"lovely website..."
Jonathan B.

great to hear the pubs are personally checked out! I'll look forward to visiting pubs.com in the future...
E.M

Excellent website! ...as you suggest, the Anchor does hire out its garden and barbie facilities, and I've subsequently booked them - It's free to hire if you bring over 100 people! Cheers for your help!
L.A.

Its a wonderful and diverse site you've got here.
S.M.

i am just calling you to say that i loved your page
J.A. (Canada)

I loved your site, pubs.com. It'll come in handy this September when we visit.
B.L. (USA)

Your site is very attractive and informative
C.S.

Let me first say ya got a great site here. A real top notch piece of work.
C.W.

It's a great site
S.G. (USA)

I think your website is absolutly fantasic !! Me and my partner are going to London tomorrow for the first time in ages and really wanted to visit some historic old pubs - so your site has been invaluble.
L.K.

i really appreciate your listings according to location, outdoor seating, good food and no smoking.
J.W.

I'm just writing to say I think your pubs site is cool
J.S.

We just got back from a whirlwind weekend in London, and thanks to your website, we were able to do an amazing pub crawl in a very short amount of time.
S.T. (Florida, USA)

I happened on to your web site. Wow, excellent. I travel to the U.K. a couple of times a year and have for the past twenty. At home everyone wants to know about the 'pubs' and it is hard to explain the intricacies. Not anymore...pubs.com
W.T.

I'm really enjoying a browse through your site - and I expect to spend quite some time. The information is well presented, without being condescending, and you deserve all success.
J.N.

I found your address in the Jan/Feb issue of "AAA World" -- article entitled "Pub Crawl Pro- tocol". Your array of information is quite im- pressive; I particularly enjoyed the history selection.
B.S.

I just spent hours enjoying your site .... very interesting ... very educational
AOL user

What they say...

WEBSPACE MAGAZINE UK. January 2001

Pubs.com: one for the connoisseur
Calling itself "the A-Z of London pubs", Pubs.com in fact only covers a selection from the various London areas, but it is enough to provide a reasonable overview. Each pub on the list has a detailed review, taking in everything from its beer to its WC facilities whether it serves food, allows smoking, has facilities children, or provides B&B accommodation. It also offers a specific list of pubs near famous places so that culture vultures know exactly where to take the eight off their feet and wash the dust from their guIlets after a surfeit of sightseeing. To help avoid confusion for overseas visitors, there is also a page explaining English pub law, including opening hours and restrictions.

One of pub.com's most interesting features is a focus on the evolution of the common or garden pub, inns run by monks in the middle ages through Elizabethan taverns when the only thing safe to drink was ale, up to the pubs of the present day that we know and love.

Keeping it simple
The site itself was in fact set up in March 1999 by dedicated pub-devotee, Paul Keating, for no better reason than that he was bored and a friend with whom had discussed the subject secured the pubs.com domain name for him. An ex-camera man for ITN, he taught himself HTML and set it up himself on his home Sting-powered Pentium 133 PC, without using any packages or any tools more sophisticated than the most basic and generic site designs and simple page links. "I get so annoyed when I try and view a page, and I can't because I don't have the specialist equipment," Paul explains. "The emphasis was on keeping it simple.'

Paul practices what he preaches: simplicity, it seems, is the key. The site is very easy to navigate and to use; although there are no search facilities for finding specific pubs, each link goes to a separate page with only the relevant information on it, so that the user isn't swamped with data and has no problem finding what they want. The site features a handy page explain-ing exactly which pubs are in which district and coun-ty that details the places that fall under the various postcodes which confuse Londoners and visitors alike. The front page of the site features links to London pubs by A-Z and postal area, by their proximity to famous places and by related information, in the form of some-what engaging beer pumps.

The general impression is of an enthusiastic amateur running the site for the love of its subject matter rather than as a strict e-commerce venture. However, so often on the Web, great businesses can be built around passion for a subject, and nobody is calling Paul Keating's passion for pubs into question.

Various plans for the site's future are being considered. The history of London's pubs is closely tied in with the development of the city itself, but as unfortunately most of the books from which Paul got his information are out of print. There are also at least 150 other pubs in London that Paul would like to include in his list, but he has to visit all of them first ...

INTERNET MAGAZINE UK. Published March 2000
LONDON PUBS SCORES...
Design ***
Content *****

Paul Keating's on something of a mission. Last March the 44 year old ITN cameraman set out to visit, rate and tbe best pubs In London. So far, this (as In house) spirited (as in Gills) Herculean task has taken Paul to 104 public houses in his never-ending for knowledge.

The design of the site clearly reflects Paul's sense of humour. The combination of an orange flock wallpaper effect background, the stained glass headings and oak leaves with acorns motif gives you the feeling that you're staring at the wall of a traditional London pub. But this isn't just any wall- it's one where someone knowledgeable has written a great guide to the capital's boozers.

For this is truly a great online guide. You can search the database of pubs that Paul has built up by postcode area or name, and you can even look for public houses nestling beside some of London's best-known landmarks such as Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and St Paul's Cathedral in the Famous Places section of the site. So if you're planning a combination of sightseeing and boozing, you're sorted.

In Paul's independent guide to London's best pubs, each pub has individually inspected and researched. He includes an history of each fine drinking establishment, descriptions, photographs and essential information, such as opening hours, whether there is disabled access, whether the pub serves food, and which real ales are on offer. He has even designed little icons for these attributes, which help you quickly identify which pubs are best suited to your needs.

For Londoners and anyone planning a visit to London, this site is an excellent resource - and just as thorough as the Good Pub Guide (www.goodguides .com). And to make his site even more competitive, Paul is adding information on children's access to the pubs and whether they offer smoke-free areas. He does admit that the site was influenced by other sites but only by their warm and welcoming feeling- "like a good pub".

Paul is passionate about his pubs. "So many have been destroyed or refurbished thoughtlessly," he says forlornly. "pubs are part of our heritage and I hope my site helps visitors appreciate them.

So far, over 27,000 visitors have appreciated Paul's hard work. It's certainly one worth book-marking. And thanks to his forward thinking, the site's address is not at all difficult to remember. The URL pubs.com is a huge asset to the site as well as being worth a few bob.

Amazingly, Paul has only been on the Net for less than two years, but he put the site together using raw HTML, with no editing tools, and only a Web design book to help him.

He describes his relationship with the Internet as businesslike. "I'm not a great surfer," he says. "I use the Net to find what I want, since I don't have much spare time. That said, it's easy to be side-tracked." Part of that spare time he's already short of is taken up with maintaining the site - for about io hours a week. "It takes up more hours when I've been visiting pubs and have to write them up," Paul adds. "Gathering the data-visiting the pubs-is time -consuming too, but enjoyable, as I have to test the beers."

Computer Active Web Guide - Winter 2000
London Pub guide
www.pubs.com
Rating ****

An independently produced guide to more than 100 of the best pubs in the capital city. To navigate the site you just select a relevant pump and pull, well click actually. Choose between an A-Z listing, a postal code search or pubs near famous places. A final pump takes you to a related info section that in-cludes a brief history of pubs, drinking laws, and the almost compulsory discussion on the merits of real ale. A beer drinker. paradise, but handy for anyone who wants to discover London by way of its public houses.

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