Clean, easy on the eyes, but a little bare is the kind of impression DearTips.com tends to leave at first sight. It's also clear to this reviewer, as may be to others who have seen sites using it, that the site is using a theme. As such it contains some of the same, albeit minor, flaws of that theme such as lack of top margin between the blocks and the header, and the gradient between the main content area and sidebar which makes the google ad stick out a little. Same suggestions apply with respect to these issues as do to the same issues in the review of BestInLife.net.

In short, top margin on homepage should be increased and the gradient width either reduced or the google ad moved a little to the right (or both). This theme also has the issue of cut off teaser titles when they're longer, but it would appear that most titles on DearTips.com actually fit leaving as the only issue the three dots ("...") behind every title, which seems redundant and slightly cluttering.

In addition to the ad, search box and category listing the sidebar contains a tags title for what should probably be a tag cloud, but it is missing and instead only the W3C XHTML 1.0 standards compliance button is shown. Speaking of which, it would look better without the border.

Category listings look actually a little better than the homepage listing and might be a better role model for the homepage. The homepage lists only five teasers per page leaving a "hole" where the sixth teaser block would be which makes the pager display in the right column of the main content area. This theme appears to be designed to look best with an even number of teasers on homepage.

Article pages look fairly good except for a difference in font color and size between the ad and the article text making the ad stick out a little too much. The section titles could also be bigger (use headings instead of strong tags).

Design Rating: 8/10

Focus:

Pretty much all titles on the site, including of course the title of the site itself, include the word "tips". This just happens to be the sole focus of the site, providing tips on topics in a variety of categories listed in the sidebar. So the focus of the site is pretty clear, but what makes it special and better than any other similar sites that may exist? That's what I suggest an about page for.

Focus Rating: 9/10

Content:

DearTips.com has tips on all kinds of things. 167 articles in 26 categories to be exact, including "uncategorized". However there seem to be quite a few articles which are covering areas where many more tips can be offered than the article actually does, like "romantic tips". They are certainly useful and any potentially useful tip counts. However in the example of romance there are various sub topics which could apply, for various romantic goals and engagements, for which tips could be offered. I would suggest linking to more tips on directly related topics just below the article on pages like "romantic tips" making the said article also a mini portal to more resources on the same topic, which would fit it's general title.

In any case however, lots of useful tips can be found here and they're as usual presented in easily readable articles.

Content Rating: 9/10