Well, after about a month (or maybe even more) of going back and forth with the very helpful TRUST e staff, the certification process is finally complete for Breeder Retriever.

It was a (perhaps surprisingly) fun and interesting experience working with the folks at TRUST e to ensure that our privacy policy adequately explains how our Web site collects and uses information from our visitors.

Aside from going through at least 5 - 10 revisions of the privacy policy, obtaining our TRUST e certification required a number of coding changes that would make it easier (and more clear) for users to unsubscribe from any e-mails or notifications we may send out (although at this point we have not sent any such e-mails).

Ultimately, I feel that the TRUST e certification process was very worthwhile–not only because of the credibility and feeling of trust it gives our users, but also, and perhaps more so, because it helped improve the usability and information provided on Breeder Retriever.

It has been a while since my last post here on the Breeder Retriever blog, but the absence of posts should not be taken as any measure of activity. In the past few months Breeder Retriever has undergone some drastic changes. First, Chris Kelly decided to leave Breeder Retriever and return to the ‘real’ working world. While it’s sad so see Chris go I believe it is equally important for everyone to be happy in what they do, and for that reason we both agreed it was for the best.

As for the website, there are a number of questions worth mentioning. First relates to the Breed Recognition Game. If you haven’t given it a try, we strongly recommend you do! To summarize, the game tests your ability to recognize breeds based on the profile image we provide. In other words you will be presented with a photo—a German Shepherd, for example—and you will also be given six options to choose from. You select the breed you think the photo depicts and move on to another breed. Once you’ve completed all 157 AKC recognized breeds your score is stored and your overall ranking is presented on the high scores page.

While the game was around in the past and I believe I blogged about it before, it has recently been greatly improved. The code was edited to make the tool run faster and more efficiently, so the load times have been greatly reduced. I hope this will make the game even more fun.

We have also added some improvements to our breed information sections, largely due to input from our visitors. Thank you to everyone who contacted us with corrections and advice!

Some under-the-hood improvements have been made to the forums as well. These changes are less noticeable but should make it more difficult for spammers to post in our forums. If you haven’t registered in the forums yet I strongly encourage you to do so and become a member of our community.

What’s coming soon? I’ve written the code for a dog book review section that will allow users as well as staff to post book reviews—but I’m not ready to post it until there are a few reviews up! So hang tight—it’ll be ready soon.

As always, if you have any suggestions or ideas that you think would make this site better, please comment here or fill out our contact form on the site. I can’t stress enough how welcome and appreciated your input is.

We released a fun little game yesterday that I think a lot of you will enjoy. The game is essentially a test of your knowledge of the 157 or so AKC-recognized breeds, and the format couldn’t be any simpler: you are shown a picture of a dog and given a choice of 6 breeds to choose from - correctly identify the breed and gain 1 point for a total possible score of 157. I tested the game before it was released and got something like 150 - I thought I would do better Top scores can be found here.

In the next couple days, we are planning on making a few revisions to the game. The ideas that stand out in my mind are:

1. Changing the name to something a little more interesting. I was thinking something like “Breed Roulette” or “Name that breed!”

2. Creating an abridged version of the game for people who don’t have the time or patience to go through every AKC-recognized breed. I was thinking of a version with 30 or 40 randomly selected breeds shown.

If any of you have thoughts on the game, please feel free to share them in the forums. Have fun!

On November 20^th I posted a list of things we’d finished and a list of things that were on our to-do list. The items we were expecting to add “soon or in the future” were:

1. A zip code search that will show you the X number of nearest breeders (maybe 5 or 10) for that specific breed and your zipcode.
2. A thorough approval process that ensures quality breeders are the ones listed.
3. A hosting service for breeds who don’t have or can’t afford their own website. Currently we want to offer this service for free, if we can afford it.
4. A new forum template (expect this within the next few days) that is more user friendly and customized.
5. New fun tools like the breed selector.
6. Connect this blog with the main site once it has a few more posts.
7. Improve the photo sharing platform so it is as user friendly as possible.

Today is December 20th. Which of these have we attacked over the past month?

1. No progress made on the zip code searches, but it’s on the calendar and we haven’t forgotten.
2. The breeder approval process has been vastly improved. We are now able to include breed clubs in the approval process—a partnership we hope will help maintain the integrity of our breeder directory.
3. Hosting: we have made advancements on the logistical end—that is, we have researched how we could best implement a useful breeder hosting platform. With Chris and I composing the entire support team, however, we are a little nervous about releasing a free service that people would undoubtedly need a lot of help with.
4. The new forum template is online. We like it, but it doesn’t seem to work well with our photo sections (at least in my opinion), so we are considering alternatives.
5. New fuin tools are still in the works. We have ideas, though, so keep your eyes peeled!
6. This blog has been connected to the main site.
7. I feel the photo sharing platform still needs a lot of work. Right now it is a bit intimidating / cumbersome for new users. We want it to be as straight forward and easy to use as possible.

