Ireland's First Dedicated Lost & Found Pet Web Site

Bluefrog

Just to let you all know, I have finally got to the point of making my 'pet project' live.

Its Lost & Found Pets Ireland and I hope it proves useful to some of you. The aim is to use the Internet and the explosive growth in social networking to make reuniting Irish pets with their owners a bit quicker and easier.

We already have our first 'client' - Lost female cat in Knocknagoshel, Co. Kerry. Anyone with any information on her whereabouts may contact the owner via the site.

Top Dog

I'm guessing it was designed with larger resolution screens in mind? I'm trying to view it in 1024x768 and the menu over the image, the left hand side bar has words missing off to the left, and the share thingies are all over the Reuniting Pets & Owners in Ireland bit.

Apart from that - good luck with the venture

Allgäuerin

Great Idea! Used all ready the link for facebook!:o

Bluefrog

Hey toptog,

Thanks for the feedback. I did actually test on IE7 and firefox 2.0 at 1024 resolution on XP and didn't see any issues. Also none on Vista IE 8, firefox 3 and Opera 9.6 running at 1024 on Vista. Finally no issues displaying site on my Ubuntu based netbook with Firefox 3 at 1024.

Perhaps the distortion you see if because of your text size setting or you are using IE 6. I have no plans to support IE 6 as I have to draw the line somewhere and drawing it there gives me particular pleasure

Can you let me know your browser, browser version, OS and which text size you are using in your browser?

Anyone else having display issues?

Top Dog wrote: »

I'm guessing it was designed with larger resolution screens in mind? I'm trying to view it in 1024x768 and the menu over the image, the left hand side bar has words missing off to the left, and the share thingies are all over the Reuniting Pets & Owners in Ireland bit.

Apart from that - good luck with the venture

Top Dog

I have to go out in a short while, but I'll find all that info for you later and post up a screen cap too so you can see for yourself.

Bluefrog

Grand - another lost soul added to the site - Yorkie lost in Clondalkin

Call me Socket

Brilliant site Bluefrog, well done on all the work!
I'll sticky it in the Lost and Found forums on IrishDogs.ie
No viewing problems on my end.....

cloudy day

Hi I haven't had a chance to look at it yet but I think it's brill and best of luck.

Bluefrog

Thanks Socket - I'll give a reciprocal link when I figure out where to put it.

Those pages with lists of links are a waste of space - I think I may put up a blog there if I can find people to contribute articles and that might be the place for such things.

Call me Socket wrote: »

Brilliant site Bluefrog, well done on all the work!
I'll sticky it in the Lost and Found forums on IrishDogs.ie
No viewing problems on my end.....

ValerieR

Hi Bluefrog,

Nice site and can prove useful one day !

I have no display issue but my screen resolution is quite large. Everything fits into it.
I like the way the modules slide into place when clicking on the tabs for each record.
A few notes :
- on your home page, the titles "Lost a Pet?" and "Found a Pet?" are switched around compared to the links presented below.
- On your template, there is a spelling mistake in "County"
- It might be an idea to have a little text box for the posters to add a little blurb if they wish.

I would advise to posters not to put too many details on the animal so that the person who found/lost the dog can complete some of the details in order to prove it's their dog as there are some ill intended people out there.

Excellent idea/site - Best of luck with it

ValerieR
www.irishfishkeepers.com
connaught.fishkeeping.society[at]gmail.com

Bluefrog

Hi,

Thanks for the kind words. I am pretty sure some other issue is at play with the display for top dog.

On the homepage links - it is actually intentional - if you have lost a dog then it makes sense to provide a search through the dogs that have been reported found - or maybe you mean something else.

On the typo - I had an inbox of corrections when I got back from walking the mutts

On the 'blurb field, that's not a feature I will be adding for pretty much the same reason as the advice you gave at the end of your post. Giving too much information can cause as many problems as it addresses. If you read the intro on the posting pages you will see that I request posters to answer the questions asked as specifically as possible and not volunteer more information than that. Also, I have to admit that part of the reason too is to cut down on the time spent administering the site as I don't want to have to correct/vet postings any more than is necessary.

ValerieR wrote: »

Hi Bluefrog,

Nice site and can prove useful one day !

I have no display issue but my screen resolution is quite large. Everything fits into it.
I like the way the modules slide into place when clicking on the tabs for each record.
A few notes :
- on your home page, the titles "Lost a Pet?" and "Found a Pet?" are switched around compared to the links presented below.
- On your template, there is a spelling mistake in "County"
- It might be an idea to have a little text box for the posters to add a little blurb if they wish.

I would advise to posters not to put too many details on the animal so that the person who found/lost the dog can complete some of the details in order to prove it's their dog as there are some ill intended people out there.

Excellent idea/site - Best of luck with it

ValerieR
www.irishfishkeepers.com
connaught.fishkeeping.society[at]gmail.com

Top Dog

Bluefrog wrote: »

I am pretty sure some other issue is at play with the display for top dog.

