Design of HowToConvert.org is certainly shiny and full of eye candy with transparencies, rounded corners and a beautiful blue splash in the header. It looks like it's floating on top of a glass plate or with some stretch of the imagination a glass table surface. Transparency style reminds a bit of panels in modern operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows 7, OS X and KDE4 desktops. In any case a pleasant it's pretty and pleasant.

The sidebar looks pretty good as well with its soothing light blue background color, style of block titles and bullet point icons for links to recent posts. I also quite like the rounded search box. Main content area is stylish as well mostly due to the light shadowy background of teasers and the TV icon. But this is where some issues come to the fore.

The TV icon is on the very edge of the background border and there's unused empty space to the left of the teaser text. My guess is this is where teaser image would be if it was available, which would be great if they were on every teaser. Otherwise, that white space should probably be filled by the teaser so that the title and teaser are aligned which would look much neater.

Article pages could use some fixing as well. The light shadow frame is visible at the end of each article where the text ends up displaying on its borders rather than within them and the text overall seems a little too close to the edge of the white area making it feel a little crammed.

Aside from that a lot of articles are really badly disrupted by two square ads displaying within them, often positioned on top of each other. When I look at these ads and what they do to content I almost see them as some kinds of big blobs that clog the natural flow of content. For example, this one is really clogged. Square ads are positioned in such a way as to make a barrier between the beginning and the rest of the article. You probably don't need to take my word for it as it's quite possible some users might find this way of showing ads rather obnoxious.

Probably the best looking thing on article pages is the comment form.

Design Rating: 7/10

Focus:

The focus of HowToConvert.org is obviously on providing tutorials on how to convert one thing to another. Specifically, judging from content available, but also as may be expected, it's about various technological conversions from one digital format of music or video to another. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have an about page explicitly outlining the purpose and focus on digital conversion though.

Focus Rating: 10/10

Content:

Tutorials on HowToConvert.org typically start with a description of the involved formats and their properties and then continues with three short sections; "things you will need", "instructions" and "do's (or don'ts)" which are set up as simple bullet lists. Instructions are a numbered list of steps to follow in order to complete the conversion. This makes these articles quite brief, but useful and easy to follow. The introductory text however in some cases could be split into two or more paragraphs as it looks like a wall of text, especially if squeezed in by ads.

There's overall 23 articles available which isn't bad, but isn't a terribly large number either. But then again if it's only digital conversions that are being covered there's only so many of the conversions people may typically be looking for.

Content Rating: 8/10

WaysTo.org looks quite nice, but still a bit bare, especially to those who recognize that it is actually a ready made theme with modified colors. There is no logo, just a plain title on top so aside from the colors there really isn't much that is original about the design, at least compared to other sites who may use the same theme. Nevertheless, the theme is a decent choice as it is fairly pleasant and presents a content in a relatively neat and clean way.

The good thing is that the homepage presents articles with nice image thumbnails. The bad news is that this doesn't continue on further pages listing articles, for some reason. For the articles presented on the homepage there is a thumbnail near the title even on article pages and for others there isn't. So it seems like the thumbnails are intentionally added to articles chosen for display on the homepage. Anyway, it's not a big deal of course, just an observation, given that these images add positively to the overall look and feel of the site.

Since I've already reviewed sites based on this theme I can make some of the same observations pertaining to details of the theme I already made before. Namely the cutting off of the teaser texts, background color of the top sidebar ad clashing with the gray gradient in the background, top teaser boxes on the homepages touching the top edge of the header and the text style of the ads within content not being adapted to the content (they're default).

Additionally, content pages actually have whole of three square ad boxes in them in addition to the one in the sidebar. I'm not sure if this is even allowed by google policy, but it certainly seems excessive. A lot of the times one of these boxes is empty as apparently there aren't enough ads to display for available content. I think if there's an ad overkill, this just must be it.

Design Rating: 7/10

Focus:

While short and easy to remember the name of the site isn't necessarily quite clear and actually sounds a bit strange, at first at least.. The titles of articles however make it clear and kinda save the day there. Like some previously reviewed sites of this type the purpose is mostly conveyed by the titles of the actual articles as they follow exactly the same form. This also reinforces its focus. Even if the site talks about "ways to" do a whole lot of mutually unrelated things it doesn't matter because the site's focus is to provide information about "ways to" do something, not on any particular "something".

