Just wanted to say a huge Merry Christmas from the team here at the UFies.org mega-conglomerate. 2012 has been a great year. Almost 900 posts were written, and more than 21,000 unique visitors hit the site and were (hopefully) entertained or at least redirected to somewhere interesting.
I have a confession to make… this isn’t really a mega-conglomerate. It’s not even a mega-corporation. It’s just me, one guy, posting things I find interesting day by day. I don’t do it for money (I have adsense running on the site, but my earnings for the last year were $121), or the fame (the most I can say is that I’ve gotten a bit of minor notoriety), but because I spend the day finding interesting things online and like to share.
For the upcoming year, here are a few things I’m planning:
- To bring the site out of it’s 2002 era design, and perhaps explore a few web design philosophies that were invented in this decade. Maybe give that new “Cee Ess Ess” thing a try. Responsive design to avoid the horrible mobile site would be great too.
- Upgrade the backend CMS. I’ve used Moveable Type since 2002 or so, and moving to either Wordpress or even a newer version of MT would be great.
- Site improvements like better search, some category reorganization, tags, etc.
- Dedicate myself to actually making the site interesting to look at. Images with posts for example.
- Actually survey my users to find out what they want. Yes, that’s right, soon the first annual UFies.org user survey will be showing up on the site to find out what sort of things interest you.
(I don’t have a lot of budget for the first item, so if you’re a designer who feels generous, or would be interested in some sort of a services trade arrangement, please email me (as a photographer though I know that creative people really don’t love being asked to do stuff for free)).
Long story short, I value being able to write on the site and post interesting things, and I appreciate my readers for continuing to make the site a success.