Sunday, August 30, 2009

An 'It'll Do' Website About Landscaping


Updated (August 31, 2009)

Designer (profile not available) took the time to write a comment, pointing out some some apparent inconsistencies between this micro-review and the website. I've been unable to add the information, as suggested by Designer, since www.the-landscape-design-site.com wasn't online when I checked, shortly after 9:00 a.m. this morning.
"The Landscape Design Site"
"Do It Yourself Landscape Design"

"The following pages focus on what you need to know to successfully and easily create your own finished landscape design without hiring a designer or landscaping contractor.

"You'll be exposed to some real professional knowledge, advice, tips, recomendations[!], and do-it-yourself landscape resources and pictures...."

Okay: It's a commercial website, for Steve Boulden / S&S Designed Landscaping in Carlsbad, New Mexico. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Boulden would like you to pay for his services. And, it's not the best-designed or maintained website on the planet. It was last updated a year ago, I had to click past a couple pages on my way to 'pictures' - and only one of the three links I clicked sent me to the external site it was supposed to.

That said, I think this could be a pretty good place to start, for someone who was planning a rather ambitious makeover of their lawn. There's a fair amount of text with what appears to be pretty good, general set of advice and ideas.

If I were starting a project like that, I wouldn't end my online search there, though. There's a lot more online: I suggest going to Google and tying in 'landscape design' - without the quotes.

That's if I were starting a project. This family doesn't have a lawn: we've got a yard. Which, considering our four kids and the size of the extended family, is just as well. It's nice to have a largish swath of grass, trees, and shrubs with a 'lived in' look.

5 comments:

Designer said...

Actually, the site is updated daily. Also, please point out on the site where you can hire Mr. Boulden for his services. It's not a commercial site and Mr. Boulden is not for hire.

Brian H. Gill said...

Designer,

Thanks for taking the time to comment on this post!

It is possible that there are technical issues involved.

I can easily believe that the site is updated daily - but time stamps and broken (probably outdated) links to external pages suggested otherwise.

Yesterday, the time stamp indicated the last update was in August of 2008. I'd have confirmed that, and checked out the contact information, but here's what I got when I tried a few minutes ago, using the URL http://www.the-landscape-design-site.com/

"Not Acceptable

"An appropriate representation of the requested resource / could not be found on this server.

"Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
"Apache/2.2.0 (Fedora) Server at www.the-landscape-design-site.com Port 80"

Designer said...

Thanks for the review...I guess.

Other than the outdated external links, I'm not sure why you're having so much trouble with the site. And thanks for pointing out the broken links. They're being taken care of.

Your review is interesting and does make me wonder about all the praise it gets from visitors about how helpful it is to them.

Still, reviewing my site out of all the landscaping sites out there...., I guess "it'll do" for most folks.

Brian H. Gill said...

Designer,

Thanks for getting back to me.

The content on your site was fine, as I recall.

Some of the difficulty I was experiencing might easily be server issues at the hosting service you use. Another point: I use the FireFox browser. It's rather widely used, but not as common as Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

I didn't take a look at the code for your website - it's possible that my browser is incompatible.

(Which is why, when I can design a website from the ground up, I try to keep strictly to HTML and basic Javascript - and not much of the latter, these days. The bells and whistles are fun, but not - to me - worth the risk of incompatibility with the dozens of browsers in fairly common use. And, I don't have the resources to test the 'top 20' for compatibility.)

Brian H. Gill said...

A word of explanation:

September was an exceptionally hectic month. One of my daughters got married, my new son-in-law got very seriously ill, and my father died.

What with one thing and another, responding to comments got tabled. I'm catching up now. Apologies all around.

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