I, more than anyone, am thrilled that the navigation elements I deployed in 2004 have finally gotten the redesign they have long deserved. Check out any page on Dogster and Catster to see what’s new.

The top buttons are always present no matter what page you are on–Where before about 60% of viewed pages offered only a subset. Superfluous options are hidden as well. For example, the “Register’ button does not appear if you are signed in.

Dogster Top Buttons (for a logged-in user)

Catster Top Buttons (for a new visitor)


 
We’ve also cleaned up the top navigation by making Login/Logout features and Site Search forms more visible and useful. Wasted space was tightened atop each page and we got rid of some elements that may have made sense in 2004, but were no longer needed. We did add a button for Video as well–so you could see the cutest pups and kitties in action!

Finally, we swapped out our linear image-based left navigation links for smooth opening and closing accordion-style text-based navigation links. Now you can drill down to almost any site features in just two clicks. Or you can leave your favorite topics open and have everything one click away. I’ve posted some screen shots, but definitely surf over to Dogster and Catster and expand and contract the topics yourself.

Dogster Left Navigation Links
[entirely closed]		[with a couple topics open]

 

Catster Left Navigation Links
[entirely closed]		[with a couple topics open]

February 10th, Steven, John and I are going to tell the whole Dogster, Inc. story - from beginning to now - at CommunityNext, a one day conference, February 10th at Stamford University.

CommunityNext is a first-time gathering that reminds me a lot more of http://webzine2005.com/ than it does Web2.0. I’ve even been helping the organizers because their interest and commitment to building and connecting communities is pure. They really want to get it right and they really want to cover the whole spectrum, not just what the press thinks is sexy or who is paying the most. Turns out they’ve got a diverse list of speakers of people from organzations and companies, I’ve been wanting to hear from.

Guy Kawasaki, Markus Frind of Plenty of Fish and the $900,000 Adsense check, Sean Suhl of SuicideGirls (a ground-breaker in passion-centric community), Jeffrey Kalmikoff and Jake Nickell of Threadless, Mike Jones of Userplace (our IM software), Hiten Shah of CrazyEgg (and our SEO guys), Doug Hirsch of Daily Strength (definitely one to know about), Premal Shah of Kiva.org and Fred Stutzman of ClaimId (an idea I applaud), and, heck I could go on and on … Check out the speaker page.

Another thing I really like about CommunityNext is that they’ve kept the price in a realistic range ($195.00) and put it on a Saturday so real web workers can go instead of just the marketing people. In fact, you can save $25 if you register Thursday and use this URL.

If you’re at all interested in community-oriented software definitely think about making it. Let us know you’re coming and we’ll bring ya a Dogster or Catster shirt ;>

Well, the Dogster community has done it again–proven that dog lovers are the best people on two feet! This time, they’ve come to the aid of a family in New Springfield, OH.

Jester, a Jack Russell terrier, came down with a painful eye disease that required a costly surgery. His family was going through a rough time financially and was turned down for the credit to fund the $500 operation. Roxanna, Jester’s mom, and a recent addition to the Dogster family, mentioned to her friends on Dogster that she was going to sell some personal belongings on eBay to raise money for Jester. That’s when the Dogster community jumped in with all four feet to help! They donated items like dog toys and camcorders that Jester’s family could auction; and ended up raising enough money to pay for his surgery two times over!

Jester had the operation and returned from the vet last week. His problem eye has been removed and he’s feeing much better. His mom says he’s still a bit ‘touchy’ at times, but that’s to be expected.

As for Roxanna, she’s just amazed at the outpouring of support.

“You very rarely hear something like this,�? she says. “To sit there and watch strangers step forward and ease the pain from someone that you love is absolutely amazing.”

We agree 110%! We’re just so doggone happy to be a part of all the dog love and support that happens on this site. Our tails can’t wag fast enough. Thanks for being you. All of you!

Here’s the link if you want to read the whole story.

(The news site makes you enter in your ZIP Code, age and gender, but it’s quick.) We also featured this pup’s tale in our January Dogster Newsletter.

Whew after last night’s translation all-nighter I thought I’d be wiped out, but I couldn’t stop myself.

I just translated both sites into four more languages!

Dogster in:
Japanese (http://donner.dogster.com/lingua/-ja)
Chinese (http://donner.dogster.com/lingua/-cn)
Russian (http://donner.dogster.com/lingua/-ru>)
Korean (http://donner.dogster.com/lingua/-ko)

Catster in:
Japanese (http://donner.catster.com/lingua/-ja)
Chinese (http://donner.catster.com/lingua/-cn)
Russian (http://donner.catster.com/lingua/-ru>)
Korean (http://donner.catster.com/lingua/-ko)

 

    

Dogster.com was unleashed on the public January 12th 2004. Oh what a romp it’s been. We’ve got to go make a birthday cake with another candle on it!