As usual, I never think it would be a bad idea to add some marketing info to it such as an about page. That always helps establish a kind of connection with the user so the site doesn't feel like just a dry repository of information. And that's the story.

Focus Rating: 9/10

Content:

My initial expectation was that the content of this site might be something like typical tutorials or "how to's". That's how I've read the "ways to" concept initially. However, sampling some articles the title makes much more sense, that is, the articles really show multiple ways of doing some things and aren't just normal "how to's". This actually makes this quite a valuable resource mostly because I think articles explaining multiple ways to do a single thing aren't as common as typical tutorials. Most that comes to mind are occasional list type articles (X ways to do X) published by some blogs and online magazines.

This actually brings me to a marketing idea for the site, albeit it may seem corny. Some articles could actually use this list format to gain some more attraction potential. For example the article about ways to raise money could be titled "5 Ways to Raise Money" and the suggestions numbered. There would need to be another way shown for it to add up to a round number of 5.

Anyway, such as they are the articles are fairly brief and start with a short, but engaging introduction that affirms the reader's confidence in finding what they're looking for in the article. That said, there's a whole of 88 of such articles so the site's content truly covers many ways to do many things. Not bad.

Content Rating: 10/10

HowToTransfer.com sports a simple, but quite modern and pleasing design. Header almost doesn't exist except for a lone home button and the search box whose input field is only faintly visible on that dark brown background.

There is no actual logo, just a "How To" title at the top of the sidebar with a nice red gradient for a background which almost looks like a polished fragment of red painted metal or plastic peaking from beneath the white board that is the main content area. Red color scheme combined with brown and white seems quite sharp and works really good.

The categories block in the sidebar also seems unnecessary given that it only displays the "uncategorized" category.

The main content area presents latest articles decorated with engaging images and a nice catching "read more" button. However the size of those titles might be a little too big making most titles jump to the second line of text. Reducing it to about 24 pixels with perhaps a bold font weight might make it look more elegant without ruining the emphasis that they require.

The view of actual articles on their own pages is a little less inspiring. The image is no longer visible, unlike in the teaser while the ads typically end up eating up quite a bit of content space on shorter articles making for quite an obnoxious intrusion. Titles of sections within the articles also seem a little too big and where they take up two lines the line height doesn't seem sufficient creating some overlap in text display between two lines.

A special graphic for bullets in lists is a nice touch, but the background color in the graphic doesn't appear to match the white background of the page therefore making the graphics look like blocks with a rounded button inside rather than just the nice button itself.

It might also be notable that the design is already seen elsewhere as a theme which is merely modified slightly in terms of the color scheme. It's not unreasonable to make at least a token suggestion or a comment towards putting a little more effort into at least further customizations of the theme or fixing of the above mentioned issues that come with it or at most doing a more thorough redesign that will make the site's design stand more on its own.

On the other hand.. it may simply be that the site is there to just show the keyword rich content, sell the ads and be done with it. I suppose it depends on the publisher's goals.

Design Rating: 7/10

Focus:

The name of this site is practically an unfinished sentence, but that could be a feature. In any case it is suggestive of the purpose of the site albeit not precisely of its focus. Apparently there is no focus other than on showing people how to transfer whatever can be transfered in whichever context, from transferring files from device to device to transferring money between bank accounts using various methods. Well, actually, all content on the site so far is precisely in one of these two categories, with the tech related transfers being more dominant.

What gives these kinds of sites a way out is always precisely this undeniable obvious link between their name and the type of content available which is evident from their titles themselves. In truth however these kinds of sites are built to serve one type of keyphrase on search engines and isn't in any way designed to attract people through the homepage and keep them for long. This makes it hard not to give a good rating, but with a strange taste of reviewing a site that's been produced half automatically as if on factory line. Regardless, I stand by my typical suggestion. Having an about page or an introduction or some other marketing material to show the highlights and spell out the purpose is always a good thing as it shows that the publisher cares.

Focus Rating: 9/10

Content:

Well, there's 22 articles mostly about transferring files from device to device or other transfer related uses of technology and transferring of money with most content being about technology related transfers. They're typically quite short and tell you what you need and provide step by step instructions to what you should do to complete the transfer. Some have a final "Do" section with what you have to keep in mind or a link to related content.

Given that information conveyed is almost strictly procedural this brief form is probably a good thing. It wont tell you a lot about the underlying process or make you understand all there is to understand, but it doesn't have to. It will tell you what to do or how to do it and as such it's useful.

Content: 9/10