listings, selling information contact details and Area Maps.

Visit www.ourgreenville.com

No, not your feet, but what is under them. I am talking about the floor coverings. As someone who has owned several houses the floor covering on the floor of every house I have bought has to some extent been “undesirable”. Yes, I hate carpet floors! They are nearly impossible to clean, have stains and just downright get smelly and stink the whole house out.

So, my solution in all houses I have owned was to rip up the smelly, stained and worn out carpets and replace them. I have used all sorts of alternative from Lino, tiles, floating wooden flooring and even just prepared, polished and varnished the wonderful wooden floors below. Now, tiles are a great floor that is easy to keep clean, look great, and are much warmer than carpet - BUT it is a lot of hard work laying them. Lino is cheap and fairly easy to lay, but looks vary. Poloshing and painting wooden floors is a lot of hard and dirty work to end up with a nice result. My favourite flooring so far has to be a floating wooden floor.

It was a few years ago that I did the floating floor and in recent times there has been quite a few newer materials used to make this style of floor coverings and one of the most interesting is Bamboo Flooring. It is a material that is really starting to be used more and more over the last few years in all sorts of applications. Some of the advantages of this material is that it not only looks great but it is an environmentally friendly product as well - no need to cut down a rainforest tree to cover your floors.

If, like me, you hate carpets and are considering updating the look and feel of your house then consider Buying Bamboo Flooring to do the job. Now, a bamboo floor will be quite unique as there are a couple of different methods of manufacturing the flooring boards - The Vertical Bamboo Floor planks are made from very narrow strips and have a fairly unform appearance whereas a Horizontal Bamboo floor plank has wider strips and offers quite a variety of patterns.

The Bamboo Flooring website contains a lot more info than I could put together - it has all sorts of information from buying, care and maintenence to the installation. The site is informational in nature and has links to quite a few different manufacturers. It has plenty of pictures demonstrating what the text says and is easy to navigate and use with a top and bottom nav bar on the pages.

Visit www.bambooflooring.biz

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In the Western World we have been putting our faith into the Medical profession whose skills and knowledge goes back around 150-200 years. Some people in the West are starting to “discover” what has been going on in the “East” for thousands of years and are starting to turn to all sorts of Natural healing methods as an alternative to “popping a pill” or “slicing it out”. Now, while it is an interesting subject in itself to debate on the pro’s and con’s of Medicine that is not what we are doing here!

One of the Eastern Ancient Healing methods is Acupuncture and New York Acupuncture have set up a website to promote their business. My first thought on Acupuncture is that it involves someone sticking needles into you and you end up looking like a pincusion! This is a gross generalisation and only partially based in the facts. Yes, Acupuncture does involve inserting needles into the body, but it is done at very specific points - and there is little to no discomfort when receiving a treatment.

Now, the website. The site has a comment on their homepage saying it has recently been re-designed. I had no idea as to what it looked like so I took a peek of how it looked in the past thanks to the waybackmachine. This site has been around for a long, long time and In the past it was not that great! They have done some great improvements to the layout and now the site actually provides some great content as well. They provide a little bit of general information on howAcupuncture can help in the treatment of various conditions. Some of them I had heard about - Acupuncture for Arthritis is one example and others such as an alternative to IVF - Infertility Acupuncture I had not heard about..

Of course, a site like this caon only provide general information and act as a bit of an introduction to how Acupuncture might be able to help you. This is where it really comes back around to what you put your trust in - the 200 year old Western Medicine or many Thousands of years of Eastern knowledge and treatments.

Visit www.activeacupuncture.com

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.. your friends and the chance to explore somewhere new is what a holiday is all about.

While you may not have friends all over the world who can take you out and show you what is what if you are heading to Italy, then there is a nice alternative. A Tuscany Holiday that puts you in touch with the Locals and off the beaten track sounds like a great way to spend a few days or weeks. Taking an Italian wine and food tour and really immersing yourself in the country and culture sounds like a great way to spend a holiday to me.

This website has to be one of the most interesting and innovative “travel brochures” I have ever seen. The site is all about how they can put You in control and in touch with the country and culture. They do this in an intersting way - by showing you exactly the sort of activites that That Arianna and her Friends can share with you from a Tuscan Cooking class, food and wine tours to treks and cycle tours. I don’t normally quote from a site I look at but a small quote from their about us page really says it all for me.

If you want to spend some time with us you’d better get to know us first!

