Next Saturday, March 21, marks the first full year that this site has been around. (I started it on March 21, 2008 but back loaded the posts starting on January 1 because I didn’t want to launch with 40 posts on one random day in March.)
I honestly didn’t think anyone would read this site and figured that it would be like one of my many other ideas that I briefly explored and then gave up on. I thought this spoof of the website stuff white people like (which a talented writer named Christian Lander started before this one) would go the way of myworstlifenow.com, an idea I registered a few years ago in response to a book you may have heard of.
But thanks to your support and kindness, this site didn’t disappear. I don’t talk much about stats because it’s a slippery slope into ego for me and like Mike Foster recently said on his blog, they don’t matter a whole lot, but a few people have asked recently. So here they are:
More than 425,000 unique visitors from 199 countries around the world have looked at 2.5 million pageviews on stuffchristianslike.net. I don’t know what the hits are, since Google Analytics doesn’t keep track of them, but there are the stats. (According to Google there are seven countries that have not read the site, including Western Sahara, which is weird because of all the Saharas I didn’t think Western would be the one that played me like that.)
So what’s next?
That’s a good question, and I’d like to ask you that.
Today, instead of a normal post, I thought we might be able to just talk about what year two should look like on Stuff Christians Like.
1. What’s working on the site?
2. What’s broken?
3. What do you want to see more of?
4. What should we get rid of?
5. What technologies is this site missing out on?
I’ll go first:
1. What’s working:
The guest posts. I really like those because I think people get tired of just my voice and I think there are a lot of other talented people out there that deserve a chance to shine.
2. What’s broken?
The usability of this site is pretty atrocious. It’s really hard to find posts and navigate and share things. In the future, maybe I’ll work on getting a new, cleaner, better designed version of Stuff Christians Like.
3. What do you want to see more of?
I’m not sure. I’d like to see more posts where I start a conversation and then just get out of the way and let it unfold. I think it’s really cool when people get to interact with each other and have that Eureka moment of realizing “Whoa, I’m not the only one that thinks or feels this way.”
4. What should we get rid of?
I think some of the posts go too long sometimes. Folks are busy and I’d like to see some shorter posts. And all the pictures of me wearing jean shorts. There’s probably about 42% too many of those on the site right now.
5. What technologies is this site missing out on?
A million. One in particular is changing the comment structure so that people can respond to individual comments and have conversations that way. A reader suggested I use “intense debate” commenting and that seems like a good option.
Those are my thoughts. Ironic that even as I complain that posts are too long I actually write one that is too long.
Thanks for reading and twittering and linking this site. I hope to continue to return that favor with content that makes you laugh and think and a book that’s so good it makes your teeth hurt.
In the meantime, what do you want to see happen in the second year of Stuff Christians Like?
What would you change? What would you keep? How would you answer the five questions above?
