101bestblackberryapps.com

101bestiphoneapps.com

These are the first 101best sites that are built around our brand new backend system that will allow for future enhancements and upgrades to be implemented more frequently and easily.

We’re going to be writing more about these websites in the coming days and weeks as we’re very excited about the future of the 101best idea. Just a couple of weeks ago 101bestwebsites.com broke through the 1,000 visitor a day mark – almost exactly a year since launch. We’re hoping to emulate that success with our 101best application sites.

You can follow the new submissions on Twitter or RSS and we have lots of plans to make the sites bigger and better. If you have any ideas or thoughts about how to make them better, or even a 101best site that you’d like to see, why not let us know…

Last week we crossed the 100,000 visitor mark which translates into 500,000 pageviews.  With the site currently growing visitor numbers at about 15% month on month we should hit 250,000 visitors in just another 6 months!

Over the next few weeks we have a few more 101 Best branded sites to launch, we’re hoping to continue our success across several new categories… Watch this space!

101bestwebsites.com

Remember, the site isn’t just a CSS showcase site, you can also submit your favourite DOM/AJAX and Flash sites:

Flash showcase on 101 Best Websites

DOM/AJAX showcase on 101 Best Websites

You can follow our progress and check out the new submissions on our Twitter feed and why not share the site on facebook or join the 101 Best Websites group and suggest ideas for the site.

We hope you like the site and will continue to support it, tell your friends!

Find out for yourself:

101 Best Websites

Review of the weekend

The idea for the site was to create a CSS / Design / AJAX showcase site with a rating system to start with, several different categories and topics to allow for plenty of updates. The twist to the site is that we’ll only show the top 101 sites in any category and the 101st site will get the same attention as the 1st.

We started with just a basic design, an idea of what we wanted to achieve and plenty of ideas. First job was to create a blog to write up our experience – WordPress of course! (101bestwebsites.com/blog/). Next we had to get the registration process seamless, keep it simple but secure. We decided early on that visitors to the site would need to register to submit new sites – our future plans would mean that it would become more important as time goes on.

Then came the submission process – this turned out to be a lot harder than expected, especially with all the little extras we had planned. The breakthrough came late last night on discovery of websnapr and the screenshot technology they provide.

This morning saw a lot of progress, submissions were successful, a few visitors (but no submissions) and we now have the categories set up and topics getting close to completion.

Our final big push this evening will be to get the ratings system in place so the site can do it’s initial job! It’s been a busy, sometimes frustrating but overall successful and satisfying weekend… Not sure I’d do it again soon though

Find out all details of the weekend and what we managed to complete