Other improvements (these are the improvements we’ve implemented that I didn’t mention before):

1. Log in system for breeders—you can now log in using the e-mail address and password you entered when submitting breeder information.
2. New options for logged in breeders—“View My Listing,” which displays a user’s listing as it appears in the directory, and “Edit My Listing,” which allows users to make some changes to their information.
3. These are internal but important: We developed some new scripts that help us effectively contact breeders to encourage registration.
4. Added about 10 new banners in the Link to Us section (if you haven’t already, please do!).
5. Customized the Link to Us page so that logged in breeders will get links specific to their breed(s).
6. Upgraded our version of PHP.
7. Upgraded our server administration platform.
8. Added the “Help Us Improve” form and included a link to it in all the breed write-ups.
9. We are 75% done developing a “ticketing” system that will help us keep track of inquiries, comments, etc. so that we can be as effective as possible in replying to our visitors.
10. About 50% done setting up a fairly advanced sitemaps generator to help the search engines index our site better.
11. Added a brief disclaimer to the directory.
12. Added Canadian provinces to the submit breeder info page to accommodate our Canadian audience.
13. Completely changed the way directory listings are displayed—adopted a “business card” format.
14. Added a help page explaining how to share pictures using our photo platform.
15. Removed the poll from the site
16. Added a little paw image that now shows in the address bar on modern browsers
17. Programmed a backend that allows us to incorporate breed clubs in the approval process.
18. Improved security of the site.
19. Changed the markers next to each sub section in the dog breed information area.
20. I feel like there must be more we’ve done, but I can’t think of it at the moment. Good thing I can always come back and edit
21. As always, if any readers have suggestions or requests for new changes / improvements, just post a comment letting us know and we will do our best.

Greetings, gentle readers. It’s been a couple weeks since my last post, so I thought I’d write a quick post to let you all know how things are going with the website.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been devoting a majority of my time to building out the breeder directory. Each morning, I have at least a dozen breeders awaiting approval for the directory, so I spend a couple hours each day investigating these breeders and working with our breeder approvers to make sure only ethical breeders make it into our directory (a special thanks to all of our volunteers, by the way!). Once that’s done, I start contacting the breeder referral agents of a handful of national breed clubs looking for quality breeders to contact about the directory, and then I wait to start the whole cycle over again the next morning.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time talking to users of the site, listening to their suggestions and corrections and helping them use the tools we have provided here. This has been an educational and humbling experience, as I’ve learned that the collective canine knowledge of our guests is incredibly immense and eager to find an audience. Thanks for all the input, guys!

In my spare time, I’ve been thinking about articles to add to the site and talking with one of our writers about adding some information on various topics that might be of interest to the dog enthusiast community. So far, we’ve come up with breed specific legislation, designer breeders, puppy mills, dog parks, training, human/dog interest stories as possible topics for upcoming articles. Any other ideas out there? Share them in the forums!

After a lot of hard work, we’ve released a beta version of our breeder directory.

The directory is designed to help people looking for dogs find rescue organizations and breeders in their area. We also hope the site will help educate potential owners with respect to the breed(s) they are interested in.

As of now, there is an administrator approval area, but since we are currently not displaying contact information in full detail, we are approving almost every breeder that fills out the form correctly. Once we have finished revising the directory and making it fully functional, we will start implementing a process for verifying breeders and making sure they are following the right breeding practices (we hope to garner the support of clubs and rescue organizations in this process, as it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for us to do this on our own).

Right now, the basic functionality is as follows:

• Breeders can submit their information using the “submit breed info” section.
• We can approve, disapprove, or queue the applicants.
• If approved, the applicant appears in the directory. This means the breeder shows up on the maps and in the correct categories based on their location and breeds.
• As a side note: the home page map (scroll to the bottom of the page) is basically just for fun–it will have too many points to be of real use. It is just a neat way for us to see visually how many breeders have signed up and how diversely located those breeders are. If you are actually looking for a breeder in your area, we would want you to use the full directory by either clicking the traditional directory links or using the currently nicknamed “QuickGo” tool.

What do we expect to add soon or in the future?

• A zip code search that will show you the X number of nearest breeders (maybe 5 or 10) for that specific breed and your zipcode.
• A thorough approval process that ensures quality breeders are the ones listed.
• A hosting service for breeds who don’t have or can’t afford their own website. Currently we want to offer this service for free, if we can afford it.
• A new forum template (expect this within the next few days) that is more user friendly and customized.
• New fun tools like the breed selector.
• Connect this blog with the main site once it has a few more posts.
• Improve the photo sharing platform so it is as user friendly as possible.

We have other ideas in mind, but these are the ones that are currently most urgent.

Of course, if you have any feedback at all, just comment or send me an email. We (seriously) work very hard to listen to your advice and do whatever we can to implement your suggestions. We want the site’s direction to be largely guided by what the users and community are looking for.

Well, I guess that sums up my first blog post