The page goes on to introduce you to the Tour guides from there. You get the feeling that you are actually visiting a friend who will show you around rather than booking a holiday. Take a quick peek at the Tuscany Photo Gallery to get a glimpse of what you can expect, and when packing, don’t forget your own Camera!

I always think to myself “one day I’ll get to Europe” and I think that after looking over this website that they really do offer something for me. I like to try and get friends or family to show me the out of the way places and from this glimpse, this is the sort of thing I would love to do.

Visit www.ariannandfriends.com

My first question was why? then after I read a little bit it was How. Everone who runs a website knows how important it is to keep in contact with their site visitors and it is even more important with a Blog. Most people have a blog so that they can share information about something, and people read the blog because they want to know more about the topic. Now back to the original why.

The why you might want Email for your blog is pretty easy - You want to be able to let your readers know when you have made an update. Sure, they could visit your site to check if there is an update, they could even subscribe to your RSS feed. The Reality is that everyone checks their email and if you send a snippet from your sit you give them a reason to come back.

Now we know the why we would want to use email marketing to promote our blogs, lets look at the How. This is where Zookoda comes into play. They have developed an email subscription system that is just perfect for Bloggers. They take care of the managing of subscriptions via email and provide you with all the tools to easily prepare and send out the email to your subscribers.

While the FAQ answered most of my questions, I decided if I was going to review what they offer that I would need to sign up. The sign-up process is straight forward, you fill in a form, click the confirm link in an email, then get your login details in another email. Once logged in, you are presented with a comprehensive control panel and everything presented in the FAQ makes more sense. I think that if they had a couple of Control panel screenshots as part of the FAQ it would really show you what you can do.

From the Control panel, you can follow the instructions and start creating your mailing lists. You do everything from here, from creating, managing and tracking your email marketing of your Blog. The best thing about this is that it is totally free. Yes, it costs you nothing to set it up and try it out for yourself.

Visit www.zookoda.com

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… online that is. Yes, we have looked at a few online shopping sites over the last couple of months, but today we are looking at what is essentially the mall. Well, first of all, we need to understand that all a mall is - it is nothing more than a huge building with a lot of smaller shops inside. So my analogy of an online shopping directory being a mall is right on the mark - it is just a “building” with lots of “shops” in it - regardless of the fact that it is all virtual.

So, what does an electronic commerce mall do? Simple, just like a regular mall it puts Internet stores in the same place so you can wander thru them all - just like walking thru a regular mall. Just like a regular mall it has shops for finding various items - such as Books, health and Pets. You can wander around each category and then visit each store by selecting a category from the main page. You can even put your own store into this “mall” by following the submission guidelines.

As we have discovered, nearly all directories have multiple submission categories - Elib has a basic submission which is free and also a couple of paid options for inclusion. The site itself is nothing special to look at, but it offers something that I have not seen in a directory before - an additional 2 languages being Dutch and Italian. By having a website that is in multiple languages you have the chance to cater for and capture a larger number of potential visitors. Whilst I cannot read either of the additional languages to verify if it is all the same, the layout looks very similar and I can guess the occasional word. Next time I build a website I am definately going to look into how easy or difficult it is to add another language. I think this is a great Idea.

Visit www.elib.org

Now, we were really surprised with the request to review a site for a manufacting company that makes Plastic Moulded Components - but I suppose only because it was the first such request we have had. Now it is fair to say that I know absolutely nothing about manufacturing or even what a Molded Components Manufacturer can and does produce. A look around their website quickly gave me a reasonable insight into what they do and what they make.

Ok, lets take a look at their site and see how it goes about telling us what they do - because we do know a thing or 2 about websites! The site itself is a fixed-width, centered design and it’s purpose is to tell us about the company. It has a small but useful header with the primary navigation. The nav has links about the Company’s products and services as you would expect, along with Company info including Location and Contact information. The site makes extensive use of flash - which I am not a great fan of, but they have managed to pull it off - and have only used it for image slideshows and not done anything stupid like relying on it for navigation.

The site is actually written in 3 Languages - English, Italian and Dutch. When you view the site there is a link to the other 2 languages the site is written in as part of the navigation. The integration of the mulitiple languages is well done. As far as websites go, it is very functional, a little “industrial” looking but overall it is very well done. They have taken the time to do it right and I would guess that this would be their overall company philosophy as well.

Overall, I am quite impressed with the site and how it is put together - a lot of people could learn from it. Like I said, I know just about nothing about the products, but their website means I know know a little about what they do.

Visit www.impa-togno.com