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At first glance, Trentdating.com has the appearance of a sleek, somewhat professional-looking website. The overall layout is clear, sleek, and uncluttered– much easier on the eyes than trentu.ca. The images and textboxes are judiciously placed in a manner that lends the site an air of balance and clarity.

The site features images of smiling straight couples that look like something out of Dawson’s Creek, and an eye-catching red and white colour scheme–like a heterosexual Kentucky Friend Chicken bucket. This website may be ill-thought out at a university like Trent.

Navigating this site is about as easy as finding your way through Peterborough on the city busses after six–it’s bloody complicated! The only places you want to go are rendered inaccessible by poor planning and design. While this is a dating site, the only place one can view the links to the profiles are on the main page. There is a main toolbar on every page that has links to various sections of the site, but not to the personal ad section. The links to the personal ads are almost hidden at the bottom of the main page.

Personal ads are divided into four sections: man seeking woman, woman seeking man, man seeking man, and woman seeking woman. In keeping with the overtly heterosexist nature of the website, the “Man seeking man and “Woman seeking woman” icons are placed below their heterosexual counterparts and the lettering is in smaller text.

The biggest drawback to TrentDating.com is that it requires all users to “enter a contest” from their sponsor. “Users who do not do this will have their account terminated without notice. You must do this now.” When you click on the link, you are taken to some nauseating spam website that asks for your name, email address, home address, and phone number.

Despite this, Trentdating.com prohibits members from posting any junk mail or spam of their own. TrentDating.com insists that your email address will be kept private, despite the fact that they require members to share their personal information with some sketchy spam website. The site also prohibits members from posting their email address or personal home-page in their profile.

The profile options limit the selection of body type to slim, petite, average, muscular, and athletic. There is no space for other categories such as large. There are two categories to place your personal under: dating and relationship. That might be all well and good for some people but I think it is rather limiting.

What if you are just looking for friends, or friends with benefits, or a scrabble partner? With all its limitations and inconsistencies it is no wonder that many people do not take this site seriously. There’s a notice on the front page that reads, “many accounts have been deleted and will continue being deleted due to the immature content being posted.”

Although it is visually appealing I really am turned off by TrentDating.com’s heterosexist overtones. This site might appeal to you if you if you are a thin heterosexual with perfect teeth but for the rest of us there is always the Only.