Thanks everyone for your wooftastic support. This is simply the most rewarding professional experience in our lives. Who knew making web apps could bring so much pleasure and laughs. Sometimes I feel like we’ve found dogvana.

(Thanks to our new forums emoticons for bringing the party!)

This article on pets blogging on Dogster and Catster in the English magazine New Woman Magazine rules! It’s sassy, hysterical and informative, just like our site. They highlight two dog who have been on the site forever three members who have been on the site forever, Yuki, Priscilla Wobbles Bean and Kiara, a special cat needing adoption.

Here’s a scan of the first page. It rules.

I had a fascinating conversation in December with Ori Brafman, co-author of the The Starfish and the Spider, which forwards the novel proposition that highly effective organizations can actually have flat org charts where anyone can make progress, anyone can assume the responsibilities of people that leave and there is no top-down authority bottlenecking decisions and progress.

Their proof is in the pudding with their large global non-profit Global Peace Networks they ran with no overall leadership, only nodes. As they point out, Al Qaeda is another extremely effective flat organization.

For such organizations to determine their status they can’t do a top-down review they need to determine the overall health of their network of individual nodes. Fascinating stuff.

Then Ori asked me how do we determine the health of our network. He wanted to know how we know the overall status of our community of 300,000 members. It was such a novel approach to a critical piece of what we do, it stopped me in my tracks. Of course we have lots of ways of knowing; open communication channels with members (email, IM and private messaging) as well as public forums, reading external blogs, a group of forums moderators, user-notification tools throughout the site. Then of course we have a full-time community manager, Randi, a customer support rep, John D., as well as the continual interest of John V. and I.

So we have lots of ways of knowing the health of our network, but I never thought of it in that perspective and from here on I always will. As well I’m going to start tracking the network’s health over time on a scale of excellent, good, average, poor and awful. (I’m happy to report that right now ours is excellent. )

I’m debating including more specific states such as healing, in-flux, confused, overwhelmed. Perhaps I’ll keep a secondary column to detail the direction the health is going in (even, healing, improving, sickening, fracturing) and then a paragraph column to recall exactly what the big events were. Later we can look for trends that may be seasonal or tied to new user surges or the loss of too many moderators at once.

So, what’s the health of your network? How do you know?

Netmag.co.uk published a solid interview with Caterina Fake. It’s a must read for anyone working on a community-oriented website. (Or any website for that matter, because the web is community, right? Right.)

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes of hers

The real nature of the web is as a connecting force. This is the web coming of age, it’s returning to what it was originally intended to be.

Flickr has now become mainstream, but it’s what we would call iPod mainstream rather than Coca-Cola mainstream.

The most difficult part is not the technology but actually getting the people to behave well … It’s always underestimated, but early on you need someone in there everyday who is kind of like the host of the party, who introduces everybody and takes their coat.

That last quote explains why the low-entry costs these days don’t mean any new player can take over the traffic of a popular site. You can make all the features you want, if you don’t have the community right from the get-go, you’re doomed.

Read the whole interview.

 
Not long after New Years Day, the 100,000th cat profile was added to Catster.com.

Catster, historically, has grown slower than Dogster, but has achieved a new momentum which is closing the gap.

We’ve spent a lot of time discerning the difference of the members of both sites - in the world’s quest to understand more completely the difference of cat and dog people. While we still don’t have a valid answer we do know that though dog people are more inclined to share their dogs online, the people that are into cats and into sharing online are a very special singular personality type.

For example, every community forums is known to experience heated arguments and name calling. Such incivility is unheard of on Catster. There has yet to be a fight in over a year even though these are very active forums talking about some very delicate issues. Reccently we learned of another wonderful phenomena. We had an international rescue organization promoting a fund raising campaign on both our sites in December. They found that even though Dogster has 50% more users, they received more overall donations from the Catster members.

So while I think Dogster is one of the happiest most supportive, engaging communities I know. Catster has managed to trump it. I’m am not hesitant at all to say the Catster community is the single best online community I have ever been near in my life. (And I’m not hesitant to say the Dogster is the second)

So congratulations to all you wonderful Catsters. You have redefined how sweet and fun even a massive online community can be. Cat-nip and lethargic mouses for everyone!