State of the Site: August 2016

As of last Thursday, the new version of Touch the Banner is one year old. On August 11, 2015, I posted a link on www.touchthebanner.blogspot.com to announce that the site was on the move. The new site was supposed to be completed a couple months earlier, but technological glitches, summer vacations, and the like postponed the launch. It would have taken longer – or maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all – if readers and contributors hadn’t donated nearly $4,000 to the cause. I am a man of many mediocre talents, but web design isn’t one of them, so those contributions remain much appreciated.

Below are some of the milestones, features, and tweaks achieved over the past twelve months.

• 21,000,000+ hits. Due to some technological difficulties, I lost some data during the switch, but both sites combined have achieved over 21,000,000 hits since the middle of 2010. That doesn’t include the leaner years of 2008, 2009, and the first half of 2010. It’s not Facebook or Google, but that’s not a bad number for somebody whose blogging gig is his third job.
• 4,500+ Twitter followers. Again, that’s not quite to the level of Barack Obama or Lady Gaga, but it’s not bad for a part-time blogger. I’m also not one of those “follow back” people since I only track 27 other accounts, so people who follow me are mostly genuine rather than being guilted or talked into it. If you want to add to that number, you can follow me on Twitter here (LINK).
• 473 users. So far 473 people have created accounts for this site. Out of that number, 307 have commented on a post or forum topic.
• Expanded user information. Every time you make a comment, you can see underneath your avatar a) when you signed up for the site and b) how many comments you have posted. As of this writing, I lead the pack with 954 comments, and Lanknows is hot on my tail at 896.
• Gravatars. Speaking of avatars, here’s another reminder that you can now choose your own avatar by doing a quick-and-easy signup on Gravatar. Here’s an explanation of how to make that happen (LINK).
• A slowly expanding message board. This is something that I wish I could have added on Blogger somehow, but it wasn’t possible. Truthfully, I liked Blogger except for two things: I couldn’t get rid of the .blogspot extension, and I couldn’t add a message board. The forum here allows me (and you) to post some lower-priority news items or discussion topics that I don’t want to push down more noteworthy items on the main page. (Note: With the way the forum is set up, you must have a forum comment/topic manually approved once before you’re free to post willy nilly. In other words, the first comment/topic might not show up immediately, but subsequent ones will.)
• New and improved offer boards. The sheer number of offer boards on the old site led to some clutter at the top of the page. They also couldn’t house as much information as I wanted (high school, height, weight, etc.). The new offer boards are a little more unwieldy for me on the back end, but I think they look a little more uniform and clean for you. And if you click on a player’s name, you can see highlights and some notes about each one. Unfortunately, the program does not allow for the “roster” of offers to be re-ordered by column, so players are listed alphabetically rather than by position. I’m hoping that an update will be made to that particular plugin so you can sort by position.
• Like/Dislike buttons. Each post and comment can be voted up or voted down once per IP address. So if you like a comment I make, you can upvote me and make me feel good. If you don’t like a comment I make, then you can anonymously make me feel terrible about myself. You have so much power! Incidentally, I think there has been less squabbling on this site than there was on the old one. It seemed like Lanknows, suduri xusai, yours truly, and others got in lots of arguments on the old site. People still disagree on here, but it’s not quite as angry as in the old days. Is that related to the buttons? I don’t know.
• New ad placements. This is probably not a thing that you’re necessarily excited about, but it’s a necessary evil, I guess. I had been placing Google Adsense ads at or near the bottom of the page so they wouldn’t clutter the site and the reader experience. However, I noticed for a while that ad revenue had dropped off significantly. Naturally, when ads are at or near the bottom of the page, they’re less likely to be seen or clicked on. I have started including ads within the content of some posts while keeping a couple standard ad spots on the sidebar. It has increased ad revenue somewhat, though it’s still not as high as it was at the Blogspot site when I had both a right and left sidebar. In all honesty, during most months I was making twice as much as I am now. But I do think this move has been good for the long-term.

On a personal note, I’m back in the swing of football season. We had our first scrimmage of the season this past weekend, and a big chunk of each day is spent on practice, watching film, and other nitty-gritty items. The content will keep coming twice or more per day, but this is getting into the busiest time of year.

As always, thanks for reading, participating, donating, clicking on ads, buying things from the Amazon links, etc. It’s been a fun first year on WordPress, and I’ve learned a lot.

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