Well whatever the issue was earlier, it's all working/looking perfect to me now. Went to try get a screen cap for you but everything is where it should be. Whatever's happened in between my earlier visit and now, it's all spot on.

To answer your earlier questions though - IE6 on Windows XP, font/script at normal size, and 1024x768 resolution.

Bluefrog

Ah yes, IE 6 - how lovely For the security of your PC and anything you have on it, you might want to consider upgrading your browser - IE 8 is out now or you could use Firefox (my personal favourite), Chrome or Opera.

Thanks for the great efforts in any case - appreciate it. I'm sure there will be other bugs to be squished yet - particularly as I build out more features.

In the meantime, we've had another pet submitted - the sad smiley may turn into a happy smiley on the site yet - Large Male Brindle Mastiff Dog - Found in Vacinity of Carrig Village, Tipp.

Top Dog wrote: »

Well whatever the issue was earlier, it's all working/looking perfect to me now. Went to try get a screen cap for you but everything is where it should be. Whatever's happened in between my earlier visit and now, it's all spot on.

To answer your earlier questions though - IE6 on Windows XP, font/script at normal size, and 1024x768 resolution.

Top Dog

Bluefrog wrote: »

Ah yes, IE 6 - how lovely For the security of your PC and anything you have on it, you might want to consider upgrading your browser - IE 8 is out now or you could use Firefox (my personal favourite), Chrome or Opera.

Thanks for the great efforts in any case - appreciate it. I'm sure there will be other bugs to be squished yet - particularly as I build out more features.

In the meantime, we've had another pet submitted - the sad smiley may turn into a happy smiley on the site yet - Large Male Brindle Mastiff Dog - Found in Vacinity of Carrig Village, Tipp.

Trust me, my laptop would most likely keel over and burst into flames if I even attempted an upgrade. Tis a bit old and worn at this stage. Just have to rely on the extra security installed

Barely use it these days anyway - and PC has IE7 (which of course displays your site perfectly ).

Fingers crossed for all the submissions ending up with happy results

Corb

Doesn't irishanimals.ie already have a lost and found section?

Top Dog

Corb wrote: »

Doesn't irishanimals.ie already have a lost and found section?

Think so - but its just a section.

Bluefrogs is JUST about Lost & Found animals

Bluefrog

Ah trust me, I have some 'vintage' hardware here myself but Firefox is quite light in terms of resources - and a hell of a lot safer.

Just crushed a little bug with image uploads where the forms wouldn't accept files with uppercase extensions - just when you think you've thought of most things someone proves you wrong.

Top Dog wrote: »

Trust me, my laptop would most likely keel over and burst into flames if I even attempted an upgrade. Tis a bit old and worn at this stage. Just have to rely on the extra security installed

Barely use it these days anyway - and PC has IE7 (which of course displays your site perfectly ).

Fingers crossed for all the submissions ending up with happy results

Bluefrog

Just a quick update to let those interested know that Lost & Found Pets Ireland website now automatically posts photos and details of animals listed to a dedicated Lost and Found Irish Pets account on Flickr.

If you are a Flickr member, you may add this account (lost-found-pets-ireland) to your contacts so you will automatically see new listings as they are posted. You may also post your own missing or found pet pictures to our Flickr group to maximise online visibility.

Morganna

well done and good luck with the site

Bluefrog

We've just had our 1,000th unique visitor according to Google Analytics which is a decent enough start I think for such a new approach to the problem of reuniting lost and found Irish pets.

I will be launching a blog on the site in the next few days which I hope can serve as a platform for those with an interest in the issue. Articles welcome. Contributors will get a clean relevant link back to their own site.

Skillie

excellent job well done, have you been in touch with all the usual people involved in rescue etc to make them aware of your site or use it etc? such as animal care society and Dog Action Welfare Group etc (these are my local ones). would be so great to centralise all the small lost and found pages out there

Bluefrog

Hey Skillie,

Thanks for the kind words. To answer your question, since this is currently a one man operation and the site has just recently launched, no, I haven't contacted individual rescues but I have made it known on the various discussion boards and on the blog itself that I'm very open to developing relationships with them to tackle the problem of lost and abandoned pets more effectively. I would especially like to open up the blog to rescues charities and other interested parties as a central online platform for 'advertising' their particular services in this area and to explore other ways we might co-operate like RSS feed syndication on their sites etc.

I'd particularly like to figure out some way of facilitating the pounds to list pets they have as easily as possible as obviously, these are the animals most under the gun.

Like I say, I am an individual with a real job and the other usual commitments but I do see huge opportunities to improve the current situation that really wouldn't take a whole lot of work and I will be talking more about these on the blog as things move forward.

If anyone else thinks this is a good idea, probably the most helpful thing they can do now is promote it via their social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo etc.

If anyone is doubtful about how effectively a dedicated but new site can get the word out on a lost or found pet, do a search on Google for 'lost cat sligo' - got this listing submitted mid-morning and you will see it is already prominent in the Google rankings.