Light and simple with a bit of shiny the three columned design of TheLists.org does an OK job at presenting its content. I'd be lying if I said I'm impressed though. The truth is I think there's a fair bit that could and probably should be fixed or improved so in the interest of making this a useful review, let's get on with it.

First off the minor stuff, things which are ok, but could be better. The logo which acts as the site's title could use a little bit more polish. The borders of the outline font style of it seem a little rough edged. The shiny bar marked by a blue gradient could actually be completely removed as the only thing it serves is a "home" link which could either be put on the right side of the bar above it or the logo could be used as the home link. On the bar below it google link ads background color could be augmented to fully match the background color of the bar.

The last "categories" block of the center column of the site doesn't seem necessary given that there are only two categories (uncategorized and "internet") and that we are already given a tag cloud to browse with above.

Now for the more serious issues there is the way tag pages like this one are displayed (when the tag in the tag cloud is clicked) which seems to lack a proper styling having the content jammed to the top and left making some content display over the header area and pushing the two left columns below.

Another major issue is the way lists are actually presented. They aren't in list form as one might expect, the form which tends to attract most people's attention. Instead the things listed are put in one long block of text making it very tedious to read. This alone could get even a person landing on one of these lists from a related google search to just leave in frustration looking for a result that presents what they're looking for in more readable form.

Finally, the number and size of advertisements further smother the usability of these pages especially when a list article is fairly short. The two square ads surround what little content there is on such pages dominating the view and making it seem like the site exists solely to present those ads rather than the content itself.

It's possible that there is a problem with the base theme being used which fails to style the page output correctly. One thing that seems to indicate this possibility is the fact that the area code list displays on the homepage as a nice organized table yet on the actual page of the list it's just a wall of text. Whatever styled the list on the homepage is missing or non-functional on the actual page. Whatever it is, fixing this is a must if the site is to keep any visitors satisfied.

Design Rating: 3/10

Focus:

Site's name and titles of content entries are the only way we have of knowing the purpose of the site and luckily they seem to be enough, not that having an introduction or an about page of some sort wouldn't be a nice touch. The site doesn't so much focus on any specific topic as much as the specific type or form of information or the style in which information is delivered. Indeed, the lists! That's what it's all about.

But it's not like those many popular lists on various other blogs with such titles as "Top X ways to do X" which is what I had in mind when I first glanced the site. That would be interesting though. Instead, TheLists.org aims to simply give you the list of "X", without any specification as to how much of X will be listed and in which order. Maybe developing some sort of a standard will be a good idea.

Nevertheless, it's undeniable that the site has a clear focus and the visitor is unlikely to see it as anything less than interesting, useful and therefore sensible, at least once the design situation above is rectified.

Focus rating: 8/10

Content:

With 181 lists of all kinds content seems to be the strong point of TheLists.org. They could be useful when we want to know what is available to choose from, when we need ideas to jump start some sort of a creative process or for educational purposes where we want a conclusive list that represents some sort of a fact. Existing lists on TheLists.org covers all of these areas.

I also wanted to point out that it seems to be updated quite frequently given that in the header it says last update is today. But it just passed midnight here and I see that time has switched to a new date and no new content is added so it appears this note is actually misleading. If anything was updated just now it's the clock. It might be a good idea to make it display the real last time when new content was added.

Content Rating: 9/10